 But the fact that these claims are not synonymous does not show that it is false that I ought to do that act which will, in fact, produce the best consequences. The latter claim could be synthetic (or, as Russell would have it, “significant”) but true. Why does Russell think it false? Russell raises the ad hominem objection that Moore’s thesis is flatly inconsistent with the moral conservatism that he goes on to embrace. According to Moore, although “there are cases where [an established moral] rule should be broken”, since “in some cases the neglect of an established moral rule will be the best course of action possible”, nevertheless, “we can never know what those cases are, and ought, therefore, never to break it” (PE: §99). “The individual, therefore, can be confidently recommended always to conform to rules which are generally useful and generally practiced.” But if we ought to perform the best action possible, what this implies is that there are some cases (though we can never know which) where we ought to do what it is not the case that we ought to do. Moore could avoid this contradiction by adopting the view that what we ought to do is that action which we have reason to believe will produce the best consequences. As Russell himself put it, Moore’s moral conservatism “implies that we ought to do what we have reason to think will have the best results, rather than what really will have the best results” [my italics]—since, in any given instance, we may have reason to think that the conventionally right act will have the best consequences even though we know that this won’t always be the case.