 Nor is this all. As we saw in  §8.1,  our moral sentiments are partly constituted by our moral beliefs. What distinguishes approval from a warm feeling of liking is not some difference in phenomenological flavor but the thought that the thing we approve of is good or right. Our moral sentiments are feelings that, where what follows the “that” is a moral judgment. But if we can’t have feelings of approval or disapproval without the corresponding moral beliefs, we can’t explain the intellectual origins of the common conceptions of goodness and badness in terms of pre-existing sentiments of approval or disapproval. For prior to these conceptions there were no such sentiments. This is not the criticism that sank the emotivist theories of Ayer and Stevenson. The problem is not that Russell’s analysis of “good” is viciously circular because it presupposes the very concept that it purports to explicate. The problem is that his genealogy of “good” is viciously circular (and therefore false) since it presupposes the concept it purports to explain. For in his capacity as an error-theorist Russell does not define “good” and “bad” in terms of approval and disapproval. Rather he gives a genealogy of these notions in which the feelings of approval and disapproval play a crucial part. As he himself puts it: “the emotions of approval and disapproval do not enter into the meaning of the proposition ‘M is good’, but only into its genesis”. But our concepts of “good” and “bad” cannot be caused by prior feelings of approval and disapproval if those feelings are partly constituted by the very beliefs they are supposed to cause. My belief that M is good cannot be caused by tendency to approve of M, if I cannot approve of M without believing that M is good.