Hare pursued this skepticism in two published papers, “Nothing Matters” (1959), and “Ontology in Ethics” (1985). Here he suspects of vacuity certain terms that get overworked, “true”, “fact”, “world”, “objective”, “realist”, “cognitivist”; hence he thinks it much harder than many have done to define a position that is distinctively objectivist. (It is certainly not enough to reassert “Murder is wrong” in a peculiar and, as it were, metaethical tone of voice, firm and yet unemotive.) What I have traced back to a verificationism that may now seem dated becomes well-grounded when applied to abstractions that, as appropriated by philosophers, await a clear sense.