If someone says ‘I'm good thank you!’, usually in response to a polite ‘how are you,’ I am tempted, and often do, reply: ‘That's an interesting claim or hypothesis – how are we going to test it?’ This paper is about testing that hypothesis, taken literally; the hypothesis that someone is good, how such a claim might be tested and what thinking about the exercise tells us about goodness and hence of course about how to increase goodness in the world and in people.

There are three elements that are essential to a system of morality: a moral community, moral values, and a moral code. There cannot be a purely private morality any more than a purely private language. The moral life of the community consists of the shared pursuit of non-material values: this is what distinguishes morality from economics. This pursuit is carried out within a framework that excludes certain types of behaviour: it is this that distinguishes morality from aesthetics. Moral laws are created by the moral community in a way similar to the way in which grammar and syntax are created by the linguistic community.