- In Principia Ethica, G.E. Moore distinguishes between the following two questions: ‘What kind of things ought to exist for their own sakes?’ and ‘What kind of actions ought we to perform?’. In your own words, briefly explain what kinds of evidence we should adduce to support or challenge answers to the second question, according to Moore.
What Moore considers evidence one could present for the second question heavily depends on his answer to the first - specifically that, as he argues, there is no way to substantiate any view as to what ought to exist for its own sake, from outside that view - “from no other truth, except themselves alone, can it be inferred that [beliefs about what kind of things ought to exist] are either true or false.” (p. 34)
Because Moore sees good as something only possible to stipulate already within a view of the good, he finds that when we consider questions of ‘what we ought to do,’ we must both provide some form of intuited moral views (‘ought’ premisses, or what Moore would call ‘ethical truths’), as well as factual information about the world that those morals would be implemented in (‘is’ premisses, or what Moore would call ‘causal truths’).
Admittedly, I find his use of the term ‘causal’ somewhat confusing, as he refers specifically to “the results of the action in question,” (p. 34) which seems to necessarily imply a consequentialist ethics if is-premisses are to be limited exclusively to the (possible) consequences of an action.
- G.E. Moore famously argues that the term ‘good’ cannot be defined. In your own words,briefly clarify what sense of definition he relies on when making this claim.
Moore distinguishes between lexical definitions and “definitions which describe the real nature of the object or notion denoted by a word, and which do not merely tell us what the word is used to mean.” Lexical definitions may be circular, as they need only restate the explanandum in other words, while real definitions break a concept down into its constituent parts. The example Moore presents is that of a horse: one could define it through the arrangement of its body parts, the color of its coat and mane, and so forth.
These constituent parts, however, cannot be broken down into indefinitely; at the lowest level lie indivisibles, simple terms that can only be made reference to, rather than defined in yet simpler terms. For instance, if we speak of the color of a horse’s coat, we cannot go simpler than just the color itself. In the text, Moore uses yellow as an example of a simple concept - no matter how hard you try, one can never explain or define yellow to somebody who has never seen it (though this perhaps invites questions about Mary’s room), as they lack the simple concept to make reference to in the first place.
Moore sees good as just such a concept, one impossible to break down into composite parts, and thus impossible to define in real analysis.