Non-naturalism

• G.E. Moore founded analytical philosophy with Russel and Wittgenstein
• Moore led the turn from idealism and became known for advocating common sense concepts and contributing to ethics, epistemology and metaphysics
• Moore wrote the Principle of Ethics which followed claims made by Hume that ethical arguments start with facts but then switch to discussing moral values without clarifying the switch
• Naturalistic fallacy- the failed attempt to derive an 'ought' from an 'is', the failed attempt to derive values from facts
• The concept of 'good' gets mistakenly defined in terms of some natural property such as 'pleasant' or desirable
• Our beliefs on what is good can be deceived by our feelings and innate desires
• Moralistic fallacy- 'ought' implies 'is'
• We cannot go from: 'pleasure is good' to 'we ought to seek pleasure'
• Naturalism argues that there are lots of different parts of 'good', whereas Moore argues that 'good' is simple and unanalysable
• "If I am asked, 'What is good?' my answer is that good is good, and that is the end of the matter. Or if I am asked 'How is good defined?' my answer is that it cannot be defined, and that is all I have to say on the matter"- Moore
• Good is a brute fact
• Naturalism and non-naturalism are both cognitive, but non-naturalism says that facts simply cannot be defined
• Ethical terms cannot be reduced to natural terms: good does not equal what is pleasurable
• Moore's argument adds to Hume's Is-Ought problem
• Hume's Is-Ought problem

  • Our moral values cannot derive from non-moral fact
  • Naturalism attempts to bridge the gap by saying you ought not to poison someone because it will kill them and that causes pain
  • This relies on moral actions causing pleasure and immoral actions causing pain
• Moore argues that good cannot be broken down in terms of its natural properties. 'Good' is not synonymous with pleasure, desirability, etc
• Good cannot be defined, instead it is something we recognise, like the colour yellow
• Moore claims we have a working sense of what goodness is, even if it always goes beyond a definition
• Demonstration of Moore's point

  1. A woman is old and lonely (fact)
  2. You ought to help her (moral value)

  This is logically invalid, something is missing

  1. She is old and lonely (fact)
  2. You ought to euthanise her (moral value)

  Still logically invalid
• IF: goodness = pleasure

  THEN: (goodness=pleasure) = (pleasure=pleasure)

  BUT: goodness= pleasure is informative as it tells us about the world

  YET: pleasure=pleasure is not informative
• An informative statement cannot be equal in meaning to an uninformative statement, so goodness cannot equal pleasure
• The question "is it good to bring about more pleasures than pain?" can be used to show there is a jump being made from pleasure to good, which proves utilitarianism false