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
• 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
• 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