ETHICS BY G.

E MOORE

ABSTRACT

G. E. Moore believed that clear questions solve philosophical problems. In Principia Ethica, he poses
three questions:(1) What ought to exist for its own sake? (2) What actions should one perform? (3)
What is the nature of the evidence to prove or disprove ethical propositions?

KEYWORDS
Ethics, Morals, self

Moore believes that the answer to the first question is self-evident. To ascertain the answer to the
second question, causal truths must be used as evidence. Moore’s goal is to establish a scientific (that is,
a practical) ethics .Moore asserts that “pleasure” is not definable in terms of “good.” This is the case
because “good” is a primitive term. That is, it is indefinable. For example, “green” maybe defined as a
combination of “yellow” and “blue.” However, “yellow,” as the name of a primary color, has no
definition other than itself. “Yellow” and “blue” are primitives. Ordinary-language philosophy
distinguishes good or value as a means from goods in themselves, or intrinsic values. Goods as means
cause or produce intrinsic values. Intrinsic values, like primitives, are simply good by definition. Moore
asserts that any action must produce a predictable effect. Since the human mind can predict only
tenuously, however, people must work with uncertainty under varying conditions. They would have to
know all results of a given action in order to determine with certainty whether a decision is productive
of more good than evil. Moreover, they would have to know all the outcomes of all possible alternative
decisions. Such knowledge is impossible. Therefore, ethical reasoning necessarily proceeds with
uncertainties: A certain ethical proposition is inherently false. By contrast, a statement referring to
generally good effects, rather than making an absolute assertion of goodness, may be true for a limited
time. Statements about intrinsic goods are different since they do not rely on predictions. An intrinsic
good, or a good in itself, exists regardless of the contingencies and uncertainties of the world around it.
For Moore, then, ethical inquiry differentiates between goodness in itself and goodness as a result. To
decide what to do in a given situation, a person relies on an analysis of both intrinsic good and resulting
good. The best course of action is the one that will lead to the greatest sum of intrinsic value. One must
weigh the intrinsic good of an action, the intrinsic good of its results, the intrinsic good of the results of
those results, and the goods and evils involved in all possible alternative actions and their resulting
causal chains.
The union of all parts of actions (their causes, conditions, and results) forms what Moore calls an
“organic whole.” For example, Menenius Agrippa’s allegory of body parts that all complain about the
lazy stomach at the center illustrates an organic whole. Parts of a picture have a similar relationship of
reciprocity. The parts are of a whole and share its nature. Organic wholes may be understood as wholes
that have intrinsic values greater than the sums of the values of their respective parts. Moore discusses
naturalistic ethics. Generally, ethics includes nature. Nature he defines as all phenomena that are taken
by physics, biology, and psychology as their proper objects of study. Naturalism assigns to any given
thing or event the quality of being either natural (normal) or unnatural (abnormal). As such, Moore
believes, it offers no reasons for ethical principles. Instead, it deceives people with false ethical
principles.
Since “good” is not definable and nature offers no guidelines, Moore insists, one must begin ethical
inquiry with an open mind. Objects of nature may be good, but goodness is not a natural property.
Feelings are natural, but goodness is not a feeling. Considering goodness as a feeling commits the
naturalistic fallacy, which is an illogical crossover from nature into non nature. This fallacy often involves
confusing “is” and “ought.”
Living “naturally,” Moore asserts, renders ethics obsolete since all actions in the world are natural. For
example, though health is good, disease, too, is natural. Evolution also cannot set a standard for how
one ought to live. Evolution ethics, derived from Charles Darwin’s concept of natural selection, classifies
“higher and “lower” races or groups. If this reasoning were correct, the cockroach, which may survive
humanity after a collapse of an ecosystem, would be a “higher” species than humanity. Whether a
surviving species is “higher” or “lower” than another is an open question. For this reason, Darwin did not
combine his theory with the questionable assumption of evolution as progress. Forces of nature cannot
set standards for moral thinkers. Moore evaluates the hedonistic view that “nothing is good but
pleasure.” Hedonism is an all-or-nothing doctrine. It rejects the notion that pleasure is just one good of
several.
Hedonists think that things are good only if they lead to pleasure as an outcome. Moore rejects such
valuation as a basis for ethics.

John Stuart Mill observed that the fact that people desire something is proof that that thing is desirable.
However, the proposition that one ought to desire a thing because one does desire that thing is another
example of the naturalistic fallacy. Moore allows that the proposition “pleasure alone is good as an end”
may still be intuitively true, if and only if intuitions are consistent. When Mill distinguishes between
“qualities of pleasures,” however, he must admit that intuitions are not universal. Therefore, pleasure—
which relies on intuitions—cannot be the only good since pleasures vary in terms of their goodness.
Moore also rejects egoism. Egoism is a way of asserting the importance of one’s own happiness. Its
secondary effect is to create a generally happy society as all pursue this good. In ordinary parlance,
egoists serve their own interests or their own good. Egoism holds that each person’s happiness is the
sole good. Each person values different good things, however, so the highest good consists of many
different goods. A universal good cannot be both universal and relative simultaneously. Adding “for him”
or “for her” to account for differences in taste or desire produces confusions in ethical theory. In other
words, a consistent theory cannot simultaneously value a single person’s happiness as sole good and
value the aggregate of all persons’ happiness as the sole good, because “sole good” in each case refers
to a different entity, a different good.

Moore discusses what one should do. People need reasons for their ethical decisions, so they need a
very clear meaning of “good.” Causal knowledge is also necessary for ethical judgments; such knowledge
must include all possible alternatives and all conceivable effects. Such certainty is practically impossible,
so certainty in ethical decisions is impossible. Likely alternatives and likely results, thus, must suffice.
“Likely alternatives” are those that occur to a person. Another alternative may be best, but it may not
occur to the person and thus cannot be considered.
Some rules for Moore do approach certainty, such as a rule against murder if one values life, a rule
against theft if one values property, a rule in support of industry if one values the acquisition of
property, a rule in support of temperance if one values health sufficient for the acquisition of property,
or a rule in support of promise-keeping if one values exchanges in the acquisition of property. Thus,
preserving life and acquiring property are universals of ethics. Chastity, on the other hand, is not a
universal since a society without conjugal jealousy or paternal affection is conceivable. Of all duties,
crimes, and sins, an individual must be able to perform or avoid them, because choice is an inherent
feature of ethics. Moreover, performing or avoiding moral actions must generally produce better or
worse results, respectively, and those results must be so predictable as to appear universal.
Purely material existence does not have as great a value as do mental events. Both together offer an
organic whole; neither is irrelevant. Evil is similar. The addition of true belief to a positive evil constitutes
a worse evil than a purely imagined evil. A “mixed” evil might be an imagined evil that is contemplated.
Thus, a tragedy (an imagined evil that is contemplated) can be productive of an overall good. However,
delighting in evil by taking pleasure from the pain of others enhances its vileness. Meanwhile, a true
belief in the existence of a good or beautiful object or person that one hates will enhance through one’s
hatred the badness of this organic whole. An erroneous judgment, by contrast, may lessen the badness
of the organic whole.
Pain appears to be a far greater evil than pleasure is a good. If pleasure enhances an evil state—if a
criminal contemplates with joy the pain of victims, for example—the resultant organic whole is worse
than it would be without this pleasure. If pain enhances an evil state—if the criminal feels the pain of
remorse or receives punishment—the resultant organic whole may be improved by that pain.
Retributive punishments consist of wickedness (the criminal act) and pain (the penalty). Targeting
existing evil adds greater value to the world. Punishing existing evil meliorates it.
Moore is aware that his remarks in his final chapter on the ideal are inconclusive and affected by his
feelings. If pain, evil, pleasure, and good were all of equal status, calculations such as Jeremy Bentham’s
hedonic calculus would make ethical analysis much easier. The simple scale of dolors and hedons used
by Bentham is turned by Moore into an analytic enterprise of great complexity, as far beyond Bentham’s
work as a modern passenger jet is beyond the initial flier invented by the Wright Brothers. Moore is to
be lauded for the great precision of his analytic approach.

ENDNOTE

According to the logical positivists’ “verifiability principle of meaning,” the meaning of a proposition is its
manner of empirical verification. If a proposition cannot be verified empirically, it is thereby revealed as
meaningless. Given the Moorean characterization of “good” as non-natural and the usual sense of “non-
natural” as connoting, among other things, “non-empirical,” the verification principle made ethical
propositions meaningless. Still, ethical discourse obviously plays an important role in human life.
According to the logical positivists, this was to be explained by treating ethical propositions not as
statements of fact, but as expressions of emotion. For example, “honesty is good” is to be taken as
equivalent to “hooray for honesty!” This view, commonly called “emotivism,” was popularized by A. J.
Ayer in his book Language, Truth and Logic (Ayer 1936), and later modified by C. L. Stevenson (1944,
1963).
To an extent, emotivism had been anticipated in Moore’s treatment of practical ethics, in his view that

“the true distinction between duties and expedient actions is not that the former are actions which it is
in any sense more useful or obligatory or better to perform, but that they are actions which it is more
useful to praise and to enforce by sanctions, since they are actions which there is a temptation to omit.”
(Moore 1903a, Ch. 5, § 101)

In other words, the language of practical ethics adds to non-ethical language only the connotation of
approval or disapproval and their consequent “hortatory force” (cf. Daly 1996, 45-47). In emotivisim this
claim was extended to all ethical discourse.

"Principia Ethica - Summary" Critical Survey of Literature for Students

Ed. Laurence W. Mazzeno.
Moore, G. E. 1903a: Principia Ethica, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moore, G. E.
Internet encyclopedia of philosophy and its authors