GEORGE EDWARDS MOORE AND DAVID ROSS ON INTUTIONISM.

INTRODUCTION.

Ethical Intuitionism was one of the dominat forces in British moral philosophy
from the early 18th century till the 1930s. it fell into disrepute on the 1840s, but
towards the end of the twentieth, Ethical intuitionism began re-emerge as a
respectable moral theory. In this article, we would be looking at some proponents
of this theory. Firstly, let’s looking at meaning of the word Intuitionism.

DEFINITION OF INTUITIONISM

Intuitionism is the philosophical theory that basic truths are known intuitively.
Intuition is that feeling you get when you instinctively know that something you
are doing is right or wrong. Intuitionism also described as the philosophical belief
that there are objective moral truths in life and that human beings can understand
these truths intuitively. In other words, what is wrong or right is considered by
ethical intuitionist to be self-evident in nature and cannot be known through human
experience. Some things are just right and some things are just wrong, how do I
know? Because I know that good is good. I know because it’s obvious, I know
because it’s intuitive. Therefore intuition is the ability to understand something
without conscious reasoning or thought.

According to intuitionism, our intuition helps us discover fundamental

morals, but we have to decide how to put those actions on a daily basis and make
the best choice for any given situation. Generally, the word good is considered to
be the opposite of evil (the absence of evil). Though good is a broad concept, it
typically deals with an association of life, charity, continuity, happiness, love and
justice. William Lillie called what is valuable s good. Thus, in general, good are
those that are valuable, important, desirable, e.t.c for human’s life. In the modern
Time, philosophical questions regarding good are subsumed into three major areas
of studies. Meta-Ethics (concerning nature of good), Normative Ethics
(Concerning how we ought to behave) and applied ethics(concerning particular
moral issues).

GEORGE EDWARDS MOORE ON PRINCIPIA ETHICA (1902) :

In his brilliant crafted book, “Principa Ethica”, which was published in 1903?
Moore’s most important and influential work in the field of ethics is his Principia
Ethica. The principia is one of the main inspirations of the movement against
ethical naturalism and is partly responsible for the twentieth-century concern with
meta-ethics. Moore sharply distinguishes between two questions of ethics:
(1). What is good? In the sense of that which is good” and (2.) What is good? In
the sense of goodness. In preface to his book, he mentioned clearly that the
difficulties and disagreement we face in the study of ethics are mainly due to a
very simple cause: majorly to an attempt to answer questions, without first
discovering precisely what question it is which you desire to answer. It is better not
to answer to the question rather than answer falsely without knowing what exactly
the question is than lead others astray.

For Moore, he said Good is simple, unanalyzable and indefinable notion.

According to Moore, a definition state what are the parts which invariably
compose a certain whole and in this sense ‘good’ cannot be defined because it is
simple and has no parts. For something to be ontologically simple is for it possess
no parts, to admit of no division or distinction in its own constitution. Moore
illustrates the situations by comparing ‘good’ to colors concept like “yellow’’ or
green. Colour concepts cannot be known by analytic description, but only by
Acquaintance (experience) that is direct cognition or intuition. For him the quality
“goodness” is simple so the word ‘good’ is simple. Good can only to those who
already know what it is.

In principia ethica, Moore charges that most philosophers of ethics have

made a mistake called the “Naturalistic fallacy”. This is the false belief that one
can define goodness by describing the qualities that make things good. Moore
agrees that the study of ethics “aims at discovering what are those other properties
belonging to all things which are good. For example, Hedonists claim that being
pleasant is what makes things good, while other theorists may claim that being
pleasant is what makes things good, while other theorist may claim that complexity
is what makes things good. The only problem, moore says, is that “far too many
philosophers have thought that when they named those other properties they were
actually defining good”.

Moore’s argument for the indefiniability of good I soften called the “Open
Question Argument” and is present in 13 of principia Ethica. The argument hinges
on the nature of statements such as “Anything that is pleasant is also good” and the
possibility of asking questions such as “I is it good that x is pleasant? According to
Moore, these questions are “open” and these statements are “significant”, and they
will remain so no matter what is substituted for “pleasant”. Thus, Moore
concludes, any attempt to analyze goodness is bound to fail. If goodness could be
analyzed, the questions and statements would be trivial and obvious. Since they are
anything but trivial and obvious, goodness must be indefinable.

According to Moore, the only way to define “good” is to point to an action

or a thing and say that is “good”. By analogy, one cannot describe to a blind man
exactly what yellow is. One can only shoe a sighted man a piece of yellow paper or
a yellow scrap of cloth and say that is yellow.

Critics of Moore’s arguments sometimes claim that he is appealing to

general puzzles concerning analysis rather than revealing anything special about
value. In addition to categorizing goodness as indefinable, Moore also emphasized
that it is a non-natural property. In other words, two objects that are identical in
every way cannot have different values. An object’s goodness is determined by
what other properties is determined by what other properties the object has. It is a
property that is a product of having other properties. Therefore, if two objects are
qualitatively identical, they must behave the same value of “good. Moore defines
Ethics as an inquiry into what is good; including what is good in human conduct;
Principa Ethica has Six Chapters,

Chapter 1: Is titled the Subject matter of Ethics, he said that the subject matter of
ethics is most often concerned with Human conduct and with the question of what
is good or bad or right or wrong.

Chapter 2 : Is natural ethics, Moore says that Naturalistic ethics are characterized
by the “Naturalostic fallacy “. Naturalistic ethics are seen in Hedonism and in
evolutionistic ethics. Evolutionisitic ethics are characterized by the naturalistic
fallacy in that they assume that the evolution of nature can be used to determine
what is good. Moore here says that there is no evidence that nature necessarily
evolve toward “good”. To be better does not necessarily mean to be more evolved,
to be more evolved does not necessarily mean to be better..

Chapter 3 is Hedonism : a fundamental principle of Hedonism is that pleasure is

the highest good. An action that produces pleasure is A food action. But an action
that produces pain instead of pleasure is bad action. For them said pleasure is good
and it is what is desired. That we desire something because it causes pleasure.
Happiness is pleasure and the absence of pain. Here moore argues that if pleasure
is considered Good as an end itself then it must be good whether we are conscious
of it or not, we don’t need to know whether we are happy, if the consciousness of
pleasure is not an End itself. Bit he asked how can we have pleasure if w don’t
know when we are happy? This problem exposes the misleading assumption of
Hedonism.

David Ross on the Nature Of Morally Good Action.

Ross holds that virtue is the most important and that some virtuous motives are
most important than others.(Example ; The desire to do one’s duty is more
valuable than the desire to promote others’ pleasure). According to Ross, self-
evident intuition shows that there are four kinds of things that are intrinsically
good; pleasure, knowledge, virtue and justice. “Virtue” refers to actions or
dispositions to act from the appropriate motives, for Example from the desire to do
one’s duty.

The relationship of Ross’s ideas with Moore’s stems from Ross’s agreement
with Moore stems from Ross’s agreement with Moore that any attempt to define
ethical predicates wholly in terms of natural predicates commits the Naturalistic
fallacy. But, Ross argued, Moore’s consequentialist ethics actually commits its
own fallacy in boosting good-maximization as the only content of the moral ought.
Ross criticized consequentialist ethics theories o f ethics that make the
determination of the rightness or wrongness of acts or decisions based on the
consequences of those acts or decisions for several reasons. (the view that an
action is right if it serves the interests of the agent performing it) is mistaken, Ross
claimed, because a large part of duty consists of respecting the rights and serving
the interests of other people without regard to the costs to us doing so.

Hedonistic Utilitarianism holds that what is good is pleasure, and when there
is a choice between different actions, the action is right which yields the greatest
for the greatest number of people. But, Ross objected, we recognize that there are
other things besides pleasure that are intrinsically good, such as for example,
possessing a good character and having an intelligent understanding of the world.
Utilitaraianism holds that an action is ethically right if and only if the amount of
intrinsic value produces and is atleast as great as that produced by another by any
other possible alternative act or rule. Ross objected that producing maximum good
is not what makes all right action right, i.e. it is not the whole of ethics, as
utilitarians must hold if they are to be faithful to their utilitaraian theory.
According to Ross, is producing maximum intrinsic goodness not always what
makes an action right?. Here Ross appealed to common sense( or intuition), which
tells us, he claimed that some actions such as keeping promise are right not
because they produce good consequences but because of what happened in the
past, i.e the making of the promise. In other words, there is a logical and ethical
connection between the past promise and the present responsibility for keeping that
promise that is not comprehended just in considering the consequences. Common
sense also tells us, he held, that sometimes we have more than one duty in that
circumstances than another.

Ross offered several criteria for what would count as good or adequate
moral theory. It should “fit the facts” of our pre-theoretical analysis and intuitions,
even if this means that the resulting theory is less simple. Against Utilitarianism
and consequentilaist theories, Ross argued that the maximization of good is only
one of the several “prima facie” obligations which play a role in determing the
content of the moral ought in any given case. Ross gives a list of other obligations,
a list that he does not claim is all-inclusive, he explicit admits that other things may
need to be added to his list. In any given situation he noted, any number of prima
facie obligations may apply. Ross claimed that the solution to this problem, Ross
claimed, comes from bringing to light and ranking those Prima Facie duties, and
then doing the one that ranks highest. Ross was well aware that his their does not
tell us absolutely what we are to do in any given situation, in that respect the
theories of kant and mill seem superior because they tell us in any case or situation
or at least claim to be able to tell us absolutely what we must we must do. Ross
theory seems to suffer in comparison because it does not give us what is often
called a decision procedure. Ross was also aware that many acts, depending on
how one views them, that act may be prima facie right or prima facie wrong. Ross
reply to those objections to his view was that.

“Every act therefore, viewed in some aspects will be prima facie right, and viewed
in others prima facie wrong, and right, and viewed in others prima facie wrong and
right acts can be distinguished from wrong acts only as being those which of all
those possible for the agent in the circumstances, have the greatest balance of
prima facie rightness, in those respects in which they are prima facie right, over
their prima facie wrongness, in those respects in which they are wrong. It can be
said, therefore, that Ross’s Ethics succeeds in bringing together certain aspects of
consequentialism and certain aspects of consequentialism and certain aspects of
non-consequentialist (deontological) theories. Ross was also astute enough to
recognize that it is almost certainly the case that no general rules sufficient to solve
all ethical problems can generally be given. Ross ethics is based on prima facie
duties, creates a hierarchy of duties, so that, in the case mentioned, the prima facie
duty not to tell a lie is overridden by a higher duty, namely to protect the innocent
person from his enemy who wants to kill him.