G.E. Moore (1873-1958) was a British philosopher (seen center here), who
alongside Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein in the early twentieth
century at Cambridge University, was a key protagonist in the formation of the
analytic tradition during the twentieth century.
This extract from OUP’s Analytic
Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction explores Moore’s concern with
the attempt to define “good’”— a key theme of Moore’s major work, Principa
Ethica.
The central question of Principia Ethica is ‘What is good?’, and Moore’s
main claim is that ‘good’ is indefinable, or, as it might also be put, that
goodness is unanalysable and hence has to be regarded as a simple quality. His
main argument for this is the ‘open question argument’, as it has come to be
called. Consider a possible definition of ‘good’, say, as ‘that which we desire
to desire’, which Moore himself takes as one of the more plausible. It seems,
though, that we can quite genuinely ask ‘Is that which we desire to desire
good?’
G.E. Moore
Read the rest of this chapter ”Do
You Know What I Mean?“.
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