Abstract
How to explicate the meaning of “good” is a classic philosophical question, one reason is that “good” has metaphysical properties which are difficult to interpret. The development of ethical naturalism opens a door to answer the “good” question. This theory proposes to view the moral world and the natural world as a continuum, in that the moral world is built on the basis of the natural one. This study aims to introduce a sort of reductive ethical naturalism—end-relational theory—to interpret “good” assertions. According to this theory, most “good” assertions are end-relational and thus “good” can be reduced to “end”. By doing so, metaphysical moral meaning can be converted into concretized natural meaning, and then “good” morality will not be high up above anymore.
Highlights
In his seminal work Principia Ethica, Moore and Baldwin (1993) declare that Ethics is a discipline of arguing what is right or wrong for people to do and explores why statements about personality or morality are true or false
When a moral sentence like “Helping people in need is good” is uttered, the speaker is describing a moral fact and encouraging the audience to help others who are in trouble
In order to account for the meaning of “good”, various philosophical theories have been developed after Moore
Summary
In his seminal work Principia Ethica, Moore and Baldwin (1993) declare that Ethics is a discipline of arguing what is right or wrong for people to do and explores why statements about personality or morality are true or false. When people make statements about any of the following topics, like “virtue”, “vice”, “duty”, “rightness”, “obligation”, “justice”, explicitly or implicitly, the concept of “good” is present all the time. For non-naturalists, the good is good for it is good in nature, not because it can inspire positive attitudes or bring about good effects or results. In this sense, the meaning of “good” is sui generis. They believe that moral properties at least in the loose sense are identical with/ equivalent to natural properties, and moral concepts can be explained by natural concepts. The semantic properties of “good” will be analyzed, and the development of reductive naturalism will be introduced
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
