G.E. Moore and the relation between intrinsic value and human activity

Abstract

The distinction between 'good as means' and 'intrinsic good' is a fundamental distinction in Moore 's moral theory; the failure to see this distinction caused, according to him, much of ' the vast disagreements prevalent in Ethics'. However, it is not clear at all that Moore himself sees the implications of this distinction in regard to human activity. No one rejects the claim that many of our actions are means for achieving good results. The question is whether action can have intrinsic value. Moore is not clear on this point. From some passages in the Principia Ethica it seems that action can have intrinsic value (pp. 24, 25, 147, 149). 1 However, it is clear from the chapter on ethics and conduct that action should be judged according to its results and not its intrinsic value. In Ethics Moore writes clearly: " a right action is never intrinsically good" . 2 Thirty years later in 'A Replay to My Critics', he returned to the claim that an action can have intrinsic value. The unclarity in Moore 's position stems from his identification of intrinsic value with universal value. Because of this identification, intrinsic (universal) value cannot be applied to actual action; however, it is hard to deny that there are actions which are worthwhile in themselves, i.e. that they have intrinsic value. In the first section of this paper I show that, in regard to human activity, 'intrinsic value' does not mean 'universal value', but rather 'worth doing for its own sake in the particular context' . In order to do this, I briefly present the anthropological distinction (which is absent in Moore's discussion) between actual action whicfi is a means to some purpose (purposive action), and actual action which has intrinsic value (nonteleological act ion)? In the second section, I examine the main moral implication of this distinction, viz. that intrinsic value cannot be separated