Moore's rejection of ethical naturalism

Abstract

The central message of Principia Ethica is that previous ethical theory has been vitiated by a fallacy, « the naturalistic fallacy ». Notoriously, Moore gives many different accounts of this fallacy : his use of Butler's aphorism that « everything is what it is and not another thing » as his motto suggests that the fallacy is the denial that goodness « is what it is ». Quite what form this denial is supposed to take is, however, never unequivocally explained, though the predominant claim is that one commits the fallacy by holding that it is possible to analyse goodness in naturalistic or metaphysical terms. As Moore came to acknowledge when he attempted in 1921 to compose a new preface for the proposed second edition of Principia Ethica , even if there is a mistake here, it is tendentious to maintain that in making this mistake one commits a « fallacy » (« Preface to the second edition », p. 21). Furthermore he recognised that the claim that one makes a mistake by asserting that it is possible to analyse goodness in naturalistic or metaphysical terms runs together two propositions which should be treated separately : (i) that goodness is not analysable, and (ii) that goodness is not a natural or metaphysical property ( PE , p. 13-14). Having made this distinction, Moore goes on to say that he regards the second proposition as much more important than the first : it is a proposition which « I still think to be true and important ; and I think it comes much nearer to what I now really want to say about G , than does the proposition that G is unanalysable » (PE, p. 15). Given the emphasis in Principia Ethica on the role of analysis, this is a surprising remark. Nonetheless it indicates that in dealing here primarily with this second proposition, that goodness is not a natural or metaphysical property, I shall be dealing with an issue that Moore himself came to regard as of central importance. One question that nonetheless arises is how far one can fully characterise Moore's treatment of it without reference to the other proposition, that goodness is unanalysable.