Thinker · TH-0170
G. E. Moore
G. E. Moore was an English philosopher at the University of Cambridge who, with Bertrand Russell, led the break from British idealism that helped…
G. E. Moore was an English philosopher at the University of Cambridge who, with Bertrand Russell, led the break from British idealism that helped found analytic philosophy. In Principia Ethica he argued that good is a simple, unanalysable property, so that any attempt to define it in natural terms commits what he called the naturalistic fallacy, a claim he supported with the open question argument. In epistemology his defence of common sense opposed skepticism by holding that we know ordinary truths better than any premise used against them.
Key ideas
- Good is simple and indefinable; identifying it with a natural property is a mistake he called the naturalistic fallacy.
- For any proposed definition of good, it remains an open question whether what fits the definition is good.
- We know many common-sense propositions, such as that here is a hand, with more certainty than any philosophical premise that would deny them.
- Asserting 'p, but I do not believe that p' is absurd even though it may be true, a puzzle now known as Moore's paradox.
Major works
- Principia Ethica (1903)
- "The Refutation of Idealism" (1903)
- "A Defence of Common Sense" (1925)
- "Proof of an External World" (1939)
In the conversation
- Question “Natural birth”: does an evolutionary story about a trait tell us whether it is good?
- Debate Moore’s “here is one hand” is not really an argument, and that is exactly why it works
- Debate The incredulous stare is a perfectly respectable argument against modal realism
- Question What does Moore’s open question argument actually prove, and what is the standard reply to it?
- Reading group Reading group: Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, about a hundred remarks a week
- Debate Natural law is a form of ethical naturalism, and it needs no ontological naturalism