G.E. Moore s Naturalistic Fallacy and Open Question Argument Reconsidered. William Piervincenzi. Submitted in Partial Fulfillment.

Transcription

1 G.E. Moore s Naturalistic Fallacy and Open Question Argument Reconsidered by William Piervincenzi Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Supervised by Professor Robert L. Holmes and Senior Lecturer John Gates Bennett Department of Philosophy The College Arts and Sciences University of Rochester Rochester, New York 2007

2 2007, William Piervincenzi ii

3 iii Curriculum Vitae The author was born in Bethpage, New York on May 24, He attended the University at Stony Brook from 1988 to1992 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy. He came to the University of Rochester in the Fall of 1994 and began graduate studies in Philosophy. He received a Rush Rhees Fellowship in 1994 and held teaching assistantships for the subsequent four years. He pursued his research in Ethics under the direction of Professor Robert Holmes and received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Rochester in 1999.

4 iv Acknowledgments Completion of this dissertation would not have been possible for me without the kindness and generosity of people too numerous to mention. I wish to extend special thanks, however, to the following: Eileen Daly and Eva Cadavid for inspiring me to stick with it and to question others instead of myself; Greg Janssen for his friendship and encouragement over the years; Keith McPartland for his enthusiasm and comments, with Greg, on chapter drafts over coffee at Canal Town; my family, and especially my parents, Bill and Edna Piervincenzi who stopped asking when will you be done? just in time; Mary Schweizer for good times and pizza; the Diggin family, especially Cecilia for love and support and especially for Kerry; John G. Bennett who gave so much of himself through the final months of writing; Robert L. Holmes for his patience and calming influence; Joe and Jeanne Norwin for being our spiritual sherpas; all of the Delaware Park Olde Tymers for whom it is always summer; and Chewbacca, Goldie, and Quincy for quiet comfort when it was needed most. I extend the most special thanks and love to my wife, Kerry Diggin, to whom this work is dedicated. (Heaven knows she s earned it).

5 v Abstract G.E. Moore is justly famous for his arguments against ethical naturalism; however, after one hundred years of commentary, Moore s arguments of the opening chapters of Principia Ethica his claim that most ethical theories commit the naturalistic fallacy and his argument that moral goodness is a simple, indefinable property are poorly understood. This work seeks to augment our understanding of these crucial arguments. This work offers an interpretation of what it means to commit the naturalistic fallacy that is maximally consistent with Moore's text and examples, distinguishes Moore s claims about the naturalistic fallacy from the open question argument, and corrects mistaken interpretations of the open question argument. In pursuing these goals, I find that the naturalistic fallacy and the open question argument are complementary, rather than redundant, arguments. I also find that, contrary to the traditional reading, Moore s open question argument actually consists of two arguments, one of which is supported by at least five sub-arguments, most of which turn on our intuitions about language and meaning, and none of which is wholly successful. Moore uses the open question argument to show that goodness is not identical with any complex natural or metaphysical property. This still leaves the possibility that goodness is identical with a simple natural or metaphysical property. His claim that philosophers who attempt to define goodness commit the naturalistic fallacy

6 vi undermines support for any such identification, even if it does not conclusively refute such definitions.

7 vii Table of Contents Chapter 1 The Legacy of Principia Ethica 1 Chapter 2 Goodness, Simple and Indefinable 15 Chapter 3 What is the Naturalistic Fallacy? 35 Chapter 4 The Naturalistic Fallacy: A New Interpretation 88 Chapter 5 Moore s Proof that Good Refers to a Simple, Non-natural Property 136 Chapter 6 Conclusions 194 Bibliography 211

8 1 Chapter 1 The Legacy of Principia Ethica I. Introduction It is safe to say that after G.E. Moore published Principia Ethica, 1 just over one hundred years ago, philosophical ethics underwent a dramatic change. All forms of ethical naturalism and metaphysical ethics, 2 theories that accounted for the majority of approaches to ethics, were under attack. Moore offered an ambitious and vexing collection of arguments that inspired, and continues to inspire, high praise and scathing criticism. 3 And while his arguments did not sound a death knell for naturalism, they did inspire the development of plenty of alternative views. 4 Moore s intent in Principia Ethica was to create a new science of ethics, one that better captured what we had in mind when we called an action or a state of affairs good. He tried to accomplish this through observations about how we 1 G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica (1903). There are two versions of Principia Ethica in wide use, which have the same text and different pagination. The newer version is the revised edition of Since this new version contains a useful, previously unpublished preface to a planned but never written second edition of Principia Ethica, all future citations will be to the newer version. The appropriate citation is G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica, revised edition, Thomas Baldwin, ed. (Cambridge 1993) [henceforth Principia Ethica ]. 2 Broadly defined, these are theories that hold that hold that goodness is identical with some natural or metaphysical property. See, e.g., Principia Ethica, Alisdair MacIntyre holds Moore s arguments to play a key role in the decline of Anglo- American ethical thought, and in the ongoing decay of Western culture. See Brian Hutchinson, G.E. Moore s Ethical Theory (Cambridge 2001) p. 3, citing Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. (University of Notre Dame Press) 1984, pp Most notably, by those who rejected Moore s positive views, like A.J. Ayer and C.L. Stevenson.

9 2 use moral language, what we intend, what it is we seem to be attributing to an action when we call it good, and through arguments that appear to demonstrate that whatever we have in mind when we use moral language, it can not be anything like what is proposed by ethical naturalists. II. Overview of Principia Ethica. Moore begins Principia Ethica by attempting to identify the scope of ethical inquiry. He wants to answer the questions: What is the subject matter of ethics? and, What is it that we purport to study when we engage in moral reasoning? Clearly, the answer is conduct. But there are other disciplines besides ethics that study conduct, so in order to differentiate ethics from those, Moore takes his study a step further. What Ethics studies is good conduct. And since all conduct is not good; for some is certainly bad, and some may be indifferent, 5 Moore looks to see what all ethical judgments have in common as their subject and determines that this common subject is goodness. This prompts Moore to accept that ethics is the general enquiry into what is good. 6 To determine what the nature of goodness is, in chapter I, Moore examines what we mean by the word good. We use the word good in many ways, most of which have nothing to do with ethics. For instance, I may say, This eggplant is really good or write, Good soil and high moisture ensure acceptable rates of 5 Principia Ethica, p Principia Ethica, p. 54.

10 3 propagation. In these contexts, good means tasty or fertile, clearly not what we mean when using ethical language. There is one sense of this word that Moore concludes is the uniquely moral sense of the word. This is the sense that Moore calls intrinsic goodness or sometimes intrinsic value. For simplicity, I will refer to this predicate as goodness, throughout this work. When it appears in single quotes, as in goodness I am talking about the word that refers to the property goodness. When it appears in regular text, without quotes, I use it to refer to the property itself. Moore asserts throughout Principia Ethica that people make a mistake when they attempt to define good. But clearly, the problem is not in defining the word good. Linguistic definition is not what Moore is after. He writes, A definition does indeed often mean the expressing of one word s meaning in other words. But this is not the sort of definition I am asking for. Such a definition can never be of ultimate importance in any study except lexicography. 7 A linguistic definition might tell us how people tend to use a word, or it might define a word by stipulation. One mistake people make is in claiming that a mere verbal definition is supposed to be an analysis of the uniquely moral sense of good, namely, the property goodness. While it is a mistake to confuse a verbal definition with a property analysis, Moore is concerned to illustrate and avoid a different mistake 7 Principia Ethica, p. 58.

11 4 that of defining the property goodness in terms of other properties, that is, the mistake of analyzing goodness at all. In the rest of the first chapter of Principia Ethica, Moore examines the characteristics of this property. He concludes that goodness is a non-natural, simple, indefinable property and an intrinsic kind of value. As we will see in Chapter 2, Moore takes properties to be either simple or complex. An example of a complex property is being-a-brother. Moore takes this property to be made up of the simpler properties being-male and being-a-sibling. Perhaps each of these can be further broken down. To give a definition of a property is to identify its component properties and their relation to each other. Goodness, claims Moore, is a property that admits of no such analysis. It is simple, without component parts. As such, it is incapable of definition. To say that goodness is an intrinsic kind of value is to say that it is a property of objects that they possess in virtue of other properties those objects possess. In particular, goodness is not part of the intrinsic nature of an object x, but it is dependent on the intrinsic nature (the natural properties) of x. This makes goodness an intrinsic kind of value. Using the word intrinsic to describe both the natural properties of an object (all those properties which make up any natural object) and the object s value (a non-natural property an object has in virtue of its arrangement of natural properties) is an unfortunate use of language. Moore clearly means two different things by this word, and leaves it to context for us to

12 5 determine which. 8 This distinction will be made clearer in Chapter 2, but for now, it is worth noting that goodness depends on the natural properties of objects, but is not itself a natural property. Moore also claims in Chapter I that how valuable an object is, i.e., to what degree goodness attaches to an object, while being determined purely by the object s intrinsic properties, is not necessarily the sum of the value of each of the object s parts. 9 The value of each individual part of an object or state of affairs is not determinative of the value of the whole. Moore calls such objects organic wholes or organic unities, a term borrowed from Hegelian philosophy. The final task of the first chapter of Principia Ethica, and the task about which this author is most interested, is to explain why it is that ethical naturalism fails. Among Moore s claims is the view that a fallacy is committed by every philosopher who offers a definition of goodness. He attempts to describe this naturalistic fallacy in a number of ways, using examples 10 and in the context of arguing against naturalistic and metaphysical theories. 11 Moore does not yet define naturalism, but it is clear from context that naturalists are defining 8 Writing in 1921 or 1922, in the proposed preface to a never-published second edition of Principia Ethica, Moore clarified his position on the relationship between goodness and the intrinsic properties of good objects. Using G to denote Goodness (to prevent confusion with non-moral senses of the word good ), he writes: G is a property which depends only on the intrinsic nature of the things which possess it and Though G thus depends on the intrinsic properties of things which possess it, and is, in that sense, and intrinsic kind of value, it is yet not itself an intrinsic property. Principia Ethica, p Principia Ethica, p Throughout Chapter I. 11 In Chapters II-IV.

13 6 goodness in terms of properties like those which are the subject matter of disciplines like biology or psychology. 12 As part of his proof that goodness is a non-natural property, and (possibly) in support of his view that all forms of naturalism commit the naturalistic fallacy, Moore offers his famous open question argument. The gist of this argument is that for any complex property you consider as a possible definition of goodness, a little reflection will show that it differs from goodness, and so, is inadequate as a definition. This is somewhat of a simplification of the argument, and as we will see in Chapter 5, there is not unanimity on what the open question argument really is, nor on what it is supposed to prove. One way to run the open question argument is as a test that uses our intuitions about the meaning of the words we use to express moral concepts to force the reflection required to see that any proposed definition fails. For instance, if the suggestion was that goodness meant happiness-promoting, we might substitute happiness-promoting for good in a sentence and see that that substitution did not preserve the meaning of the original sentence, as in: [1] Practicing vegetarianism is good [2] Practicing vegetarianism is happiness promoting. We can see that happiness promoting has a different meaning than good, Moore argues, because even if we accept [2], we may intelligibly ask, 12 He provides a working definition of naturalism in Chapter II.

14 7 Is practicing vegetarianism good? The fact that we can know [2] is true, while the truth of [1] is an open question i.e., that [2] does not make [1] trivial shows that [1] and [2] have different meanings. Moore would say that our suspicion that [1] and [2] do not mean the same thing is grounded in the inadequacy of happiness-promoting as a definition for goodness. 13 Some version of this test and the naturalistic fallacy are Moore s most enduring impacts on moral philosophy and the primary subject of this dissertation. Chapters II, III and IV of Principia Ethica are devoted to showing that the various forms of ethical naturalism and metaphysical ethics commit the naturalistic fallacy and should be rejected. In Chapter II, Moore tells us that what characterizes all forms of naturalism is that they purport to define goodness in terms of some natural object (or property) or other. Moore offers two ways of identifying natural objects and properties. The first, based on our idea of the proper scope of scientific inquiry, defines natural properties and objects as those things that are the subject matter of natural sciences and psychology. Biology, chemistry, physics, and psychology collectively study such properties as beingproductive-of-life, being-alkaline, being-massive, and being-productive-ofhappiness, therefore these are natural properties. The second way Moore defines natural objects and properties is in terms of metaphysics. He writes that these 13 This is a vastly simplified version of his argument. Moore s more elaborate version is the subject of chapter 5 of this work.

15 8 properties are objects or properties that currently exist, have existed, or will one day exist. He offers a test to help us make the determination Can we imagine that object or property existing alone in the universe? If so, it is a natural object or property. This isolation test is purported to be especially useful in identifying natural properties because Moore takes it to be perfectly conceivable that natural properties are capable of existence in time (and space) independent of the objects to which they are usually attached. But this is not the case for non-natural properties. Naturalistic theories of ethics define goodness in terms of one of these sorts of objects or properties. All of these theories, including Hedonism, the subject of Chapter III, are said to rest on the commission of the naturalistic fallacy. Spencer s theory of evolutionary ethics commits the fallacy because it identifies the normative concept being-ethically-better with being-more-evolved. As Moore points out, being more evolved may be better than being less so, but it may not be. Surely, they are not one and the same concept. Hedonists and all those who base their theories on hedonism the theory that goodness is pleasure are also said to commit the naturalistic fallacy. J.S. Mill is said to do so in virtue of thinking that the fact that pleasure is universally desired proves that being-productive-of-pleasure is identical with goodness. Ethical egoists those who argue that we ought each to pursue our own best interests make two mistakes. Those who are hedonistic egoists commit the

16 9 naturalistic fallacy by identifying goodness with being-productive-of-pleasure. And all ethical egoists confuse a universal concept, goodness, with something not universal the agent s benefit, i.e., a property that is necessarily different for everyone. Utilitarianism, the view that what is right is the act that has the best results (that which maximizes the proper end(s) of moral conduct), is praised as a general theory, but criticized on the grounds that utilitarians typically choose as their end either pleasure, which fails for the reasons Moore has already discussed, or some other natural property, none of which are identical with goodness. In Chapter IV, Moore turns his attention to metaphysical ethics. These are theories that purport to define goodness by identifying it with some metaphysical property or other Moore calls these supersensible properties. These are supposed to be real, existent properties that are beyond our comprehension. A theory might hold that things are good insofar as they mirror this supersensible reality. Moore rejects these theories on the ground that they commit the naturalistic fallacy. This may seem odd, as they are not defining goodness with respect to any natural property, but Moore notes that though the ultimate definitions are not natural ones, the commission of the fallacy lies not in the nature of the definition, but in the definition itself This may be read as some proof that the naturalistic fallacy is just a definist fallacy that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to give a definition of an indefinable property, goodness. But when we attend closely to the text, we see that Moore does not say the fault lies in the mere definition, but in inferring the definition on inappropriate evidence. See, e.g., Moore s comments on Green s theory, Principia Ethica, p. 189.

17 10 In Chapter V, Moore moves from discussions of meta-ethics the discussion of the nature of goodness, and what sorts of things possess goodness to a discussion of practical ethics. The proper question for practical ethics is What ought I (we) do? Rather than asking about the value of objects and states of affairs, it seeks to determine the rightness of actions that bring about such objects or states of affairs. The answer Moore embraces is that our goal is to try to maximize intrinsic goodness, and to accomplish this, we ought to do those things that tend to produce better results in the foreseeable future, measured by the production of intrinsic goodness. The final chapter of Principia Ethica is where Moore tells us what things are intrinsically valuable. To determine the value of objects and states of affairs, Moore again turns to a kind of isolation test. What value would a thing have if it existed alone in the universe? Something that has only instrumental value a thing that is good only as a means to some other thing clearly has no value in such a universe. Moore concludes that there are a great many intrinsically good things, but two stand out as very great goods, namely love of beautiful things and love of good persons. Some effects of Principia Ethica Principia Ethica has had a profound impact on subsequent analytic ethics. Convinced by Moore s assault on naturalism, many came to embrace Moore s

18 11 non-naturalism. Some, like W.D. Ross, accept non-naturalism, but reject the centrality of goodness, opting instead to base their theories on the concepts of rightness or duty. 15 Others have taken a more radical approach, denying the view that moral language has the kind of universal meaning Moore presupposes. These views, varieties of noncognitivism, hold that the words we use to make moral judgments, words like good, bad or right, do not denote moral properties, but are expressions of some one of our mental states or psychological attitudes. Thus when I say, Torture is bad, I am not attributing the property badness to torture, rather I am merely expressing an attitude I have (disfavor of some sort, depending on the variety of noncognitivism) toward torture. Of course, some philosophers maintain that some form of ethical naturalism is correct, but straightforward identification of goodness with some natural property or other has become more rare. 16 Some of these naturalists are non-reductive naturalists who do not propose to define goodness in terms of any particular natural property at all. Plan of this work This dissertation consists of a close reading and explication of Chapters I- III of Principia Ethica. After one hundred years of commentary, Moore s views on the central arguments of these chapters of Principia Ethica are poorly understood. For instance, Darwall, Gibbard and Railton, in their "Toward Fin de 15 W.D. Ross, The Right and the Good (1930). 16 Though there are still plenty of straightforward hedonists.

19 12 Siecle Ethics" 17 claim that fifty years ago, it was proved that there was no fallacy involved in Moore s naturalistic fallacy 18. At the same time, others criticize theories like those of evolutionary ethics on the grounds that they commit the naturalistic fallacy. What a curious thing it must be if it is no fallacy at all, yet the reason to reject these theories. Moore, himself, claims not to know what he meant by his claims that all forms of ethical naturalism commit the fallacy. 19 It also seems that critics of the naturalistic fallacy and open question argument generally criticize Moore s arguments without being sufficiently careful to distinguish the open question argument from Moore s claims about the naturalistic fallacy. One would hope that after a century of scholarship we would be able to distinguish theses central tenets of Moorean thought. 20 My purpose in writing this dissertation is to offer an interpretation of Moore s central claims that demonstrates the subtlety and power of those arguments. This involves three things: 1) Offering an explication of what it means to commit the naturalistic fallacy that is consistent with Moore s text and examples, 2) Distinguishing Moore s claims about the naturalistic fallacy from the open question argument, and 17 The Philosophical Review, Vol. 101, No. 1 (January 1992) 18 Probably referring to Frankena s article The Naturalistic Fallacy, Mind 48: In his posthumously published preface to the unpublished second edition of Principia Ethica. 20 As we shall see, the failure is not to be laid squarely at the feet of the critics, as Moore is difficult to interpret, even for himself.

20 13 3) Correcting mistaken interpretations of the open question argument. The heavy lifting begins in Chapter 2. There I describe the property goodness and explain Moore s claims about it. I focus on what it means for goodness to be simple and indefinable. In Chapter 3, I examine interpretations of the naturalistic fallacy offered by Thomas Baldwin, A.N. Prior, and William Frankena. I also include some comments made by Moore in the years after Principia Ethica was published. I find that none of those interpretations, even Moore s, maintain fidelity to the text of Principia Ethica. The mistakes, however, are instructive. We will see that Prior, for instance, conflates the naturalistic fallacy and the open question argument. The consequences of this are dire, for it allows Prior to minimize both claims by attacking only one. In Chapter 4, I offer a close reading of Moore s statements wherein he describes the naturalistic fallacy and of his examples of philosophers who commit the naturalistic fallacy. I find that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to make one of three closely related errors. My interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy suggests that while it is indeed an error, it is not the error that most critics think it is. In Chapter 5, I provide a reading of Moore s open question argument that, as in the case of the naturalistic fallacy, emphasizes fidelity to the text and rejects the traditional interpretation. I find that, rather than proving that all natural

21 14 definitions of goodness are false, the section of Principia Ethica wherein Moore details the open question argument actually contains many arguments all in support of the conclusion that goodness is simple and indefinable. I examine these arguments in detail and offer one of my own that is intended to overcome some of the problems normally associated with Moore s arguments. Chapter 6, the conclusion, summarizes my main points, and emphasizes the proper role of Moore s two major arguments of Principia Ethica, Chapter I. I find that the open question argument is Moore s proof that goodness cannot be defined in terms of any complex natural property. But this leaves the possibility that goodness is a simple natural property. The naturalistic fallacy is then deployed against any possible simple definition. I argue that the naturalistic fallacy does not disprove any proposed natural definition, but that commission of the naturalistic fallacy undermines the rational support any naturalistic theory could hope to garner.

22 15 Chapter 2 Goodness, Simple and Indefinable It is immediately obvious that when we see a thing to be good, its goodness is not a property which we can take up in our hands, or separate from it even by the most delicate scientific instruments, and transfer to something else. It is not, in fact, like most of the predicates which we ascribe to things, a part of the thing to which we ascribe it. 1 The main theses Moore defends in Principia Ethica are that goodness is a simple and indefinable property, and that most naturalistic ethical theories commit the naturalistic fallacy. Chapters 3 and 4 are about the naturalistic fallacy, and in Chapter 5, I explain Moore s argument for the indefinability of goodness. But this does not tell us much about what goodness is. What features does this property have? What does it mean for a property to be indefinable? This chapter begins with an examination into what property it is that Moore claims is simple and indefinable. This is followed by an examination into what it means to be simple and indefinable. I. Goodness Moore s claims about the naturalistic fallacy aside, perhaps the most significant thesis he defends in Principia Ethica is the claim that goodness is 1 Principia Ethica, p. 175.

23 16 simple and indefinable. Of what property is Moore predicating indefinability? Moore begins his examination of moral theory by asking the question What is good? 2 He does not mean by this question What things are good? but rather, he is inquiring about the property, goodness, itself. By good, he means to refer to that property that he believes is unique to ethics, and upon which all judgments of right and wrong rest, and not to the many other properties that go by the same name but which are not relevant to ethics. For example, if I say, Soup is good food, the word good does not refer to the property relevant to ethics. I am likely using the word to refer to some property like tastiness, or being-valued-forits-nutritional-content. The question of what things are good is an interesting one, but before we can do a good job of answering it, we must first figure out what it means to be good. To what does the word good when used in its moral sense refer? In other words, what property does the word good pick out? By good, Moore means the only simple object of thought which is peculiar to Ethics. 3 At various times in his career, Moore believed that the other concepts of ethics examples include right, obligation, and virtue 4 could be 2 Principia Ethica, p Moore, Principia Ethica, p. 57. This quote raises a few issues worth footnoting. First, Moore notes that goodness is not the only such property, but its converse, badness, is another. Together they are the only simple objects of thought peculiar to Ethics. Second, by object of thought he actually means what we mean by property. He takes property, notion, concept, object of thought, quality, and predicate to mean the same thing, at least early in his philosophical career. In Principia Ethica, Moore no longer uses concept to denote objects and properties. As the vocabulary and conventions of analytic philosophy became standardized, his use of these words became standardized as well. 4 Note, Moore holds that virtue is not an unique ethical predicate. Principia Ethica, p. 231.

24 17 defined, at least in terms of goodness. For example, in Principia Ethica, he offers the following analysis of obligation: S is obligated to do x means x will produce the greatest amount of good in the universe 5 But it is not clear whether Moore believed these other ethical properties could be defined in terms of goodness throughout his career. In Ethics, for instance, he does not give a definition of rightness in terms of goodness. 6 It is unclear whether this warrants concluding that he abandoned hopes of such a definition, or whether he merely intended to distance his later work from the controversy associated with Principia Ethica. In a letter to Russell, written in 1905, Moore writes in response to Russell s article On Denoting 7 Your theory suggested to me a new theory about the meaning of the meaning of words, which might, I think, help us to settle the question about whether the meaning of right is indefinable. But I can t work it out right now. 8 Clearly, in 1905, Moore was unsettled about the definability of right. Since we have no evidence that Moore had, by 1905, changed his views about language, it 5 Principia Ethica, p We recognize that this is an incomplete analysis, because the right side does not seem to require anything of S. Assuming that ought implies can, we might solve this by the addition of and x is among the things S can do. Moore provides an analysis of rightness in the same passage. 6 Moore, Ethics (1911) p Russell, B., On Denoting, Mind New Series, Vol. 14, No. 56 (Oct., 1905), pp Letter to Bertrand Russell of 23 October 1905, reprinted in part in Philip Pettit, The Early Philosophy of G.E. Moore, The Philosophical Forum, vol. IV, no. 2 (Winter ), pp , at p. 298.

25 18 is clear that he was unsure whether rightness was definable (analyzable). We also have inconclusive evidence from Moore s reply to his critics in Schilpp. In that essay, he defends, for the most part, the project of defining ethical properties in terms of goodness, but in a telling passage, he admits that he is sometimes inclined to think that no moral terms are names of properties at all, but only carry emotive meanings. 9 Regardless of whether goodness is really the only simple object of thought peculiar to ethics, or whether some or all of the other concepts are simple as well, or definable in terms of goodness, it is clear we have ways of thinking about goodness and these other properties. Despite not being able to define goodness, it is possible to recognize it for purposes of discussion. 10 Similarly, basic properties of physics mass, for instance may not be defined in terms of their constituent parts, but only by relation to other properties or objects. Nonetheless, such properties may be identified and discussed. We may think of Moore s claim about goodness as the analog to a physicist s claim about mass. It is a basic 9 He writes: I must say again that I am inclined to think that right, in all ethical uses, and, of course, wrong, ought, duty also, are, in this more radical sense, not the names of characteristics at all, that they have merely emotive meaning and no cognitive meaning at all: and, if this is true of them, it must also be true of good, in the sense I have been most concerned with. I am inclined to think that this is so, but I am also inclined to think it is not so; and I do not know which way I am inclined most strongly. Moore, A Reply to My Critics, p. 554 in P.A. Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of G.E. Moore, The Library of Living Philosophers collection, vol. IV, Northwestern University Press (1942). 10 This very feature will be the motivating force behind Moore s argument that good is not meaningless, i.e., that there is a property that we refer to by the name good. This argument is the second part of Moore s proof that goodness is simple and indefinable, the subject of Chapter 5.

26 19 property, we all know it is there, we recognize it, we can discuss it, but we cannot define it. Since Moore takes this property to be indefinable, he cannot tell us much more than this. He can only rely on the fact that we are familiar with the property in question, that we use it in our judgments about ethics, and that when we reflect on it, we will recognize it. This is not necessarily problematic. Many disciplines have core features that we may not be able to define. Nonetheless, we can talk meaningfully about them. To use an analogy Moore comes back to frequently, we can talk about yellowness even though I cannot define it. It is enough that we can identify instances of it when we see it, etc. 11 Moore writes Whenever [someone] thinks of intrinsic value, or intrinsic worth, or says that a thing ought to exist, he has before his mind the unique object the unique property of things which I mean by good. 12 Although in this dissertation I have avoided citing to Moore s later work except to contrast it with what appears in Principia Ethica, I must make an exception here. Since Moore sometimes refers to this property as intrinsic 11 Actually, though this is not anything I wanted to talk about in this dissertation, it strikes me that we may very well be wrong about the features that we think allow us to pick out goodness for purposes of discussion. 12 Moore, Principia Ethica, p. 68. We see in this quote one of the problems endemic to Moore s writing in Principia Ethica. Though it seems that he might be referring to the property being intrinsically valuable and not the words intrinsic value he offsets the phrase with single quotes. As I have noted elsewhere, this can lead to use/mention problems, some of which Moore noted himself in his Preface to the Second Edition. On the other hand, he is trying to express the thought that these are other names for the property goodness. This suggests that they should be offset by quotes, but then the quote ought to read Whenever [someone] thinks of the property named intrinsic value....

27 20 value, which brings to mind features of goodness that we might not otherwise think of, Moore s comments about intrinsic goodness from the Second Preface are helpful. Moore identifies two important features of intrinsic goodness: 1) Intrinsic goodness is a property which depends only on the intrinsic nature of the things which possess it, and 2) Though it depends on the intrinsic properties of the things which possess it, it is not itself an intrinsic property. 13 Moore sometimes writes as if (1) implies that if an object has intrinsic goodness, it has it necessarily, but this implication is not literally true. In particular, he makes two claims that seem to imply necessity. First, he writes that judgments that state that certain kinds of things are themselves good are, if true, universally true. 14 Secondly, he writes that a judgment which asserts that a thing is good in itself... if true of one instance of the thing, is necessarily true of all. 15 By necessarily true Moore does not mean true in every possible world. Clearly there are worlds in which a given object, good in this world, would have intrinsic properties that make it bad, just as my counterpart in Bizarro world might have no beard and a malevolent streak a mile wide. What Moore means is that in any world in which an object, good in this world, exists with exactly the same intrinsic properties, it will be good regardless of the other characteristics of the world. 13 Preface to the Second Edition of Principia Ethica, p. 22. He believes that only predicates of value have these two features. 14 Principia Ethica, p Principia Ethica, p. 78.

28 21 Whatever is good depends only on the non-relational properties of the object such that for any object, no matter what the rest of the world is like, if an object is good in one world, its exactly similar counterpart will be good in every world. It seems that Moore is trying to establish that goodness is a kind of emergent property, or that it supervenes on the intrinsic properties of the objects that possess it. His descriptions seem to imply that the supervenience relation is a strong, local form of supervenience. We can state this view as follows: For any objects x and y, and any worlds, w1 and w2, if x in w1 is indiscernible from y in w2 with respect to their intrinsic properties, then x in w1 is indiscernible from y in w2 with respect to goodness. On this view, 16 the indiscernibility is at the level of individuals, not whole worlds. This is a variety of strong supervenience because the indiscernibility with respect to goodness is across worlds. A weak supervenience view might claim that if two objects were indiscernible with respect to their natural (or other) properties in a given possible world, they would be indiscernible with respect to goodness in that world. On Moore s view, if an object is good anywhere, an object exactly like it is good everywhere, whatever else may be true of that world. The view is a variety of local supervenience because the moral supervenes on the "local" properties of the objects in question. Relational properties and other non- 16 Unlike, say, a global supervenience view.

29 22 intrinsic properties do not make up part of the supervenience base. Moore also believes that most (maybe all) natural and metaphysical predicates are either contingent or intrinsic. Intrinsic goodness is neither, so it cannot be natural or metaphysical. We might create from this an argument that goodness is not definable in terms of natural or metaphysical properties, and while this would go a long way toward establishing Moore s claim that goodness is indefinable, it is not an argument Moore makes. II. Goodness, simple and indefinable Simplicity Moore takes goodness to be simple and indefinable. For Moore, the indefinability of goodness is a consequence of its being simple. To be a simple property is to have no other properties as constituents. Complex properties, by contrast, have such parts. Moorean definition consists in identifying those parts and their relations to each other and the whole. This conception of properties is examined briefly, below. The simplicity of a property and its indefinability are distinct features the property may have, though one is the consequence of the other. 17 And the reason 17 Some doubt is cast on this claim by Moore, himself, in the Second Preface, where he writes that in Principia Ethica he identified being simple with being indefinable. I do not find this identification. To be simple is to admit of no definition, but given Moore s conception of definition, it appears that indefinability is a consequence of not having parts, rather than being identical with simplicity.

30 23 I take this to be so important is that no part of Moore s proof that goodness is simple and indefinable actually turns on the indefinability. What Moore does is to present an argument from the premise that either goodness is simple (hence, indefinable), or it is complex, or it has no unique meaning. We will see that Moore does not show that no definition is correct. 18 In fact, he only rules out definitions that identify goodness with some complex property. He then argues that good is not meaningless that there is some unique property we have in mind when we use the word good in the moral sense. What he does not do, and this point has been missed by every author I have read, is present in this argument any sub-argument to the conclusion that no simple natural property, like pleasantness, is identical with goodness. 19 Simplicity has some implications worth drawing, besides the consequences for definability. To see this, we can consider the property yellowness. 20 Moore uses the analogy between goodness and yellow when he describes the naturalistic fallacy and to give an example of a natural simple property. 18 It is typically asserted by those who claim that Moore s naturalistic fallacy is a definist fallacy that Moore s open question argument is designed to show that no definition is correct. But he emphatically does not show this. Rather, he shows that Goodness is simple. From that simpleness we might infer that Goodness is indefinable. But we could resist this inference. 19 Strictly speaking, identifying goodness and pleasantness is not to define either, at least in Moorean terms. 20 Scott Soames, in Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century (Princeton University Press 2003) does a nice job explaining this analogy.

31 24 Consider the statement Lemons are yellow. It is perfectly reasonable to assert or to believe this statement. Further, the statement does not assert that lemons are necessarily yellow. We can conceive of an orange or green lemon it seems reasonable to think there could be such things, or a world in which such things existed. And the truth of the statement does not follow from some deeper necessary truth about lemons, as it might if lemons were defined as the yellow citrus fruit, in which case, we would claim that the expression is analytic. So Moore would claim that the statement lemons are yellow is synthetic. This is analogous to statements about good, such as: Pleasure is good. 21 We can hold that such a statement is true without holding that the relation between pleasure and goodness follows from the definitions of either pleasure or goodness. 22 So, again, Moore would claim that this expression is synthetic. 23 If someone were to attempt to define yellowness, by claiming that to be yellow is to reflect light waves of wavelength Y, we might also take this to be a synthetic statement. This is because from our knowledge of yellowness, nothing 21 Where the statement is taken as predicating goodness of pleasure. That is, that pleasure is a thing that is good. 22 Moore takes pleasure to be a simple property as well, so no definition is possible for it. 23 He writes, [P]ropositions about the good are all of them synthetic and never analytic. Principia Ethica, p 58. I think this might be an error on Moore s part. If a property or object were defined in terms of goodness, such as to be a woozle is to be a morally good whatzit, then the statement Woozles are good would be analytic, and would be about the good, because woozles would, by definition, be part of the good. Moore might have done better to say instead Propositions purporting to define the good (statements purporting to tell us all and only the good things) are synthetic. So, pleasure is good may or may not be synthetic, depending on the definition of pleasure, but pleasure is the good is synthetic (and, Moore would add, false).

32 25 seems to follow about Y-ish light wavelengths. This is to say that it is not part of our concept of yellow (and in fact, it is not part of the property yellowness) that yellow things reflect any particular kind of light. As in the earlier case, we could imagine a situation in which yellow things reflected wavelengths of a different size, which suggests a certain contingency about the proposed definition. Thus, it is synthetic, and not a successful definition. The reason that goodness and yellowness resist definition in this way is that they are both simple, and hence, unanalyzable properties. Hence, everything we might say about them is synthetic. Analysis Moore takes this to be so because he takes these properties to be unanalyzable. Of the many possible kinds of definition, 24 Moore is interested in the kind of definition we might call a property analysis. In Moorean terms, a successful definition of a property is an analysis that tells us the parts that make up the object, and perhaps, the relation that those parts stand in to each other and the thing as a whole. As a consequence of this view of definition, simple properties those properties that have no parts are incapable of being defined. 25 Moore writes definitions which describe the real nature of the object or notion 24 John Fischer, in his paper On Defining Good, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 51 (1954), pp , identifies sixteen different sorts of definition. His list is not considered authoritative. 25 Principia Ethica, p. 59.

33 26 denoted by a word, and which do not merely tell us what the word is used to mean, are only possible when the object or notion in question is something complex. 26 Complex objects or properties, real or mythical, are subject to this sort of definition. Moore illustrates with the examples of a horse and a chimaera. Each of these can be analyzed into its component parts, and those parts might be further analyzable as well, until you get to the level of simples, at which no further analysis is possible. 27 Mary Warnock, in Ethics Since 1900, 28 comments on Moore s contention that the definition of Horse is hooved quadruped of the genus equus. This contention is a source of concern for Warnock because Moore asserts it on several occasions as an aid to clarify what he means by definition. But the result, for Warnock, is not clarity at all. It is evident that what Moore means by definition is analysis, but the definition he offers for horse does not look much like an analysis to Warnock. She writes No doubt one could list the parts of the horse, and even state their relation one to another, but to do this would not be to say Hooved quadruped etc., with a special meaning; nor would it be taken to be defining horse at all. 29 What Moore expects of a good analysis is that it makes clear the parts which compose a thing and the relation in which they stand to each 26 Ibid. 27 Principia Ethica, p Ethics Since 1900, 3 rd ed., (Oxford University Press 1978). 29 Warnock, p. 21.

34 27 other. Warnock thinks this would not be a definition. An analysis of horse, she thinks, simply would not contain pasterns, chestnuts, hooves and tails. There seem to be two sources of concern underlying Warnock s criticism. The first might be that Moore has not given us a single complete and successful analysis against which we could measure any future analyses we might make. 30 With his examples of horses and chimaeras, he gestures in the direction he thinks a successful analysis lies, but fails to offer one. He says of a chimaera that we can describe its parts a snake, a goat, and a lioness and how it is put together. And we can further divide each of its parts into parts, because snakes, goats, and lionesses are, themselves, complex things. [A]ll are composed of parts, which may, themselves, in the first instance, be capable of similar division, but which must in the end be reducible to simplest parts, which no longer can be defined. 31 In some ways, his choice of examples leaves much to be desired. The examples of horse and chimaera, while illustrating the possibility for defining both concrete and imaginary entities, are simply too complex to be useful. Additionally, the lend themselves to a good deal of confusion about what we are actually defining. And this, it seems, is the second concern underlying Warnock s complaint. Are we to consider these definitions of concrete entities or the properties being a horse and being a chimaera? Moore wants to assert that a certain kind of 30 He gives such an analysis of beauty in Chapter VI, but it looks nothing like an analysis in terms of parts, so it is not particularly illuminating. 31 Principia Ethica, p. 59.

35 28 definition a property analysis is impossible for goodness, but the examples he gives of property analyses look like analyses of concrete objects. He divides the horse and the chimaera into pieces, it appears. This seems like a mistake. The idea of property analysis as demonstrating the component parts of complex properties is a defensible project, but I think it looks very little like these particular examples. There are some things that can be said in defense of the view that there are complex properties and that they are made up of other, possibly simple properties. 32 Consider the property being a bachelor. It is reasonable to think that this property is a conjunction of other properties, viz., being unmarried, being adult, being male, and perhaps (to eliminate a problem raised by Richard Brandt that I discuss in Chapter 5) being un-widowed and un-divorced. I embrace this view of properties because I find the alternative unreasonable. The alternative is that being a bachelor has no parts and is thus, simple. But then, instantiating that property is not to instantiate all of its parts. But it seems for all the world like being a bachelor does mean to be unmarried, and male, and adult, etc. 33 I think it would be a weird sort of world if my being a husband was something beyond my being married and being male. It would have to be a whole other simple property I instantiated. I am unsure whether my unease with such a view is that it leads to 32 See, e.g., Jeffrey King, What is a Philosophical Analysis, Philosophical Studies 90: , Could it be a mere accident that people instantiating all those properties also instantiate bachelorhood?