G. E. Moore

George Edward Moore ( * November 4, 1873 in London, † October 24, 1958 in Cambridge ) was an English philosopher. He was, together with Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and in the succession of Gottlob Frege, one of the fathers of analytic philosophy.

Work: Overview

Moore was educated at the University of Cambridge. He was particularly known for his advocacy of common sense, for his non- naturalistic ethics, and his clear and prudent way of writing. He was a methodical and careful philosopher, but is known in contrast to his friend Russell today outside of academic philosophy no longer.

Moore's most famous writings, The Refutation of Idealism ( " The Refutation of Idealism " ), A Defence of Common Sense ( " A Defense of Common Sense " ) and A Proof of the External World ( " A proof of the external world " ), are all included in his collection Philosophical papers. Is known of his argument against skepticism by at lectures his right hand raised and said: "Here is a hand ", then raised his left hand and said: " Here is a hand ", and concluded that there are at least two material objects in the world and thus give an external world.

Ethics

Moore is also known for the argument of the "open question " from his influential book Principia Ethica, which is one of the basic writings against ethical naturalism and mitbegründend for the meta-ethics of the 20th century.

The naturalistic fallacy

Moore has most other philosophers who have worked in the field of ethics, maintained that they had committed a fundamental error, the so-called naturalistic fallacy. Moore agreed with the view that it was possible to determine the goodness of the properties. Thus, for example, teaches the hedonism that such values ​​can be classified as good, make things pleasant. Other theorists argue that complexity leads to good. Moore, however, turned against the idea that one. From the properties with which you can describe the good that already has a meaning analysis of "good" have The improper identification of the meanings referred to Moore as the naturalistic fallacy. Just because something has the properties that "good" and to be "pleasant", follow not that " good" meant nothing more than "pleasant". The naturalistic reductionist, however, claims that the two expressions "pleasant" and "good" lecture on the same property and thus would have the same meaning.

" And similarly no difficulty need be found in my saying that ' pleasure is good ' and yet not meaning that ' pleasure' is the same meaning as ' good', did good pleasure Means, and Means that good pleasure. "

The German term " naturalistic fallacy " is, however, by a mistranslation of Moore's term " naturalistic fallacy ", which he "good" can not a fallacy, special means a simple mistake, namely the erroneous assertion that the moral predicate a naturalistic descriptive predicate be defined ..

The argument of the open-ended question

Moore began his doctrine of ethics with the exact determination of what is "good " is not, by formulating the argument of the open-ended question. He showed that a provision adopted the concept of the good is not in a position to do so conclusively. When determining the good as the Desirable for example, so there is still the question of whether everything Desirable is also good. Obviously you can pick up with an infinite process of questions that attempts to determine what is good, again and again. The argument can be structured as follows:

Therefore, a stand-alone value is "good" independent of all others. One can not equate with happiness or joy, because these terms can also always have a not with the good matching content is good.

The good can not be defined

Moore concluded that the good can be equated with any other value. In his book Principia Ethica, he expressed the as follows:

"It's possible that all those who are good are also something else, just like all the yellow things cause certain vibrations in the light. And it is a fact that the ethics endeavors to all the other properties that are associated with the good out. But far too many philosophers have thought that when they call these or other properties, they could already define what is good; that these properties, whether they are simple or non-simple, are in fact neither absolute nor completely the same as the good. "

Thus the only possible definition of good is ostensively, that is, that can be called merely an act or object as well. This is just as one can not describe the color yellow to a blind man. We can only someone who can see, show a yellow object and explain that this is yellow.

Good as a non-natural property

In addition to determining good as not definable, Moore has pointed out that it is a non-natural property. This means that two things are qualitatively identical, do not contain different values ​​. Thus, for example two yellow T -shirts that are identical in all respects natural properties ( in hue, from the same factory, with the same brand name, with the same design, etc. ), not by the property well (ie one is good, the others are not ) differ. The property of an object as well is thus completely determined by the other attributes that make up the object. The good as the property is made up of various properties of an object. Therefore, two objects of the same quality must have the same value of good necessarily.

Moral knowledge

In support of his arguments Moore taught that one could reliably determine with the help of moral intuition, which is good. In this respect he was a representative of moral intuitionism.

Language

Moore to the paradox named after him ( Moore paradox) noted first that lies in the following statement: It's raining, but I do not think it does. This problem inspired Ludwig Wittgenstein to a series of works.

Works

• The Nature of Judgment ( 1899)
• The Refutation of Idealism, Mind 12 (1903 )
• Principia Ethica (1903 )
• Review of Franz Brentano 's The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong (1903 )
• Ethics ( 1912) * Ethics ( 1912)
• On Propositions, Some Main Problems of Philosophy, ca 1914 (PDF file, 1.30 MB )
• A Defence of Common Sense, 1925 ( PDF file, 1.92 MB )
• Proof of an External World, Proc. British Academy 1939 ( PDF file, 1.62 MB )