Moore on the RPF

Bio

George Edward Moore, also known as G.E. Moore, was a distinguished
and hugely influential English philosopher who was educated, and later
taught, at the University of Cambridge. He was, with Bertrand Russell,
Wittgenstein, and (before them) Frege, one of the fathers of the analytic
philosophy tradition that now predominates in the English-speaking world.

Moore was best known for his advocacy of common sense, his ethical
non-naturalism, and his very clear, circumspect writing style. He was a
methodical and careful philosopher. He is very much a "philosopher's
philosopher"--influential among and greatly respected by other
philosophers, but relatively unknown to non-philosophers (unlike his
friend and colleague Russell).

Moore's most famous essays are "The Refutation of Idealism", "A
Defence of Common Sense", and "A Proof of the External World" each of
which can be found in his collection of papers, Philosophical Papers. He
argued against skepticism about the external world by, famously, raising
his right hand and saying 'here is a hand', then raising his left hand and
saying 'here is a hand', concluding that there are at least two material
objects in the world and therefore, there is an external world.

G.E. Moore died on October 24, 1958 and was interred in the Burial
Ground of Parish of the Ascension, Cambridge, England. The poet
Nicholas Moore is his son.

Ethics
Moore is also well-known for the so-called "open question argument,"
which is contained in his (also greatly influential) Principia Ethica. The
Principia is one of the main inspirations of the movement against ethical
naturalism and is partly responsible for the twentieth-century concern with
meta-ethics.

The Naturalistic Fallacy
Moore charged that most other philosophers who worked in ethics had
made a mistake he called the "Naturalistic fallacy". The business of
ethics, Moore agreed, is to discover the qualities that make things good.
So, for example, hedonists about value claim that the quality being
pleasant is what makes things good; other theorists could claim that
complexity is what makes things good. With this project Moore has no
quarrel. What he objects to is the idea that, in telling us the qualities that
make things good, ethical theorists have thereby given us an analysis of
the term 'good' and the property goodness. Moore regards this as a
serious confusion. To take an example, a hedonist might be right to claim
that something is good just in case it is pleasant. But this does not mean,
Moore wants to insist, that we can define value in terms of pleasure.
Telling us what qualities make things valuable is one thing; analyzing
value is quite another.

Open Question Argument
Moore began his ethics by proposing exactly what "good" is not. He did
this by forming the Open Question Argument, showing that the assumed
definition of "good" is incorrect due to an inability to localize "good". We
begin by using one of the most common definitions of "good" (that being
"good" is that which is desirable), then we proceed with the following line
of argumentation: If we assert that "X is good", we are really asserting that
X is desirable. In doing so, we must then ask "Is it good to desire X?"
Thus leading to "Is it good for us to desire to desire X?" As it is plain to
see, Moore's point is that by assuming "good" to be equal with another
property leads to a line of questioning that never ends. The argument
could also be structured as such:

1. "X is good" = "X has property P"
2. X has P, but is P good? (are things that have P good?)
3. X has P, but does P have P? (do things that have P have P?)

Ultimately, all you end up with is an infinite number of Xs being desirable
for being desirable for being desirable ad infinitum...Therefore, "good"
has to be its own property, separate from all others, "good" cannnot equal
that which we desire (or "happiness", or "pleasure").

Good as indefinable
Moore contended that goodness cannot be associated with any other
property. In Principia Ethica, he stated it thus:

"It may be true that all things which are good are also something else,
just as it is true that all things which are yellow produce a certain kind of
vibration in the light. And it is a fact, that Ethics aims at discovering what
are those other properties belonging to all things which are good. But far
too many philosophers have thought that when they named those other
properties they were actually defining good; that these properties, in fact,
were simply not ‘other,’ but absolutely and entirely the same with
goodness" (Chapter 1, sec. 10).

Therefore, the only definition we can give of "good" is an ostensive one;
that is, we can only point to an action or a thing and say "That is good."
Similarly, we cannot describe to a blind man exactly what yellow is. We
can only show a sighted man a piece of yellow paper or a yellow scrap of
cloth and say "That is yellow."

Good as a non-natural property
In addition to categorizing "good" as indefinable, Moore also emphasized
that it is a non-natural property. That is, two objects that are qualitatively
identical cannot have different values. There cannot be two yellow shirts
that are identical in every way (same shade of yellow, made at the same
factory, the same brand name, the same style, etc...) except for their
reception of the predication of "good" (one cannot be good and the other
not good). An object's property of "good" is determined by what other
properties the object has. It is a property that is a product of having other
properties. Therefore, if two objects are qualitatively identical, they must
have the same value of "good".

Moral Knowledge
To support his proposed arguments, Moore contended that man has a
"moral intuition" that helps him locate what exactly is "good". In this he
was a proponent of Ethical intuitionism.

(Excerpts adapted and portrait taken from the Wikipedia article on Moore. Click here
for complete article.)

Works

The Refutation of Idealism [available online]

NOTE: As Moore's work is not yet in the public domain, there is little available online.
The following sources are links to Amazon.com.

Principia Ethica

Philosophical Papers