G. E. Moore | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Moore in 1914 | |
| Born | George Edward Moore (1873-11-04)4 November 1873 Upper Norwood, London, England |
| Died | 24 October 1958(1958-10-24) (aged 84) Evelyn Nursing Home, Cambridge, England |
| Spouse | Dorothy Ely |
| Children | 2, includingNicholas Moore |
| Relatives | Thomas Sturge Moore (brother) |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | Trinity College, Cambridge |
| Academic advisor | James Ward[1] |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic philosophy Consequentialism |
| Institutions | Trinity College, Cambridge Aristotelian Society (president, 1918–19) Ethical Union (president, 1935–36) |
| Doctoral students | Casimir Lewy |
| Notable students | R. B. Braithwaite[2] |
| Main interests | Philosophy of language |
| Notable ideas |
|
George Edward MooreOM FBA (4 November 1873 – 24 October 1958) was an English philosopher, who withBertrand Russell,Ludwig Wittgenstein and earlierGottlob Frege was among the initiators ofanalytic philosophy. He and Russell began de-emphasising theidealism which was then prevalent among British philosophers and became known for advocatingcommon-sense concepts and contributing toethics,epistemology andmetaphysics. He was said to have had an "exceptional personality and moral character".[6]Ray Monk dubbed him "the most revered philosopher of his era".[7]
As Professor of Philosophy at theUniversity of Cambridge, he influenced but abstained from theBloomsbury Group, an informal set of intellectuals. He edited the journalMind. He was a member of theCambridge Apostles from 1894 to 1901,[8] a fellow of theBritish Academy from 1918, and was chairman of the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club in 1912–1944.[9][10] Ahumanist, he presided over the British Ethical Union (nowHumanists UK) in 1935–1936.[11]
George Edward Moore was born inUpper Norwood, in south-east London, on 4 November 1873, the middle child of seven of Daniel Moore, a medical doctor, and Henrietta Sturge.[12][13][14] His grandfather was the authorGeorge Moore. His eldest brother wasThomas Sturge Moore, a poet, writer and engraver.[12][15][16]
He was educated atDulwich College[17] and, in 1892, began attendingTrinity College, Cambridge, to learnclassics andmoral sciences. Histripos results were adouble first.[18] He became a Fellow of Trinity in 1898 and was laterUniversity of CambridgeProfessor of Mental Philosophy and Logic from 1925 to 1939.
Moore is known best now for defendingethical non-naturalism, his emphasis oncommon sense for philosophical method, and theparadox that bears his name. He was admired by and influenced by other philosophers and some of theBloomsbury Group. But unlike his colleague and admirer Bertrand Russell, who for some years thought Moore fulfilled his "ideal of genius",[19] he is mostly unknown presently except among academic philosophers. Moore's essays are known for their clarity and circumspection of writing style and methodical and patient treatment of philosophical problems. He was critical of modern philosophy for lack ofprogress, which he saw as a stark contrast to the dramatic advances in thenatural sciences since theRenaissance. Among Moore's most famous works are hisPrincipia Ethica,[20] and his essays, "The Refutation of Idealism", "A Defence of Common Sense", and "A Proof of the External World".
Moore was an important and admired member of the secretiveCambridge Apostles, a discussion group drawn from the British intellectual elite. At the time another member, 22-year-old Bertrand Russell, wrote "I almost worship him as if he were a god. I have never felt such an extravagant admiration for anybody",[7] and would later write that "for some years he fulfilled my ideal of genius. He was in those days beautiful and slim, with a look almost of inspiration as deeply passionate asSpinoza's."[21]
In 1914 Moore traveled to Norway to visit Wittgenstein, here he took a series of notes later published asNotes dictated to G.E. Moore in Norway.[22] From 1918 to 1919, Moore was chairman of theAristotelian Society, a group committed to the systematic study of philosophy, its historical development and its methods and problems.[23] He was appointed to theOrder of Merit in 1951.[24] This was awarded to him atBuckingham Palace by KingGeorge VI. After a conversation with the King, he returned to his wife who was awaiting Moore back in the car and told her "Do you know that the King had never heard of Wittgenstein!".[25] The title ofLudwig Wittgenstein'sTractatus Logico-Philosophicus was adopted at the suggestion of Moore, taking the title fromBaruch Spinoza'sTractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670).[26]
Moore died in England in theEvelyn Nursing Home on 24 October 1958.[27] He was cremated at Cambridge Crematorium on 28 October 1958 and his ashes interred at theParish of the Ascension Burial Ground in the city. His wife, Dorothy Ely (1892–1977), was buried there. Together, they had two sons, the poetNicholas Moore and the composer Timothy Moore.[28][29]
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His influential workPrincipia Ethica is one of the main inspirations of the reaction againstethical naturalism (seeethical non-naturalism) and is partly responsible for the twentieth-century concern withmeta-ethics.[30]
Moore asserted that philosophical arguments can suffer from a confusion between the use of a term in a particular argument and the definition of that term (in all arguments). He named this confusion thenaturalistic fallacy. For example, an ethical argument may claim that if an item has certain properties, then that item is 'good.' Ahedonist may argue that 'pleasant' items are 'good' items. Other theorists may argue that 'complex' things are 'good' things. Moore contends that, even if such arguments are correct, they do not provide definitions for the term 'good'. The property of 'goodness' cannot be defined. It can only be shown and grasped. Any attempt to define it (X is good if it has property Y) will simply shift the problem (Why is Y-ness good in the first place?).
Moore'sargument for the indefinability of 'good' (and thus for the fallaciousness in the "naturalistic fallacy") is often termed theopen-question argument; it is presented in§13 ofPrincipia Ethica. The argument concerns the nature of statements such as "Anything that is pleasant is also good" and the possibility of asking questions such as "Is itgood that x is pleasant?". According to Moore, these questions areopen and these statements aresignificant; and they will remain so no matter what is substituted for "pleasure". Moore concludes from this that any analysis of value is bound to fail. In other words, if value could be analysed, then such questions and statements would be trivial and obvious. Since they are anything but trivial and obvious, value must be indefinable.
Critics of Moore's arguments sometimes claim that he is appealing to general puzzles concerning analysis (cf. theparadox of analysis), rather than revealing anything special about value. The argument clearly depends on the assumption that if 'good' were definable, it would be ananalytic truth about 'good', an assumption that many contemporary moral realists likeRichard Boyd andPeter Railton reject. Other responses appeal to theFregean distinction betweensense and reference, allowing that value concepts are special andsui generis, but insisting that value properties are nothing but natural properties (this strategy is similar to that taken bynon-reductive materialists inphilosophy of mind).
Moore contended that goodness cannot be analysed in terms of any other property. InPrincipia Ethica, he writes:
Therefore, we cannot define 'good' by explaining it in other words. We can only indicate athing or anaction and say "That is good." Similarly, we cannot describe to a person born totally blind exactly what yellow is. We can only show a sighted person a piece of yellow paper or a yellow scrap of cloth and say "That is yellow."
In addition to categorising 'good' as indefinable, Moore also emphasised that it is a non-natural property. This means that it cannot be empirically or scientifically tested or verified—it is not analysable by "natural science".
Moore argued that, once arguments based on thenaturalistic fallacy had been discarded, questions of intrinsic goodness could be settled only by appeal to what he (followingSidgwick) termed "moral intuitions":self-evident propositions which recommend themselves to moral thought, but which are not susceptible to either direct proof or disproof (Principia,§ 45). As a result of his opinion, he has often been described by later writers as an advocate ofethical intuitionism. Moore, however, wished to distinguish his opinions from the opinions usually described as "Intuitionist" whenPrincipia Ethica was written:
In order to express the fact that ethical propositions of myfirst class [propositions about what is good as an end in itself] are incapable of proof or disproof, I have sometimes followed Sidgwick's usage in calling them 'Intuitions.' But I beg that it may be noticed that I am not an 'Intuitionist,' in the ordinary sense of the term. Sidgwick himself seems never to have been clearly aware of the immense importance of the difference which distinguishes his Intuitionism from the common doctrine, which has generally been called by that name. The Intuitionist proper is distinguished by maintaining that propositions of mysecond class—propositions which assert that a certain action isright or aduty—are incapable of proof or disproof by any enquiry into the results of such actions. I, on the contrary, am no less anxious to maintain that propositions ofthis kind arenot 'Intuitions,' than to maintain that propositions of myfirst classare Intuitions.
— G. E. Moore,Principia Ethica, Preface ¶ 5
Moore distinguished his view from the opinion ofdeontological intuitionists, who claimed that "intuitions" could determine questions about whatactions are right or required byduty. Moore, as aconsequentialist, argued that "duties" and moral rules could be determined by investigating theeffects of particular actions or kinds of actions (Principia,§ 89), and so were matters for empirical investigation rather than direct objects of intuition (Principia,§ 90). According to Moore, "intuitions" revealed not the rightness or wrongness of specific actions, but only what items were good in themselves, asends to be pursued.
Moore holds thatright actions are those producing the most good.[31] The difficulty with this is that the consequences of most actions are too complex for us to properly take into account, especially the long-term consequences. Because of this, Moore suggests that the definition of duty is limited to what generally produces better results than probable alternatives in a comparatively near future.[32]: §109 Whether a given rule of action is also aduty depends to some extent on the conditions of the corresponding society butduties agree mostly with what common-sense recommends.[32]: §95 Virtues, like honesty, can in turn be defined aspermanent dispositions to perform duties.[32]: §109
One of the most important parts of Moore's philosophical development was his differing with theidealism that dominated British philosophy (as represented by the works of his former teachersF. H. Bradley andJohn McTaggart), and his defence of what he regarded as a "common sense" type ofrealism. In his 1925 essay "A Defence of Common Sense", he argued against idealism andscepticism toward the external world, on the grounds that they could not give reasons to accept that their metaphysical premises were more plausible than the reasons we have for accepting the common sense claims about our knowledge of the world, which sceptics and idealists must deny. He famously put the point into dramatic relief with his 1939 essay "Proof of an External World", in which he gave a common sense argument against scepticism by raising his right hand and saying "Here is one hand" and then raising his left and saying "And here is another", then concluding that there are at least two external objects in the world, and therefore that he knows (by this argument) that an external world exists. Not surprisingly, not everyone preferring sceptical doubts found Moore's method of argument entirely convincing; Moore, however, defends his argument on the grounds that sceptical arguments seem invariably to require an appeal to "philosophical intuitions" that we have considerably less reason to accept than we have for the common sense claims that they supposedly refute. The "Here is one hand" argument also influencedLudwig Wittgenstein, who spent his last years working out a new method for Moore's argument in the remarks that were published posthumously asOn Certainty.)
Moore is also remembered for drawing attention to the peculiar inconsistency involved in uttering a sentence such as "It is raining, but I do not believe it is raining", a puzzle now commonly termed "Moore's paradox". The puzzle is that it seems inconsistent for anyone toassert such a sentence; but there doesn't seem to be anylogical contradiction between "It is raining" and "I don't believe that it is raining", because the former is a statement about the weather and the latter a statement about a person's belief about the weather, and it is perfectly logically possible that it may rain whilst a person does not believe that it is raining.
In addition to Moore's own work on the paradox, the puzzle also inspired a great deal of work byLudwig Wittgenstein, who described the paradox as the most impressive philosophical insight that Moore had ever introduced. It is said[by whom?] that when Wittgenstein first heard this paradox one evening (which Moore had earlier stated in a lecture), he rushed round to Moore's lodgings, got him out of bed and insisted that Moore repeat the entire lecture to him.
Moore's description of the principle of theorganic whole is extremely straightforward, nonetheless, and a variant on a pattern that began with Aristotle:
According to Moore, a moral actor cannot survey the 'goodness' inherent in the various parts of a situation, assign a value to each of them, and then generate a sum in order to get an idea of its total value. A moral scenario is a complex assembly of parts, and its total value is often created by the relations between those parts, and not by their individual value. The organic metaphor is thus very appropriate: biological organisms seem to have emergent properties which cannot be found anywhere in their individual parts. For example, a human brain seems to exhibit a capacity for thought when none of its neurons exhibit any such capacity. In the same way, a moral scenario can have a value different than the sum of its component parts.
To understand the application of the organic principle to questions of value, it is perhaps best to consider Moore's primary example, that of a consciousness experiencing a beautiful object. To see how the principle works, a thinker engages in "reflective isolation", the act of isolating a given concept in a kind of null context and determining its intrinsic value. In our example, we can easily see that, of themselves, beautiful objects and consciousnesses are not particularly valuable things. They might have some value, but when we consider the total value of a consciousness experiencing a beautiful object, it seems to exceed the simple sum of these values. Hence the value of a whole must not be assumed to be the same as the sum of the values of its parts.
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