G. E. Moore: The Indefinability Of Good
Ethics
Topic: G.E. Moore: The Indefinability of Good.
In all the ethical philosophy we have been taught until this point, it has been commonly accepted that Ethics was indefinitely an examination of human conduct and how we react to each situation that arises. G. E. Moore, a philosopher from Cambridge University, begins his discussion of ethics otherwise, rejecting this concept and instead offering up his own concept that states that ethics is "the general enquiry into what is good."
Many philosophers are to quick to accept the definition of Ethics as a study of what is good or bad in human conduct when Moore points out that Ethics is much more than that of human conduct, going on to include many other realms of thought. In order to explain this, Moore asks the question, "What is good?" He goes on to give examples of different things in life that he deems "good," such as books or pleasure, but decides that these answers to the question are not the solution he is looking for. He wants to find out what is good in another, more meaningful …show more content…
He says that these assumptions of what good' are, are false because they only attempt to explain the word superficially and not it's true meaning. He uses an example of the word yellow', where the color is impossible to define because anyone who has never experienced it before could not understand what it means to actually see yellow' just from hearing a definition of the word. He says that most philosophers, in their explanation of good', explain it like one would with yellow': a certain vibration in the light spectrum that causes the eye to see what it sees. He says that just as people define the color yellow in these terms, philosophers often make the same mistake in their explanation of ethics by trying to define what is good'. He calls this the "naturalistic
Topic: G.E. Moore: The Indefinability of Good.
In all the ethical philosophy we have been taught until this point, it has been commonly accepted that Ethics was indefinitely an examination of human conduct and how we react to each situation that arises. G. E. Moore, a philosopher from Cambridge University, begins his discussion of ethics otherwise, rejecting this concept and instead offering up his own concept that states that ethics is "the general enquiry into what is good."
Many philosophers are to quick to accept the definition of Ethics as a study of what is good or bad in human conduct when Moore points out that Ethics is much more than that of human conduct, going on to include many other realms of thought. In order to explain this, Moore asks the question, "What is good?" He goes on to give examples of different things in life that he deems "good," such as books or pleasure, but decides that these answers to the question are not the solution he is looking for. He wants to find out what is good in another, more meaningful …show more content…
He says that these assumptions of what good' are, are false because they only attempt to explain the word superficially and not it's true meaning. He uses an example of the word yellow', where the color is impossible to define because anyone who has never experienced it before could not understand what it means to actually see yellow' just from hearing a definition of the word. He says that most philosophers, in their explanation of good', explain it like one would with yellow': a certain vibration in the light spectrum that causes the eye to see what it sees. He says that just as people define the color yellow in these terms, philosophers often make the same mistake in their explanation of ethics by trying to define what is good'. He calls this the "naturalistic