WJEC/Eduqas RS for A2/Yr2: Religion and Ethics (DRAFT)

WJEC / Eduqas Religious Studies for A Level Year 2 and A2 Religion and Ethics

Key quote Moore makes it perfectly clear that what he thinks you cannot legitimately do to ‘good’ is to analyse it. It is impossible to name its parts because it has no parts. (Warnock) In particular, Moore was keen to attack the principles of Utilitarianism that clearly equated the definition of good with pleasure. However, ethics is about discovering any property that defines goodness that is potentially part of other properties – a sort of common denominator. For example, pleasure, happiness and love may be analysed to see whether or not we can identify the ‘goodness’ elements within them. Since we cannot discover this, we cannot say that they are all exactly the same as good as they are all very different; this would be nonsense. However, that is exactly what theories such as Utilitarianism do in identifying goodness as happiness. Moore writes: ‘Yet a mistake of this simple kind has commonly been made about good … 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. This view I propose to call the naturalistic fallacy and of it I shall now endeavour to dispose.’

Key term Naturalistic fallacy: Moore’s view that it is a logical error to explain that which is good reductively in terms of natural properties such as ‘pleasant’ or ‘desirable’

Key quote It is an enquiry to which most

special attention should be directed; since this question, how good is to be defined, is the most fundamental question in all Ethics. That which is meant by good is, in fact, except its converse bad, the only simple object of thought which is peculiar to Ethics. Its definition is, therefore, the most essential point in the definition of Ethics; and moreover a mistake with regard to it entails a far larger number of erroneous ethical judgements than any other. Unless this first question be fully understood, and its true answer clearly recognised, the rest of Ethics is as good as useless from the point of view of systematic knowledge. (Moore)

Therefore, Moore concluded that: DRAFT ■ Good is a simple concept or notion that cannot be broken down; ■ The term ‘good’ is therefore indefinable;

■ Good, in itself, it is not relational, nor dependent upon any other constituent part and neither is it a constituent part itself;

and that not to recognise this would render any pursuit of ethics as ‘useless’ as he confirms: ‘Unless this first question be fully understood, and its true answer clearly recognised, the rest of Ethics is as good as useless from the point of view of systematic knowledge.’ G. E. Moore also then relates the implications of this to his second question ‘what ought we to do?’ Whilst Hume’s Law made an observation about logical process and inducing an inappropriate conclusion from what ‘is’ the case, Moore focuses on the linguistic process of meaning and the nonsensical conclusions that had to be drawn if one identifies good with a natural quality. He looks at Mill’s Utilitarianism and explains the linguistic contradiction in trying to find an ‘ought’ from something that is unanalysable. He finds simply that in

1.12 When Moore stated ‘good is a simple notion’ what did he mean?

setting to find out what one ‘ought’ to do from identifying the meaning of good with pleasure, one only arrives at the end of not what we ought to do, but of what we do already do. Moore’s reasoning is as follows: ■ If we think that we can define good by a natural quality such as ‘what is desired’ we are mistaken. Then to argue that we ‘ought to pursue desire because it is good’ is another fallacy.

A closed question always invites a definitive answer.

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