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

T1 Ethical Thought

‘That fallacy, I explained, consists in the contention that good means nothing but some simple or complex notion, that can be defined in terms of natural qualities. In Mill’s case, good is thus supposed to mean simply what is desired; and what is desired is something which can thus be defined in natural terms.’ (Moore) ■ We are mistaken because it creates a tautology . That is, if ‘desire’ is good then we ought to seek desire. Unfortunately, this then means that we ought to seek what we do in fact seek. ‘Mill tells us that we ought to desire something (an ethical proposition), because we actually do desire it; but if his contention that “I ought to desire” means nothing but “I do desire” were true, then he is only entitled to say, “We do desire so and so, because we do desire it”; and that is not an ethical proposition at all; it is a mere tautology.’ (Moore) ■ Moore’s contention is that since good is indefinable we cannot identify it as a natural quality because when we consider what this implies ethically in terms of duty, obligation and ‘ought’ (normative proposition) all we are doing is describing what we are already doing and not a normative proposition. ‘The whole object of Mill’s book is to help us to discover what we ought to do; but in fact, by attempting to define the meaning of this “ought”, he has completely debarred himself from ever fulfilling that object: he has confined himself to telling us what we do do.’ (Moore) Challenges: The Open Question Argument (moral facts cannot be reduced to natural properties) The open question argument, as it is called, is really a demonstration of the futility of defining good within the parameters of empiricism; quite simply, all attempts will fail because they still leave an unanswered question about ‘good’. In other words, if we can define the ethical notion of good then we can state precisely what that good is in relation to psychological, biological or sociological truths. This would be a simple ‘closed question’ with a definitive answer. For example, ‘Have you done your homework?’ or ‘Shall we have tea at 6pm?’ or ‘is the sum of 2 + 2 equal to 4?’. The answer to such questions can be a straight, ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The problem is that this does not work with good. The main issue is that in attempting to define good by natural properties (e.g. pleasure) we are actually pending an open question, that is, a question with no definitive answer. This is because we still can legitimately ask ‘is pleasure good?’ once we have defined good as pleasure. It would not be a meaningless question to ask. But if we have succeeded in defining good then we should not need to ask this further question because it would be illogical. ■ For example, if ‘pleasure is the same as good’ then we could say ‘whatever promotes pleasure is good’ but this would be really an unnecessary statement equivalent to ‘whatever promotes pleasure promotes pleasure!’ ■ Also, if we ask whether or not the promotion of pleasure is good, then we will in effect be asking ‘are good things good?’ which is, of course, nonsense. ■ Since it is never absurd to ask of natural properties ‘is this good? ’, we know that we can logically ask the question ‘is the promotion of pleasure good?’ and, in fact, it is not nonsense because pleasure is a complex notion and not a simple notion. ■ Therefore, if that is the case, then good cannot be identified as, or defined by, natural properties which are by their very nature complex notions.

Key term Tautology: saying the same thing twice over in different words

DRAFT

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