2. INTUITIONISM: GE Moore, PRITCHARD & ROSS LO: I will understand GE Moore’s idea of naturalistic fallacy. STARTER TASK: Read through the exam essay from 2011’s Summer exam, and level and mark it.

3. Recap Write a definition of ethical naturalism. What are the principles of ethical naturalism? Give 2 arguments in favour of ethical naturalism. Give 2 arguments against ethical naturalism. End

4. The is/ought distinction Write one sentence to summarize the is/ought distinction. Difference between prescriptive and descriptive statements. Separating ought from is. Difference from ought and is. End

5. Background Bentham, Mill, Kant and Aristotle are all ethical naturalists because they all argued that value statements can be defined in terms of factual statements. G.E. Moore denies the possibility of this because of the fact-value problem. The naturalistic fallacy led to the dominance of meta-ethics in the twentieth century as attempted responses to the problem began to develop, namely, intuitionism, emotivism and prescriptivism…

6. Background continued… These responses tend to fall into two camps: –Moral Realism (or cognitivism) which asserts that moral claims are making reference to facts about the world. E.g. in the same way as saying ‘it is raining,’ the statement, ‘killing someone is wrong’ is stating a fact of the matter. –Moral Anti-Realism (non cognitivism) says that certain statements (such as religious, aesthetic and moral) are not referring to the world at all and so are not capable of being true or false in any real sense. There are no moral facts, and therefore, no moral knowledge.

7. Intuitionism The philosopher G.E. Moore criticised naturalism. Instead he said we have an infallible intuitive knowledge of good things. e.g. I don’t need to observe a murder to know that killing someone is wrong – I just know it is. In answer to the question, ‘what is good?’ Moore tells us that, in fact, it cannot be defined, but is known intuitively.

8. Simple v Complex Moore argued that there are simple and complex ideas. Complex = ‘horse’ can be broken down into animal, mammal, quadruped, equine. Simple = ‘yellow’ we can’t break it down any further. Moral terms are simple. The word ‘good’ is indefinable and un-analysable because it is simple and the concept cannot be broken down further.

9. The Open-Question Argument What if, for example, you define good as pleasure? That is, ‘good’ is reduced to (means exactly the same things as) pleasure. But if I was then to ask you, “I get pleasure poisoning the water system, but is it good?” then all I am really saying is, “I get pleasure from poisoning the water system, but is it pleasure?” My first question seems to be a valid moral question, whereas the latter question makes no sense at all.

10. The Open-Question Argument Cont… Put in Moore’s terms, my first question is an ‘open question’ because it makes moral sense to ask it, whereas the latter formulation of the question is a ‘closed question’ and, in fact, isn’t a question at all. Therefore, ‘good’ and ‘pleasure’ cannot mean the same thing! This led Moore to conclude that good cannot be defined by non-ethical terms: Simply put, good is good! If ‘good’ cannot be defined in terms of any natural property it means that good is a mysterious thing indeed. How are we to be aware of goodness if we cannot define it? This is why Moore’s theory is known as intuitionism. We intuit goodness.

11. Naturalistic fallacy Against naturalism. Good and bad are not natural properties. You cant verify moral statements. You can have open questions.

12. GE Moore Research in more detail: a)Naturalistic fallacy b)Why is yellow like good? c)How do we know if something is good or not?

13. Moral judgements cannot be proven So, Moore argues that moral judgements cannot be proven empirically. We cannot observe pleasure and then say that goodness is pleasure. W.D. Ross accepted Moore’s version of ethics and also added that in any given situation moral duties or obligations become apparent. These are called prima facie duties. Prima facie means ‘at first appearance’

14. Prima Facie Duties Ross listed the following as prima facie duties: Keeping a promise, reparation for harm done, gratitude, justice, beneficence, self- improvement and non- maleficence He acknowledged that this list might not be complete.

15. REVIEW