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The term naturalistic fallacy is sometimes used to label the problematic inference of an ought from an is (the is–ought problem). [3] Michael Ridge relevantly elaborates that "[t]he intuitive idea is that evaluative conclusions require at least one evaluative premise—purely factual premises about the naturalistic features of things do not entail or even support evaluative conclusions."
Principia Ethica is a book written in 1903 by British philosopher, G. E. Moore. Moore questions a fundamental pillar of ethics, specifically what the definition of "good" is. He concludes that "good" is indefinable because any attempts to do so commit the naturalistic fallacy.
Moore argued that, once arguments based on the naturalistic fallacy had been discarded, questions of intrinsic goodness could be settled only by appeal to what he (following Sidgwick) termed "moral intuitions": self-evident propositions which recommend themselves to moral thought, but which are not susceptible to either direct proof or disproof ...
The open-question argument is a philosophical argument put forward by British philosopher G. E. Moore in §13 of Principia Ethica (1903), [1] to refute the equating of the property of goodness with some non-moral property, X, whether natural (e.g. pleasure) or supernatural (e.g. God's command). That is, Moore's argument attempts to show that no ...
Moore also stated that a reduction of ethical properties to a divine command would be the same as stating their naturalness. This would be an example of what he referred to as "the naturalistic fallacy." Moore claimed that goodness is "indefinable", i.e., it cannot be defined in any other terms. This is the central claim of non-naturalism.
A similar view is defended by G. E. Moore's open-question argument, intended to refute any identification of moral properties with natural properties, which is asserted by ethical naturalists, who do not deem the naturalistic fallacy a fallacy. The is–ought problem is closely related to the fact–value distinction in epistemology.
The fact–value distinction is closely related to the naturalistic fallacy, a topic debated in ethical and moral philosophy. G. E. Moore believed it essential to all ethical thinking. [7] However, contemporary philosophers like Philippa Foot have called into question the validity of such assumptions.
G. E. Moore published his Principia Ethica in 1903 and argued that the attempts of ethical naturalists to translate ethical terms (like good and bad) into non-ethical ones (like pleasing and displeasing) committed the "naturalistic fallacy". Moore was a cognitivist, but his case against ethical naturalism steered other philosophers toward ...