Can Ethical Terms Be Defined? :: Philosophy Philosophical Papers

Can Ethical ground Be Defined? The answer might seem obvious. Ethical monetary value sess be defined because they rescue been. Good means fun good means utility good means self-importance-realisation, or self interest and so on. Classical moral philosophy philosophers have on the face of it had no difficulty at all in defning terms same(p) good. It was just this multitude of different and incompatible definitions however, which led Moore to have some doubts about whether philosophers knew what they were doing when they geted to define good. Is it really likely to define good as one might define triangle or horse? Are there non some eventful differences? Moore is convinced that there are. In the first place, when we define triangle or horse we know what we are defining in the whizz that we can see or at least formulate an empirical original of what we are talking about. We arent able to see goodness, or point to it, at least in the same way. Furthermore when we define t riangle as an enclosed three sided plane figure, it makes no perceive to ask, exactly is an enclosed three sided plane figure a triangle? non at least if we know what we are talking about, i.e. a triangle. alone if we define good as pleasure for instance, it does seem to make sense to ask but is pleasure (really or always) good? Moore is convinced that it makes sense to ask this question, not merely because we may happen to be illiterate of what goodness is, and have thus made a mistake such as would be the case if we defined a triangle as a four sided figure rather the error occurs because we have illogical two quite different cordials of things with one another. We have confused a natural property (pleasure) with a non natural property (good). He calls this kind of error a naturalistic fallacy. Since it is bound to occur whenever we attempt to identify good with something that isnt, all purported definitions of good commit this fallacy. Good he concludes is indefinable Th is does not mean however that the term good is meaningless. On the contrary it is no more meaningless than the term yellow which is as well indefinable in the requisite sense. Still the question remains. What does good indeed refer to ? Certainly not to any sensed property like yellow. It refers, according to Moore, to an intuited and unanalysiable property of goodness which some things have and others do not have.