G.E.

Moores Naturalistic Fallacy and Open Question Argument Reconsidered

by

William Piervincenzi

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Supervised by Professor Robert L. Holmes and Senior Lecturer John Gates Bennett Department of Philosophy The College Arts and Sciences University of Rochester Rochester, New York

2007

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2007, William Piervincenzi

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Curriculum Vitae

The author was born in Bethpage, New York on May 24, 1969. He attended the University at Stony Brook from 1988 to1992 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy. He came to the University of Rochester in the Fall of 1994 and began graduate studies in Philosophy. He received a Rush Rhees Fellowship in 1994 and held teaching assistantships for the subsequent four years. He pursued his research in Ethics under the direction of Professor Robert Holmes and received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Rochester in 1999.

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Acknowledgments

Completion of this dissertation would not have been possible for me without the kindness and generosity of people too numerous to mention. I wish to extend special thanks, however, to the following: Eileen Daly and Eva Cadavid for inspiring me to stick with it and to question others instead of myself; Greg Janssen for his friendship and encouragement over the years; Keith McPartland for his enthusiasm and comments, with Greg, on chapter drafts over coffee at Canal Town; my family, and especially my parents, Bill and Edna Piervincenzi who stopped asking when will you be done? just in time; Mary Schweizer for good times and pizza; the Diggin family, especially Cecilia for love and support and especially for Kerry; John G. Bennett who gave so much of himself through the final months of writing; Robert L. Holmes for his patience and calming influence; Joe and Jeanne Norwin for being our spiritual sherpas; all of the Delaware Park Olde Tymers for whom it is always summer; and Chewbacca, Goldie, and Quincy for quiet comfort when it was needed most.

I extend the most special thanks and love to my wife, Kerry Diggin, to whom this work is dedicated. (Heaven knows shes earned it).

Abstract

G.E. Moore is justly famous for his arguments against ethical naturalism; however, after one hundred years of commentary, Moores arguments of the opening chapters of Principia Ethicahis claim that most ethical theories commit the naturalistic fallacy and his argument that moral goodness is a simple, indefinable propertyare poorly understood. This work seeks to augment our understanding of these crucial arguments. This work offers an interpretation of what it means to commit the naturalistic fallacy that is maximally consistent with Moore's text and examples, distinguishes Moores claims about the naturalistic fallacy from the open question argument, and corrects mistaken interpretations of the open question argument. In pursuing these goals, I find that the naturalistic fallacy and the open question argument are complementary, rather than redundant, arguments. I also find that, contrary to the traditional reading, Moores open question argument actually consists of two arguments, one of which is supported by at least five sub-arguments, most of which turn on our intuitions about language and meaning, and none of which is wholly successful. Moore uses the open question argument to show that goodness is not identical with any complex natural or metaphysical property. This still leaves the possibility that goodness is identical with a simple natural or metaphysical property. His claim that philosophers who attempt to define goodness commit the naturalistic fallacy

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undermines support for any such identification, even if it does not conclusively refute such definitions.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

The Legacy of Principia Ethica

Chapter 2

Goodness, Simple and Indefinable

15

Chapter 3

What is the Naturalistic Fallacy?

35

Chapter 4

The Naturalistic Fallacy: A New Interpretation

88

Chapter 5

Moores Proof that Good Refers to a Simple, Non-natural Property

136

Chapter 6

Conclusions

194

Bibliography

211

Chapter 1

The Legacy of Principia Ethica I. Introduction It is safe to say that after G.E. Moore published Principia Ethica,1 just over one hundred years ago, philosophical ethics underwent a dramatic change. All forms of ethical naturalism and metaphysical ethics,2 theories that accounted for the majority of approaches to ethics, were under attack. Moore offered an ambitious and vexing collection of arguments that inspired, and continues to inspire, high praise and scathing criticism.3 And while his arguments did not sound a death knell for naturalism, they did inspire the development of plenty of alternative views.4 Moores intent in Principia Ethica was to create a new science of ethics, one that better captured what we had in mind when we called an action or a state of affairs good. He tried to accomplish this through observations about how we
1

G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica (1903). There are two versions of Principia Ethica in wide use, which have the same text and different pagination. The newer version is the revised edition of 1993. Since this new version contains a useful, previously unpublished preface to a planned but never written second edition of Principia Ethica, all future citations will be to the newer version. The appropriate citation is G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica, revised edition, Thomas Baldwin, ed. (Cambridge 1993) [henceforth Principia Ethica]. 2 Broadly defined, these are theories that hold that hold that goodness is identical with some natural or metaphysical property. See, e.g., Principia Ethica, 27. 3 Alisdair MacIntyre holds Moores arguments to play a key role in the decline of AngloAmerican ethical thought, and in the ongoing decay of Western culture. See Brian Hutchinson, G.E. Moores Ethical Theory (Cambridge 2001) p. 3, citing Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. (University of Notre Dame Press) 1984, pp 14-19. 4 Most notably, by those who rejected Moores positive views, like A.J. Ayer and C.L. Stevenson.

use moral language, what we intend, what it is we seem to be attributing to an action when we call it good, and through arguments that appear to demonstrate that whatever we have in mind when we use moral language, it can not be anything like what is proposed by ethical naturalists.

II. Overview of Principia Ethica. Moore begins Principia Ethica by attempting to identify the scope of ethical inquiry. He wants to answer the questions: What is the subject matter of ethics? and, What is it that we purport to study when we engage in moral reasoning? Clearly, the answer is conduct. But there are other disciplines besides ethics that study conduct, so in order to differentiate ethics from those, Moore takes his study a step further. What Ethics studies is good conduct. And since all conduct is not good; for some is certainly bad, and some may be indifferent,5 Moore looks to see what all ethical judgments have in common as their subject and determines that this common subject is goodness. This prompts Moore to accept that ethics is the general enquiry into what is good.6 To determine what the nature of goodness is, in chapter I, Moore examines what we mean by the word good. We use the word good in many ways, most of which have nothing to do with ethics. For instance, I may say, This eggplant is really good or write, Good soil and high moisture ensure acceptable rates of
5 6

Principia Ethica, p. 54. Principia Ethica, p. 54.

propagation. In these contexts, good means tasty or fertile, clearly not what we mean when using ethical language. There is one sense of this word that Moore concludes is the uniquely moral sense of the word. This is the sense that Moore calls intrinsic goodness or sometimes intrinsic value. For simplicity, I will refer to this predicate as goodness, throughout this work. When it appears in single quotes, as in goodness I am talking about the word that refers to the property goodness. When it appears in regular text, without quotes, I use it to refer to the property itself. Moore asserts throughout Principia Ethica that people make a mistake when they attempt to define good. But clearly, the problem is not in defining the word good. Linguistic definition is not what Moore is after. He writes, A definition does indeed often mean the expressing of one words meaning in other words. But this is not the sort of definition I am asking for. Such a definition can never be of ultimate importance in any study except lexicography.7 A linguistic definition might tell us how people tend to use a word, or it might define a word by stipulation. One mistake people make is in claiming that a mere verbal definition is supposed to be an analysis of the uniquely moral sense of good, namely, the property goodness. While it is a mistake to confuse a verbal definition with a property analysis, Moore is concerned to illustrate and avoid a different mistake
7

Principia Ethica, p. 58.

that of defining the property goodness in terms of other properties, that is, the mistake of analyzing goodness at all. In the rest of the first chapter of Principia Ethica, Moore examines the characteristics of this property. He concludes that goodness is a non-natural, simple, indefinable property and an intrinsic kind of value. As we will see in Chapter 2, Moore takes properties to be either simple or complex. An example of a complex property is being-a-brother. Moore takes this property to be made up of the simpler properties being-male and being-a-sibling. Perhaps each of these can be further broken down. To give a definition of a property is to identify its component properties and their relation to each other. Goodness, claims Moore, is a property that admits of no such analysis. It is simple, without component parts. As such, it is incapable of definition. To say that goodness is an intrinsic kind of value is to say that it is a property of objects that they possess in virtue of other properties those objects possess. In particular, goodness is not part of the intrinsic nature of an object x, but it is dependent on the intrinsic nature (the natural properties) of x. This makes goodness an intrinsic kind of value. Using the word intrinsic to describe both the natural properties of an object (all those properties which make up any natural object) and the objects value (a non-natural property an object has in virtue of its arrangement of natural properties) is an unfortunate use of language. Moore clearly means two different things by this word, and leaves it to context for us to

determine which.8 This distinction will be made clearer in Chapter 2, but for now, it is worth noting that goodness depends on the natural properties of objects, but is not itself a natural property. Moore also claims in Chapter I that how valuable an object is, i.e., to what degree goodness attaches to an object, while being determined purely by the objects intrinsic properties, is not necessarily the sum of the value of each of the objects parts.9 The value of each individual part of an object or state of affairs is not determinative of the value of the whole. Moore calls such objects organic wholes or organic unities, a term borrowed from Hegelian philosophy. The final task of the first chapter of Principia Ethica, and the task about which this author is most interested, is to explain why it is that ethical naturalism fails. Among Moores claims is the view that a fallacy is committed by every philosopher who offers a definition of goodness. He attempts to describe this naturalistic fallacy in a number of ways, using examples10 and in the context of arguing against naturalistic and metaphysical theories.11 Moore does not yet define naturalism, but it is clear from context that naturalists are defining

Writing in 1921 or 1922, in the proposed preface to a never-published second edition of Principia Ethica, Moore clarified his position on the relationship between goodness and the intrinsic properties of good objects. Using G to denote Goodness (to prevent confusion with non-moral senses of the word good), he writes: G is a property which depends only on the intrinsic nature of the things which possess it and Though G thus depends on the intrinsic properties of things which possess it, and is, in that sense, and intrinsic kind of value, it is yet not itself an intrinsic property. Principia Ethica, p. 22. 9 Principia Ethica, p. 79. 10 Throughout Chapter I. 11 In Chapters II-IV.

goodness in terms of properties like those which are the subject matter of disciplines like biology or psychology.12 As part of his proof that goodness is a non-natural property, and (possibly) in support of his view that all forms of naturalism commit the naturalistic fallacy, Moore offers his famous open question argument. The gist of this argument is that for any complex property you consider as a possible definition of goodness, a little reflection will show that it differs from goodness, and so, is inadequate as a definition. This is somewhat of a simplification of the argument, and as we will see in Chapter 5, there is not unanimity on what the open question argument really is, nor on what it is supposed to prove. One way to run the open question argument is as a test that uses our intuitions about the meaning of the words we use to express moral concepts to force the reflection required to see that any proposed definition fails. For instance, if the suggestion was that goodness meant happiness-promoting, we might substitute happiness-promoting for good in a sentence and see that that substitution did not preserve the meaning of the original sentence, as in: [1] Practicing vegetarianism is good [2] Practicing vegetarianism is happiness promoting. We can see that happiness promoting has a different meaning than good, Moore argues, because even if we accept [2], we may intelligibly ask,
12

He provides a working definition of naturalism in Chapter II.

Is practicing vegetarianism good? The fact that we can know [2] is true, while the truth of [1] is an open question i.e., that [2] does not make [1] trivialshows that [1] and [2] have different meanings. Moore would say that our suspicion that [1] and [2] do not mean the same thing is grounded in the inadequacy of happiness-promoting as a definition for goodness.13 Some version of this test and the naturalistic fallacy are Moores most enduring impacts on moral philosophy and the primary subject of this dissertation. Chapters II, III and IV of Principia Ethica are devoted to showing that the various forms of ethical naturalism and metaphysical ethics commit the naturalistic fallacy and should be rejected. In Chapter II, Moore tells us that what characterizes all forms of naturalism is that they purport to define goodness in terms of some natural object (or property) or other. Moore offers two ways of identifying natural objects and properties. The first, based on our idea of the proper scope of scientific inquiry, defines natural properties and objects as those things that are the subject matter of natural sciences and psychology. Biology, chemistry, physics, and psychology collectively study such properties as beingproductive-of-life, being-alkaline, being-massive, and being-productive-ofhappiness, therefore these are natural properties. The second way Moore defines natural objects and properties is in terms of metaphysics. He writes that these
13

This is a vastly simplified version of his argument. Moores more elaborate version is the subject of chapter 5 of this work.

properties are objects or properties that currently exist, have existed, or will one day exist. He offers a test to help us make the determinationCan we imagine that object or property existing alone in the universe? If so, it is a natural object or property. This isolation test is purported to be especially useful in identifying natural properties because Moore takes it to be perfectly conceivable that natural properties are capable of existence in time (and space) independent of the objects to which they are usually attached. But this is not the case for non-natural properties. Naturalistic theories of ethics define goodness in terms of one of these sorts of objects or properties. All of these theories, including Hedonism, the subject of Chapter III, are said to rest on the commission of the naturalistic fallacy. Spencers theory of evolutionary ethics commits the fallacy because it identifies the normative concept being-ethically-better with being-more-evolved. As Moore points out, being more evolved may be better than being less so, but it may not be. Surely, they are not one and the same concept. Hedonists and all those who base their theories on hedonismthe theory that goodness is pleasureare also said to commit the naturalistic fallacy. J.S. Mill is said to do so in virtue of thinking that the fact that pleasure is universally desired proves that being-productive-of-pleasure is identical with goodness. Ethical egoiststhose who argue that we ought each to pursue our own best interestsmake two mistakes. Those who are hedonistic egoists commit the

naturalistic fallacy by identifying goodness with being-productive-of-pleasure. And all ethical egoists confuse a universal concept, goodness, with something not universalthe agents benefit, i.e., a property that is necessarily different for everyone. Utilitarianism, the view that what is right is the act that has the best results (that which maximizes the proper end(s) of moral conduct), is praised as a general theory, but criticized on the grounds that utilitarians typically choose as their end either pleasure, which fails for the reasons Moore has already discussed, or some other natural property, none of which are identical with goodness. In Chapter IV, Moore turns his attention to metaphysical ethics. These are theories that purport to define goodness by identifying it with some metaphysical property or otherMoore calls these supersensible properties. These are supposed to be real, existent properties that are beyond our comprehension. A theory might hold that things are good insofar as they mirror this supersensible reality. Moore rejects these theories on the ground that they commit the naturalistic fallacy. This may seem odd, as they are not defining goodness with respect to any natural property, but Moore notes that though the ultimate definitions are not natural ones, the commission of the fallacy lies not in the nature of the definition, but in the definition itself.14

14

This may be read as some proof that the naturalistic fallacy is just a definist fallacythat to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to give a definition of an indefinable property, goodness. But when we attend closely to the text, we see that Moore does not say the fault lies in the mere definition, but in inferring the definition on inappropriate evidence. See, e.g., Moores comments on Greens theory, Principia Ethica, p. 189.

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In Chapter V, Moore moves from discussions of meta-ethicsthe discussion of the nature of goodness, and what sorts of things possess goodness to a discussion of practical ethics. The proper question for practical ethics is What ought I (we) do? Rather than asking about the value of objects and states of affairs, it seeks to determine the rightness of actions that bring about such objects or states of affairs. The answer Moore embraces is that our goal is to try to maximize intrinsic goodness, and to accomplish this, we ought to do those things that tend to produce better results in the foreseeable future, measured by the production of intrinsic goodness. The final chapter of Principia Ethica is where Moore tells us what things are intrinsically valuable. To determine the value of objects and states of affairs, Moore again turns to a kind of isolation test. What value would a thing have if it existed alone in the universe? Something that has only instrumental valuea thing that is good only as a means to some other thingclearly has no value in such a universe. Moore concludes that there are a great many intrinsically good things, but two stand out as very great goods, namely love of beautiful things and love of good persons.

Some effects of Principia Ethica Principia Ethica has had a profound impact on subsequent analytic ethics. Convinced by Moores assault on naturalism, many came to embrace Moores

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non-naturalism. Some, like W.D. Ross, accept non-naturalism, but reject the centrality of goodness, opting instead to base their theories on the concepts of rightness or duty.15 Others have taken a more radical approach, denying the view that moral language has the kind of universal meaning Moore presupposes. These views, varieties of noncognitivism, hold that the words we use to make moral judgments, words like good, bad or right, do not denote moral properties, but are expressions of some one of our mental states or psychological attitudes. Thus when I say, Torture is bad, I am not attributing the property badness to torture, rather I am merely expressing an attitude I have (disfavor of some sort, depending on the variety of noncognitivism) toward torture. Of course, some philosophers maintain that some form of ethical naturalism is correct, but straightforward identification of goodness with some natural property or other has become more rare.16 Some of these naturalists are non-reductive naturalists who do not propose to define goodness in terms of any particular natural property at all.

Plan of this work This dissertation consists of a close reading and explication of Chapters IIII of Principia Ethica. After one hundred years of commentary, Moores views on the central arguments of these chapters of Principia Ethica are poorly understood. For instance, Darwall, Gibbard and Railton, in their "Toward Fin de
15 16

W.D. Ross, The Right and the Good (1930). Though there are still plenty of straightforward hedonists.

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Siecle Ethics"17 claim that fifty years ago, it was proved that there was no fallacy involved in Moores naturalistic fallacy18. At the same time, others criticize theories like those of evolutionary ethics on the grounds that they commit the naturalistic fallacy. What a curious thing it must be if it is no fallacy at all, yet the reason to reject these theories. Moore, himself, claims not to know what he meant by his claims that all forms of ethical naturalism commit the fallacy.19 It also seems that critics of the naturalistic fallacy and open question argument generally criticize Moores arguments without being sufficiently careful to distinguish the open question argument from Moores claims about the naturalistic fallacy. One would hope that after a century of scholarship we would be able to distinguish theses central tenets of Moorean thought.20 My purpose in writing this dissertation is to offer an interpretation of Moores central claims that demonstrates the subtlety and power of those arguments. This involves three things: 1) Offering an explication of what it means to commit the naturalistic fallacy that is consistent with Moores text and examples, 2) Distinguishing Moores claims about the naturalistic fallacy from the open question argument, and

The Philosophical Review, Vol. 101, No. 1 (January 1992) Probably referring to Frankenas article The Naturalistic Fallacy, Mind 48: 464-77. 19 In his posthumously published preface to the unpublished second edition of Principia Ethica. 20 As we shall see, the failure is not to be laid squarely at the feet of the critics, as Moore is difficult to interpret, even for himself.
18

17

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3) Correcting mistaken interpretations of the open question argument. The heavy lifting begins in Chapter 2. There I describe the property goodness and explain Moores claims about it. I focus on what it means for goodness to be simple and indefinable. In Chapter 3, I examine interpretations of the naturalistic fallacy offered by Thomas Baldwin, A.N. Prior, and William Frankena. I also include some comments made by Moore in the years after Principia Ethica was published. I find that none of those interpretations, even Moores, maintain fidelity to the text of Principia Ethica. The mistakes, however, are instructive. We will see that Prior, for instance, conflates the naturalistic fallacy and the open question argument. The consequences of this are dire, for it allows Prior to minimize both claims by attacking only one. In Chapter 4, I offer a close reading of Moores statements wherein he describes the naturalistic fallacy and of his examples of philosophers who commit the naturalistic fallacy. I find that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to make one of three closely related errors. My interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy suggests that while it is indeed an error, it is not the error that most critics think it is. In Chapter 5, I provide a reading of Moores open question argument that, as in the case of the naturalistic fallacy, emphasizes fidelity to the text and rejects the traditional interpretation. I find that, rather than proving that all natural

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definitions of goodness are false, the section of Principia Ethica wherein Moore details the open question argument actually contains many arguments all in support of the conclusion that goodness is simple and indefinable. I examine these arguments in detail and offer one of my own that is intended to overcome some of the problems normally associated with Moores arguments. Chapter 6, the conclusion, summarizes my main points, and emphasizes the proper role of Moores two major arguments of Principia Ethica, Chapter I. I find that the open question argument is Moores proof that goodness cannot be defined in terms of any complex natural property. But this leaves the possibility that goodness is a simple natural property. The naturalistic fallacy is then deployed against any possible simple definition. I argue that the naturalistic fallacy does not disprove any proposed natural definition, but that commission of the naturalistic fallacy undermines the rational support any naturalistic theory could hope to garner.

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Chapter 2

Goodness, Simple and Indefinable It is immediately obvious that when we see a thing to be good, its goodness is not a property which we can take up in our hands, or separate from it even by the most delicate scientific instruments, and transfer to something else. It is not, in fact, like most of the predicates which we ascribe to things, a part of the thing to which we ascribe it.1

The main theses Moore defends in Principia Ethica are that goodness is a simple and indefinable property, and that most naturalistic ethical theories commit the naturalistic fallacy. Chapters 3 and 4 are about the naturalistic fallacy, and in Chapter 5, I explain Moores argument for the indefinability of goodness. But this does not tell us much about what goodness is. What features does this property have? What does it mean for a property to be indefinable? This chapter begins with an examination into what property it is that Moore claims is simple and indefinable. This is followed by an examination into what it means to be simple and indefinable.

I. Goodness Moores claims about the naturalistic fallacy aside, perhaps the most significant thesis he defends in Principia Ethica is the claim that goodness is

Principia Ethica, p. 175.

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simple and indefinable. Of what property is Moore predicating indefinability? Moore begins his examination of moral theory by asking the question What is good?2 He does not mean by this question What things are good? but rather, he is inquiring about the property, goodness, itself. By good, he means to refer to that property that he believes is unique to ethics, and upon which all judgments of right and wrong rest, and not to the many other properties that go by the same name but which are not relevant to ethics. For example, if I say, Soup is good food, the word good does not refer to the property relevant to ethics. I am likely using the word to refer to some property like tastiness, or being-valued-forits-nutritional-content. The question of what things are good is an interesting one, but before we can do a good job of answering it, we must first figure out what it means to be good. To what does the word good when used in its moral sense refer? In other words, what property does the word good pick out? By good, Moore means the only simple object of thought which is peculiar to Ethics.3 At various times in his career, Moore believed that the other concepts of ethicsexamples include right, obligation, and virtue4could be

2 3

Principia Ethica, p. 55. Moore, Principia Ethica, p. 57. This quote raises a few issues worth footnoting. First, Moore notes that goodness is not the only such property, but its converse, badness, is another. Together they are the only simple objects of thought peculiar to Ethics. Second, by object of thought he actually means what we mean by property. He takes property, notion, concept, object of thought, quality, and predicate to mean the same thing, at least early in his philosophical career. In Principia Ethica, Moore no longer uses concept to denote objects and properties. As the vocabulary and conventions of analytic philosophy became standardized, his use of these words became standardized as well. 4 Note, Moore holds that virtue is not an unique ethical predicate. Principia Ethica, p. 231.

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defined, at least in terms of goodness. For example, in Principia Ethica, he offers the following analysis of obligation: S is obligated to do x means x will produce the greatest amount of good in the universe5 But it is not clear whether Moore believed these other ethical properties could be defined in terms of goodness throughout his career. In Ethics, for instance, he does not give a definition of rightness in terms of goodness.6 It is unclear whether this warrants concluding that he abandoned hopes of such a definition, or whether he merely intended to distance his later work from the controversy associated with Principia Ethica. In a letter to Russell, written in 1905, Moore writes in response to Russells article On Denoting7 Your theory suggested to me a new theory about the meaning of the meaning of words, which might, I think, help us to settle the question about whether the meaning of right is indefinable. But I cant work it out right now.8 Clearly, in 1905, Moore was unsettled about the definability of right. Since we have no evidence that Moore had, by 1905, changed his views about language, it
5

Principia Ethica, p. 198. We recognize that this is an incomplete analysis, because the right side does not seem to require anything of S. Assuming that ought implies can, we might solve this by the addition of and x is among the things S can do. Moore provides an analysis of rightness in the same passage. 6 Moore, Ethics (1911) p 61. 7 Russell, B., On Denoting, Mind New Series, Vol. 14, No. 56 (Oct., 1905), pp. 479-493. 8 Letter to Bertrand Russell of 23 October 1905, reprinted in part in Philip Pettit, The Early Philosophy of G.E. Moore, The Philosophical Forum, vol. IV, no. 2 (Winter 1972-73), pp. 260298, at p. 298.

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is clear that he was unsure whether rightness was definable (analyzable). We also have inconclusive evidence from Moores reply to his critics in Schilpp. In that essay, he defends, for the most part, the project of defining ethical properties in terms of goodness, but in a telling passage, he admits that he is sometimes inclined to think that no moral terms are names of properties at all, but only carry emotive meanings.9 Regardless of whether goodness is really the only simple object of thought peculiar to ethics, or whether some or all of the other concepts are simple as well, or definable in terms of goodness, it is clear we have ways of thinking about goodness and these other properties. Despite not being able to define goodness, it is possible to recognize it for purposes of discussion.10 Similarly, basic properties of physicsmass, for instancemay not be defined in terms of their constituent parts, but only by relation to other properties or objects. Nonetheless, such properties may be identified and discussed. We may think of Moores claim about goodness as the analog to a physicists claim about mass. It is a basic

He writes: I must say again that I am inclined to think that right, in all ethical uses, and, of course, wrong, ought, duty also, are, in this more radical sense, not the names of characteristics at all, that they have merely emotive meaning and no cognitive meaning at all: and, if this is true of them, it must also be true of good, in the sense I have been most concerned with. I am inclined to think that this is so, but I am also inclined to think it is not so; and I do not know which way I am inclined most strongly. Moore, A Reply to My Critics, p. 554 in P.A. Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of G.E. Moore, The Library of Living Philosophers collection, vol. IV, Northwestern University Press (1942). 10 This very feature will be the motivating force behind Moores argument that good is not meaningless, i.e., that there is a property that we refer to by the name good. This argument is the second part of Moores proof that goodness is simple and indefinable, the subject of Chapter 5.

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property, we all know it is there, we recognize it, we can discuss it, but we cannot define it. Since Moore takes this property to be indefinable, he cannot tell us much more than this. He can only rely on the fact that we are familiar with the property in question, that we use it in our judgments about ethics, and that when we reflect on it, we will recognize it. This is not necessarily problematic. Many disciplines have core features that we may not be able to define. Nonetheless, we can talk meaningfully about them. To use an analogy Moore comes back to frequently, we can talk about yellowness even though I cannot define it. It is enough that we can identify instances of it when we see it, etc.11 Moore writes Whenever [someone] thinks of intrinsic value, or intrinsic worth, or says that a thing ought to exist, he has before his mind the unique objectthe unique property of thingswhich I mean by good.12 Although in this dissertation I have avoided citing to Moores later work except to contrast it with what appears in Principia Ethica, I must make an exception here. Since Moore sometimes refers to this property as intrinsic
11

Actually, though this is not anything I wanted to talk about in this dissertation, it strikes me that we may very well be wrong about the features that we think allow us to pick out goodness for purposes of discussion. 12 Moore, Principia Ethica, p. 68. We see in this quote one of the problems endemic to Moores writing in Principia Ethica. Though it seems that he might be referring to the property being intrinsically valuable and not the words intrinsic value he offsets the phrase with single quotes. As I have noted elsewhere, this can lead to use/mention problems, some of which Moore noted himself in his Preface to the Second Edition. On the other hand, he is trying to express the thought that these are other names for the property goodness. This suggests that they should be offset by quotes, but then the quote ought to read Whenever [someone] thinks of the property named intrinsic value. . . .

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value, which brings to mind features of goodness that we might not otherwise think of, Moores comments about intrinsic goodness from the Second Preface are helpful. Moore identifies two important features of intrinsic goodness: 1) Intrinsic goodness is a property which depends only on the intrinsic nature of the things which possess it, and 2) Though it depends on the intrinsic properties of the things which possess it, it is not itself an intrinsic property.13 Moore sometimes writes as if (1) implies that if an object has intrinsic goodness, it has it necessarily, but this implication is not literally true. In particular, he makes two claims that seem to imply necessity. First, he writes that judgments that state that certain kinds of things are themselves good are, if true, universally true.14 Secondly, he writes that a judgment which asserts that a thing is good in itself . . . if true of one instance of the thing, is necessarily true of all.15 By necessarily true Moore does not mean true in every possible world. Clearly there are worlds in which a given object, good in this world, would have intrinsic properties that make it bad, just as my counterpart in Bizarro world might have no beard and a malevolent streak a mile wide. What Moore means is that in any world in which an object, good in this world, exists with exactly the same intrinsic properties, it will be good regardless of the other characteristics of the world.
13

Preface to the Second Edition of Principia Ethica, p. 22. He believes that only predicates of value have these two features. 14 Principia Ethica, p. 75. 15 Principia Ethica, p. 78.

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Whatever is good depends only on the non-relational properties of the object such that for any object, no matter what the rest of the world is like, if an object is good in one world, its exactly similar counterpart will be good in every world. It seems that Moore is trying to establish that goodness is a kind of emergent property, or that it supervenes on the intrinsic properties of the objects that possess it. His descriptions seem to imply that the supervenience relation is a strong, local form of supervenience. We can state this view as follows: For any objects x and y, and any worlds, w1 and w2, if x in w1 is indiscernible from y in w2 with respect to their intrinsic properties, then x in w1 is indiscernible from y in w2 with respect to goodness. On this view,16 the indiscernibility is at the level of individuals, not whole worlds. This is a variety of strong supervenience because the indiscernibility with respect to goodness is across worlds. A weak supervenience view might claim that if two objects were indiscernible with respect to their natural (or other) properties in a given possible world, they would be indiscernible with respect to goodness in that world. On Moores view, if an object is good anywhere, an object exactly like it is good everywhere, whatever else may be true of that world. The view is a variety of local supervenience because the moral supervenes on the "local" properties of the objects in question. Relational properties and other non16

Unlike, say, a global supervenience view.

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intrinsic properties do not make up part of the supervenience base. Moore also believes that most (maybe all) natural and metaphysical predicates are either contingent or intrinsic. Intrinsic goodness is neither, so it cannot be natural or metaphysical. We might create from this an argument that goodness is not definable in terms of natural or metaphysical properties, and while this would go a long way toward establishing Moores claim that goodness is indefinable, it is not an argument Moore makes.

II. Goodness, simple and indefinable Simplicity Moore takes goodness to be simple and indefinable. For Moore, the indefinability of goodness is a consequence of its being simple. To be a simple property is to have no other properties as constituents. Complex properties, by contrast, have such parts. Moorean definition consists in identifying those parts and their relations to each other and the whole. This conception of properties is examined briefly, below. The simplicity of a property and its indefinability are distinct features the property may have, though one is the consequence of the other.17 And the reason

17

Some doubt is cast on this claim by Moore, himself, in the Second Preface, where he writes that in Principia Ethica he identified being simple with being indefinable. I do not find this identification. To be simple is to admit of no definition, but given Moores conception of definition, it appears that indefinability is a consequence of not having parts, rather than being identical with simplicity.

23

I take this to be so important is that no part of Moores proof that goodness is simple and indefinable actually turns on the indefinability. What Moore does is to present an argument from the premise that either goodness is simple (hence, indefinable), or it is complex, or it has no unique meaning. We will see that Moore does not show that no definition is correct.18 In fact, he only rules out definitions that identify goodness with some complex property. He then argues that good is not meaninglessthat there is some unique property we have in mind when we use the word good in the moral sense. What he does not do, and this point has been missed by every author I have read, is present in this argument any sub-argument to the conclusion that no simple natural property, like pleasantness, is identical with goodness.19 Simplicity has some implications worth drawing, besides the consequences for definability. To see this, we can consider the property yellowness.20 Moore uses the analogy between goodness and yellow when he describes the naturalistic fallacy and to give an example of a natural simple property.

It is typically asserted by those who claim that Moores naturalistic fallacy is a definist fallacy that Moores open question argument is designed to show that no definition is correct. But he emphatically does not show this. Rather, he shows that Goodness is simple. From that simpleness we might infer that Goodness is indefinable. But we could resist this inference. 19 Strictly speaking, identifying goodness and pleasantness is not to define either, at least in Moorean terms. 20 Scott Soames, in Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century (Princeton University Press 2003) does a nice job explaining this analogy.

18

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Consider the statement Lemons are yellow. It is perfectly reasonable to assert or to believe this statement. Further, the statement does not assert that lemons are necessarily yellow. We can conceive of an orange or green lemonit seems reasonable to think there could be such things, or a world in which such things existed. And the truth of the statement does not follow from some deeper necessary truth about lemons, as it might if lemons were defined as the yellow citrus fruit, in which case, we would claim that the expression is analytic. So Moore would claim that the statement lemons are yellow is synthetic. This is analogous to statements about good, such as: Pleasure is good.21 We can hold that such a statement is true without holding that the relation between pleasure and goodness follows from the definitions of either pleasure or goodness.22 So, again, Moore would claim that this expression is synthetic.23 If someone were to attempt to define yellowness, by claiming that to be yellow is to reflect light waves of wavelength Y, we might also take this to be a synthetic statement. This is because from our knowledge of yellowness, nothing
Where the statement is taken as predicating goodness of pleasure. That is, that pleasure is a thing that is good. 22 Moore takes pleasure to be a simple property as well, so no definition is possible for it. 23 He writes, [P]ropositions about the good are all of them synthetic and never analytic. Principia Ethica, p 58. I think this might be an error on Moores part. If a property or object were defined in terms of goodness, such as to be a woozle is to be a morally good whatzit, then the statement Woozles are good would be analytic, and would be about the good, because woozles would, by definition, be part of the good. Moore might have done better to say instead Propositions purporting to define the good (statements purporting to tell us all and only the good things) are synthetic. So, pleasure is good may or may not be synthetic, depending on the definition of pleasure, but pleasure is the good is synthetic (and, Moore would add, false).
21

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seems to follow about Y-ish light wavelengths. This is to say that it is not part of our concept of yellow (and in fact, it is not part of the property yellowness) that yellow things reflect any particular kind of light. As in the earlier case, we could imagine a situation in which yellow things reflected wavelengths of a different size, which suggests a certain contingency about the proposed definition. Thus, it is synthetic, and not a successful definition. The reason that goodness and yellowness resist definition in this way is that they are both simple, and hence, unanalyzable properties. Hence, everything we might say about them is synthetic.

Analysis Moore takes this to be so because he takes these properties to be unanalyzable. Of the many possible kinds of definition,24 Moore is interested in the kind of definition we might call a property analysis. In Moorean terms, a successful definition of a property is an analysis that tells us the parts that make up the object, and perhaps, the relation that those parts stand in to each other and the thing as a whole. As a consequence of this view of definition, simple propertiesthose properties that have no partsare incapable of being defined.25 Moore writes definitions which describe the real nature of the object or notion

24

John Fischer, in his paper On Defining Good, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 51 (1954), pp. 730-736, identifies sixteen different sorts of definition. His list is not considered authoritative. 25 Principia Ethica, p. 59.

26

denoted by a word, and which do not merely tell us what the word is used to mean, are only possible when the object or notion in question is something complex.26 Complex objects or properties, real or mythical, are subject to this sort of definition. Moore illustrates with the examples of a horse and a chimaera. Each of these can be analyzed into its component parts, and those parts might be further analyzable as well, until you get to the level of simples, at which no further analysis is possible.27 Mary Warnock, in Ethics Since 1900,28 comments on Moores contention that the definition of Horse is hooved quadruped of the genus equus. This contention is a source of concern for Warnock because Moore asserts it on several occasions as an aid to clarify what he means by definition. But the result, for Warnock, is not clarity at all. It is evident that what Moore means by definition is analysis, but the definition he offers for horse does not look much like an analysis to Warnock. She writes No doubt one could list the parts of the horse, and even state their relation one to another, but to do this would not be to say Hooved quadruped etc., with a special meaning; nor would it be taken to be defining horse at all.29 What Moore expects of a good analysis is that it makes clear the parts which compose a thing and the relation in which they stand to each

26 27

Ibid. Principia Ethica, p. 60. 28 Ethics Since 1900, 3rd ed., (Oxford University Press 1978). 29 Warnock, p. 21.

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other. Warnock thinks this would not be a definition. An analysis of horse, she thinks, simply would not contain pasterns, chestnuts, hooves and tails. There seem to be two sources of concern underlying Warnocks criticism. The first might be that Moore has not given us a single complete and successful analysis against which we could measure any future analyses we might make.30 With his examples of horses and chimaeras, he gestures in the direction he thinks a successful analysis lies, but fails to offer one. He says of a chimaera that we can describe its partsa snake, a goat, and a lionessand how it is put together. And we can further divide each of its parts into parts, because snakes, goats, and lionesses are, themselves, complex things. [A]ll are composed of parts, which may, themselves, in the first instance, be capable of similar division, but which must in the end be reducible to simplest parts, which no longer can be defined.31 In some ways, his choice of examples leaves much to be desired. The examples of horse and chimaera, while illustrating the possibility for defining both concrete and imaginary entities, are simply too complex to be useful. Additionally, the lend themselves to a good deal of confusion about what we are actually defining. And this, it seems, is the second concern underlying Warnocks complaint. Are we to consider these definitions of concrete entities or the properties being a horse and being a chimaera? Moore wants to assert that a certain kind of

He gives such an analysis of beauty in Chapter VI, but it looks nothing like an analysis in terms of parts, so it is not particularly illuminating. 31 Principia Ethica, p. 59.

30

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definitiona property analysisis impossible for goodness, but the examples he gives of property analyses look like analyses of concrete objects. He divides the horse and the chimaera into pieces, it appears. This seems like a mistake. The idea of property analysis as demonstrating the component parts of complex properties is a defensible project, but I think it looks very little like these particular examples. There are some things that can be said in defense of the view that there are complex properties and that they are made up of other, possibly simple properties.32 Consider the property being a bachelor. It is reasonable to think that this property is a conjunction of other properties, viz., being unmarried, being adult, being male, and perhaps (to eliminate a problem raised by Richard Brandt that I discuss in Chapter 5) being un-widowed and un-divorced. I embrace this view of properties because I find the alternative unreasonable. The alternative is that being a bachelor has no parts and is thus, simple. But then, instantiating that property is not to instantiate all of its parts. But it seems for all the world like being a bachelor does mean to be unmarried, and male, and adult, etc.33 I think it would be a weird sort of world if my being a husband was something beyond my being married and being male. It would have to be a whole other simple property I instantiated. I am unsure whether my unease with such a view is that it leads to
See, e.g., Jeffrey King, What is a Philosophical Analysis, Philosophical Studies 90: 155179, 1998. 33 Could it be a mere accident that people instantiating all those properties also instantiate bachelorhood?
32

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a weird promiscuity of properties34 or that new property instantiations seem to bring with them no new information about the object that instantiates them. At any rate, these considerations suggest an initial plausibility to the kind of view Moore must advocate. If the idea of complex properties being composed of component properties has some plausibility, Moores conception of definition as property analysis can be motivated. The remainder of this chapter considers some requirements for a successful analysis.

Nature of Analysis Moore claims that good is indefinable. Moore meant by this that the concept to which the word good refers, when used in the sense that is relevant to ethics, is unanalyzable. In Principia Ethica, Moore offers little explanation of what he really intended for a successful analysis. He writes that good is indefinable in that it is not composed of any parts, which we can substitute for it in our minds when we are thinking of it35 and definitions which describe the real nature of the object or notion denoted by a wordare only possible when the object or notion involved is complex.36 This gives us some idea of what he expects from an analysisthat it only applies to things with parts and that it
34

This is something that does not bother me for other metaphysical entities, like events, or objects, so why would it be strange here? 35 Principia Ethica, p. 60. 36 Principia Ethica, p. 59.

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should tell us what those parts are in a way that will enable use to substitute them for the object when we have it in mind. In his subsequent writing, for instance in his Reply to my Critics and in his Preface to the Second Edition of Principia Ethica he gives a more thorough treatment of the topic. What follows is an explication of successful analysis as derived from these sources. Consider a sample analysis of x, x iff y Calling x the analysandum and y the analysans, Moore sets the following criteria for a successful analysis: 1. Both analysans and analysandum must be concepts, ideas or propositions, but not mere verbal expressions.37 This is to ensure that we are clear that we are doing conceptual analysis and not linguistic analysis.38 The features of language, while interesting to Moore, are not what he is out to discover. He writes To define a concept is the same thing as to give an analysis of it; but to define a word is neither the same things as to give an analysis of that word, nor the same thing as to give an analysis of any concept.39 To be sure, in conceptual analysis, the analysandum and

37

Moore, Reply to My Critics in Schilpp, P.A., The Philosophy of G.E. Moore, Northwestern University Press, Chicago, 1942 , p. 662 38 Moore uses the words concept and property interchangeably. To do a conceptual analysis is not to analyze our way of thinking about a thing. It is to analyze the thing itself. 39 Moore, 1942, p 664

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analysans are expressed verbally, but what is being analyzed is the concept, not its expressionthe shape of the letters, spacing, syntax, etc. 2. Both analysans and analysandum must in some sense be the same concept.40 The inclusion of in some sense is terribly unsatisfying, but it might be the saving grace of this condition. The problem is that when you are doing conceptual analysis, the concept you are analyzing cannot be the same concept as the analysandum. This would make the analysis useless. We usually think that the analysans and analysandum would need to refer to the same object or property in the world, but they should not be the same concept. This criticism, however is a consequence of having been trained in post-Moorean philosophy of language and metaphysics. Contemporary philosophers use the word concept to denote a way of thinking about a thing. Moore means something else. Philip Pettit writes that for Moore everything that exists, and everything that is knownincluding objects of perceptionis composed of concepts.41 Similarly, words are meaningful because they stand for objects, so the object for which a word stands is a concept. Given this interpretation of concept, condition (2) seems perfectly reasonable. The analysans and analysandum of a successful analysis should refer to the same object, but in different terms. Consider the analysis of brother:
40 41

Moore, 1942, p. 666. Pettit, P, The Early Philosophy of G.E. Moore, in The Philosophical Forum, vol. IV, No. 2, Boston University 1972, p. 267 Existing things can, if anything is to be true of them, be composed of nothing but concepts. Moore, Nature of Judgment, Mind, (1899) p. 182.

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x is a brother iff x is a male sibling Brother and male sibling both refer to the same objects (Moore would say concepts) in the world. 3. The analysans must be such that nobody can know or verify that the analysandum applies to an object without knowing that the analysans does also.42 This condition is troublesome to me. This, I believe, is the source of Moores paradox of analysis. An analysis is not successful unless it meets this condition, but this condition keeps such an analysis from being informative. It can offer us no new information. Consider the folk philosophical analysis of heat. This analysis, thought to be correct and successful, might be worded something like this: x is hot iff x has rapidly moving molecules. Clearly, one might know that some object has rapidly moving molecules without knowing that that object was hot. It is conceivable that one might have a sophisticated molecular motion detector and not know that it is also a heat detector. In fact, anyone unfamiliar with the analysis could know one side of the bi-conditional applied without knowing that the other applied as well. If Moore is actually giving an account of this property: x is a successful analysis of y for S(someone), then (3) might be a good condition.
42

Moore, 1942, p. 663.

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4. The expression used for the analysans must be synonymous with that used for the analysandum.43 This particular condition is one that gave Moore some difficulty. He thought it was necessary for any successful analysis but he also thought that it was not satisfiable. This is because he is not sure what criteria to use for synonymy. If synonymy of expressions means simply that two expressions refer to the same object, then this condition is clearly correct. But he seems to want something more of synonymy. In his Reply to My Critics he writes: It is obviousthat, in a sense, the expression x is a brother is not synonymous with, has not the same meaning as x is a male sibling, since if you were to translate the French word frre by the expression male sibling your translation would be incorrect, whereas if you were to translate it by brother it would not44 This suggests an alternate criterion for synonymy, which, I believe, ought to be rejected. Issues of correctness in translation (particularly this translation) are as much issues of style as they are of content. I think the proper response to Moores concern about translation is one of two things: either reject translational substitutivity as a criterion for synonymy, or reject his assertion that this is a bad translation. Stylistically it is awkward, but in terms of content it is certainly acceptable. Another possibility is to simply reject condition (4).
43 44

Ibid p. 663. Ibid, p. 667.

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5. The expression used for the analysandum must be different from that used for the analysans in two ways: a) The analysans must mention explicitly concepts not used in the analysandum. b) The analysans must mention the method by which the concepts are combined.45 For example, being male and being a sibling are not mentioned by brother and the method by which the concepts male and sibling are combined is conjunction. Ultimately, Moores claim is that there is no analysis of intrinsic goodness that satisfies (1-5).46 For Moore, good is unanalyzable because it is simple. Simple concepts have no parts, unlike brother, which has other concepts as constituents. Since it has no parts, there are no other concepts, which can be combined in any way, which could stand as the referents of the analysans.

Ibid, p. 666. There is nothing like unanimity on the requirements for a successful analysis. For Moorean ethics purposes, the part/whole discussion may be enough.
46

45

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Chapter 3 What is the Naturalistic Fallacy?

[F]ar too many philosophers have thought that when they named [the other properties that good things have], 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.1 Introduction Perhaps the most enduring impact of Principia Ethica is the addition of the expression the naturalistic fallacy into the lexicon of analytic ethics. It is the one contribution of Principia Ethica most recognized and relied upon by other philosophers, and it is the one holdover of Moores arguments that even nonphilosophers embrace.2 Those precious few pages of Principia Ethica in which Moore describes the naturalistic fallacy have received a great deal of commentary.3 None of this commentary, however, illuminates why the naturalistic fallacy is held in such high regard by some and completely dismissed
1 2

Principia Ethica, p. 62. Though the embrace is hesitant, and perhaps naive. My own informal observations suggest that most non-philosophers take the naturalistic fallacy to be the attempt to derive an ought from an isthe undertaking of attempting to reach moral conclusions from scientific, or other, observations. See, e.g., Ursula Goodenaugh, The Holes in Gould's Semipermeable Membrane Between Science and Religion, American Scientist, May 1999, wherein she reviews Stephen J. Goulds Rocks of Ages (Ballantine Books, 1999) Goodenaugh writes that the book attempts to make a . . . point, namely, that scientists are prone to commit the naturalistic fallacyto derive oughts from iseson a grand, overbearing scale. 3 In addition to the commentary I examine in this chapter, there are a vast number of papers and book chapters devoted to it. See, e.g., Warnock, Mary, 1978, Ethics Since 1900, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, Ch. 1; Lewy, Casimir, G.E. Moore on the Naturalistic Fallacy, Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol 50, (1965) pp 251-262; and Kolnai, Aurel, The Ghost of the Naturalistic Fallacy, Philosophy, Vol. 55, No. 211. (Jan., 1980), pp. 5-16.

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by others. This is due, I believe, to a failure by commentators to tease out from Moores somewhat cryptic text a coherent reconstruction of what committing the naturalistic fallacy entails and what role the fallacy plays in Moores overall project.4 Moore states that nearly all philosophers who advocate naturalistic ethicsthose theories that hold that good or some other moral property is identical with some natural property or propertiesand all, or nearly all, philosophers who advocate metaphysical ethicsthose theories that hold that ethical truths follow from metaphysical truths5commit the naturalistic fallacy.6 Despite one hundred years of philosophical work on the subject, it is not clear what is being asserted when a theory is said to commit the naturalistic fallacy. Typically, commentators conclude that Moores claim that naturalistic theories commit the naturalistic fallacy simply amounts to the claim that such theories assert that good is identical with some natural property, or that Moores comments are so hopelessly confused that his claim is meaningless. For example, Tom Regan writes, The naturalistic fallacy is the name Moore gives to any

For instance, Thomas Baldwin, whose work is discussed in detail, below, writes that it is Moores central claim in Principia Ethica that the naturalistic fallacy is committed by almost all moral philosophers. I contend that, while this is a claim of Moores, it is far from his central claim. See Baldwin, T., G.E. Moore, Rutledge (London 1990) p. 69. 5 He is not using the term metaphysical as we do today. By a metaphysical truth he means some proposition about the metaphysical (i.e., part of the super-sensible) realm. See Principia Ethica, p. 161. 6 See, e.g., Principia Ethica, pp. 90-93 and 176.

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attempt to identify Good with something other than itself.7 Regan, who provides a thorough treatment of the impact of Moores ethical philosophy and the metaphysics underlying his claims, opts not to analyze just what the naturalistic fallacy is, beyond this simple assertion. The two most significant claims Moore makesthat most naturalists commit the naturalistic fallacy and that goodness is simple and indefinableare left unexamined. So, even though Regan points out that nearly two-thirds of Principia Ethica is devoted to the explanation of the naturalistic fallacy, and finding instances of it in others work,8 Regan sidesteps the very issue of what it means to commit the naturalistic fallacy. I offer that this is because Moores text is brutally hard to interpret and subject to a variety of challenges, including those coming from Moore himself. What error do naturalistic theories (or those philosophers who assert their truth) commit? Is it correct to call it a fallacy? In this chapter I examine answers to these questions as proposed by Thomas Baldwin, Arthur Prior, and William Frankena. Before examining this secondary literature, it is worth reviewing Moores goals for Principia Ethica and, in light of these, identifying some of the confusion surrounding the naturalistic fallacy. As we shall see, Moores own subsequent commentary on the Principia Ethica is the root of some of the confusion. Moore has as his primary purpose in Principia Ethica the scientization of ethics. In order to establish a science of ethics on a par with the natural
7 8

Tom Regan, Bloomsburys Prophet (Temple University Press 1986), p. 193. T. Regan, p. 197.

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scienceswhich had seen substantial success by the time Moore wrote Principia EthicaMoore believes it is necessary to establish precisely what the proper subject of ethics is. As noted in the first chapter, he takes the proper subject of ethics to be goodness. Goodness, unlike some of the properties that are the proper subject of the natural sciences, is a property about which there is nothing like unanimity in the views about its nature. The paradigms of sound reasoningmathematics and the natural sciencesmight face this problem, especially at the peripheries of those sciences,9 but not about their central concepts; there is something like unanimity about what angles are or what it is that chemistry studies. And this is no surprise. It takes a certain solidification about central concepts before advancement is possible. In keeping with goal of solidifying the central concepts of ethics, a big part of Moores work is to identify what goodness is. One might infer from this that to identify what goodness is, it may help to determine what it is not. Disabusing fellow philosophers of their false views about the subject matter of ethics would go a long way toward establishing a core science of ethics. One way to view Moores writing on the naturalistic fallacy, then, is that it is an attempt to determine what it is that goodness is not.
9

For example, there is debate about the nature of fields in physics. See, e.g., Auyang, S. Y., How is Quantum Field Theory Possible? , (New York: Oxford University Press 1995) cited in Michael Esfeld, Holism in Cartesianism and in Todays Philosophy of Physics, Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift fr allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 30 (1999), pp. 1736 available online at http://www.unil.ch/webdav/site/philo/shared/DocsPerso/EsfeldMichael/1999/JGPhilSci99.pdf

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Moore claims that the naturalistic fallacy is committed in the arguments for nearly all forms of naturalism and by any other theory that attempts to define goodness. The bulk of his critical work in Principia Ethica is an assault on ethical naturalism. Ethical naturalism, as defined by Moore, encompasses those theories that attempt to define goodness in terms of natural properties.10 As examples of such theories, Moore offers Hedonismthe view that goodness is pleasureand Spencers evolutionary ethicsthe theory that goodness is being conducive to life, or alternately, that being more evolved is morally better than not being so evolved.11 Both of these theories and all others that define goodness in terms of some natural property or object are said to rest on a naturalistic fallacy. Fully one third of Principia Ethica is devoted to showing that naturalistic theories, and Hedonism in particular, commit the naturalistic fallacy.12 If we were to take what Moore says about the naturalistic fallacy as a way to determine a little about what goodness is not, Moores claim that every form of ethical naturalism commits the fallacy suggests to us that goodness is not any natural property or object. I take up Moores criticisms of ethical naturalism in an

attempt to determine just what committing the naturalistic fallacy entails in the next chapter.

10 11

See, e.g., Principia Ethica, Ch II, sec. 27 In fact, one of Moores criticisms of Spencers view is that underlying his view is a form of Hedonistic naturalism. 12 If we reserve about a third for the explanation of the naturalistic fallacy, and detecting it in metaphysical theories, we get the two-thirds that Tom Regan pointed out above.

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Moore also argues that no metaphysical theory of ethics can be correct. These theories define goodness in terms of metaphysical properties or objects. Moore writes, They all imply, and many of them expressly hold, that ethical truths follow logically from metaphysical truths. . . . And the result is that they all describe the Supreme Good in metaphysical terms.13 As an example, Moore offers the theory that goodness is the Absolute.14 Some of what Moore ultimately says about goodness is true of these metaphysical propertiesfor instance, that they are part of super-sensible reality and are non-natural. This other-worldly aspect of metaphysical properties is not what Moore objects to, but rather it is the derivation of moral conclusions from these non-moral facts that he condemns.15 In this respect, Moores assertion that theories of metaphysical ethics commit the naturalistic fallacy sounds a lot like an application of Humes law.16 Indeed, some Moore scholars have argued that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is merely to violate Humes Law, that is, to derive a moral conclusion from non-moral premises. This suggestion, often repeated in popular literature, is taken up and effectively refuted by William Frankena,17 as we will see below.

Principia Ethica, p. 161. This is the idea, embraced by British Idealists, of the universe as a rational whole. See Principia Ethica 66 (pp.161-164). 15 See Principia Ethica, Ch. IV. 16 See discussion of Frankena, below. 17 William Frankena, The Naturalistic Fallacy, Mind 48.192 (1939): 464-77.
14

13

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As noted above, Moore believes that both naturalistic and metaphysical ethical theories involve the naturalistic fallacy.18 If this is the mistake these theories make that makes them false, we might gain some insight into what the naturalistic fallacy is by comparing the false-making characteristics of these theories and seeing what it is that they have in common. We see this thinking in Thomas Baldwins work, for example. Since both naturalistic and metaphysical ethics attempt to define goodness in terms of real, existent (notably not nonnatural) properties, Baldwin decides that Moore meant to write that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to deny the non-naturalness of goodness.19 I am opposed to Baldwins sort of approach to sorting out the meaning of the naturalistic fallacy, in part because it is not clear to me that the commission of the naturalistic fallacy actually makes any theories false. We know that Moore thinks the naturalistic fallacy is a mistake made by almost all ethicists, but is it merely a mistake that other theorists make or is it the mistake that makes their theories false? This, in both the primary and secondary literature, is unclear. The proper role of the fallacy will naturally depend on what it is to commit the fallacy. At times, Moores writing seems to suggest that all other theories are wrong in virtue of mis-identifying goodness, and that this very mis-identification is the naturalistic fallacy. If this is the case, then, clearly,

18

Involve is a loaded term. What the relation is between the naturalistic fallacy and these defective theories will become clear in the next chapter. 19 Baldwin, pp. 72-ff.

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commission of the naturalistic fallacy is what makes these theories false. For instance, Moore writes, the naturalistic fallacy [is] the fallacy which consists in identifying the simple notion we mean by good with some other notion.20 It seems clear that to identify one notion with another, non-identical notion is a mistake, and indeed, it is a mistake sufficient to make false any theory that relied on the identification for its truth. Further, such identification is what Moore takes to be the defining feature of naturalistic and metaphysical ethical theories. This suggests the naturalistic fallacy is the false-making mistake made by advocates of naturalism and other theories. On the other hand, Moore sometimes treats the naturalistic fallacy in more general terms, suggesting that to commit it is merely to attempt to offer any definition of goodness at all. This is understandable, given his conviction that goodness is indefinable. Nevertheless, a naturalist could argue that given this more expansive conception of the naturalistic fallacy, it may not be a fallacy at all.21 Whether a naturalistic theory was false then, would depend not on whether it attempts to define that property we mean by good, but on whether the theory gets the definition right. A third way to interpret the naturalistic fallacy might be to claim that to commit it is simply to take an unreliable approach to moral reasoning. For instance, some of Moores passages suggest that to commit the naturalistic fallacy
20 21

Principia Ethica, p. 109. We will see this strand of thought in Frankenas work, below.

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is to see that there is a constant conjunction between some natural property, say pleasure, and goodness, and to infer from this connection that they are one and the same property.22 This would be an unreliable method for investigating the nature of moral propertiesit certainly would make for an invalid argumentand, if this is a mistake commonly made, perhaps it is best thought of as a fallacy of some sort. But if this is the right interpretation of Moores naturalistic fallacy, commission of the fallacy does not, in itself, make the identification and any theory based on it false.23 Even a fallacious argument can have a true conclusion, after all. If this were the correct view of the naturalistic fallacy, then adherents to such faulty reasoning can accept that they have engaged in a fallacious argument, but might still insist on a counter-argument that proves their identification wrong. So, there are a number of ways to interpret the naturalistic fallacy and its role in Moores scheme. And there is some textual support for each. The commentators whose work I highlight in this chapter note the difficulty in determining the appropriate role for the naturalistic fallacy in Moores writing. For example, Frankena claims that, at times, Moore wields the naturalistic fallacy like a weapon. This is to say that those, like Moore, who assert that a theorist has committed the naturalistic fallacy are really asserting that her theory is false in virtue of running afoul of the fallacy. These philosophers
This seems to be what Moore describes in the passage I quoted at the start of this chapter. In fact, in a passage I have found cited only twice in secondary literature (and not for the proposition I offer here), Moore, himself, makes this assertion. See, Moore, Principia Ethica, Ch I, 14.
23 22

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who wield their accusations like a weapon are making an error, claims Frankena. Frankena aims to show that asserting that a theory commits the naturalistic fallacy is okay, but only if it is the conclusion of an argument against the theory in question, not a starting premise. Frankena argues that a philosopher who claims a theory is false by virtue of having committed the naturalistic fallacy is committing the same sort of error that intuitionists attribute to naturaliststhey assume the truth of a view that needs argumentation. Others, like Prior, take the naturalistic fallacy to be a mistake, but not the fundamental flaw with any given naturalistic theory. He takes the naturalistic fallacy to be a decisive argument only against those naturalists who assert their definitions of goodness as truisms that prove, as a logical consequence, the falsity of rival theories. For any other theory, argues Prior, the naturalistic fallacy has no effect on its truth. If the naturalistic fallacy is a mistake in reasoning, but not necessarily decisive, it need not play any particular role in Moores critiques of naturalism. Or it may be Moores diagnosis of where a theorist has erred, whether or not it has been determined that his view is false. That is, it describes an error that is common to naturalist reasoning about ethics (an error that is easy to make), much the same way as affirming the consequent describes an error common among those just learning logic.

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Which of these is the correct function of the naturalistic fallacy is as debated as the meaning of the naturalistic fallacy itself. I trust that a thorough examination of what it means to commit the naturalistic fallacy will provide a ready answer to its proper role in Moores scheme.

The source of the confusion Moores writing, itself, is a source of some of this confusion. For instance, he writes that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to believe of oneself that one is defining goodness when, in reality, one is merely enumerating the properties that good objects have.24 This is to say that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to have mistaken beliefs about ones own philosophical activities. We would expect that the problem must not be in the theorists view of his own activity, but in the proposed definition itself. Then again, Moore is famous for being a careful, thorough thinker.25 Could it be that the problem is one of selfperception?26 Just a few pages later, Moore writes, The naturalistic fallacy always implies that when we think, This is good, what we are thinking is that the thing
Principia Ethica, p. 62. A close reading of Principia Ethica and his other early works may lead one to realize that this reputation is likely justified by his later works. This would not be an entirely fair assessment. Though Moores Principia Ethica is a tough read, it is due, in part, to Moores desire to bring clarity to a difficult subject where some of the tools of contemporary analytic philosophy did not yet exist. In fact, some take Moores early work to be the very founding of our trade. Consider, for example, Scott Soames Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Vol. 1 (Princeton University Press 2003), Part One, pp. 1-90. 26 No, it cannot be. I take up a proper reading of this suggestion in the next chapter.
25 24

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in question bears a definite relation to some one other thing.27 He goes on to state that this other thing may be either a natural object (naturalistic ethics) or an object inferred to exist in supersensible reality (metaphysical ethics). Whatever Moore intended in this quote, it surely leaves room for interpretations of the naturalistic fallacy different from the previous one. Happily, Moore gives us some guidance about the meaning of the naturalistic fallacy, while simultaneously proving my contention that he is, in part, responsible for the confusion surrounding the naturalistic fallacy. He writes in the preface to the second (though unpublished)28 edition of Principia Ethica that there are at least three different characterizations of the naturalistic fallacy that appear in Principia Ethica. These are: 1) Identifying goodness with some predicate other than goodness, 2) Identifying goodness with some analyzable predicate, and 3) Identifying goodness with some natural or metaphysical predicate. 29 Moore, in trying to explain what he must have meant when he wrote Principia Ethica, ultimately discounts the first two choices and claims that the third option

27 28

Principia Ethica, p. 90. Please note that Moore decided not to publish this new preface when he scrapped plans for a second edition of Principia Ethica. For this reason, any discussion of his views as they appear in this preface is somewhat suspect. But in this case, they are worth examining as they suggest that Moore, himself, was acutely aware in 1922 of the problems with his earlier arguments. Knowledge of the contents of this preface comes to us from Casimir Lewy, who inherited Moores unpublished work and whose paper referenced above highlighted the major themes in the second preface, and from Thomas Baldwin who included it in the 1993 reissue of the original edition of Principia Ethica. 29 Moore, Preface to the Second Edition, Principia Ethica, p. 17.

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or something like it is what he must have meant. His position at the time he wrote the second preface was different still, in that he believed that the naturalistic fallacy, rather than being any identification of good with some natural of metaphysical predicate, should be more narrowly conceived as identifying good with a limited subset of the natural or metaphysical properties.30 It is worth noting that none of these three characterizations is much like the one mentioned in text accompanying footnote 24, that is, believing oneself to be giving a definition when really merely naming properties coextensive with goodness in good objects. The picture we are left with is not a very satisfying one considering that this aspect of Moores views is supposed to be the most enduring. One would expect a measure of shared understanding of a philosophical concept used by so many for so long. This chapter attempts merely to highlight this confusion about the proper role and meaning of the naturalistic fallacy. In an to effort to clarify the meaning and significance of the naturalistic fallacy, I examine the work of Baldwin, Prior, and Frankena. Each has attempted to identify either the proper understanding of the naturalistic fallacythat is, to answer what mistake it really is, if anyor the proper role of assertions that some theorist has committed the naturalistic fallacy, or both. I find that none of the commentators offers an account of the naturalistic fallacy that is in keeping with the text and spirit of

30

Viz., those which do not depend only on the intrinsic natures of those things which possess them, and are themselves intrinsic properties of those things.

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Principia Ethica. I will rely heavily on the work of Frankena and Prior in setting the foundation for my positive account of the naturalistic fallacy in Chapter 4.

Literature Review 1. Thomas Baldwin The first commentator whose work I examine is Thomas Baldwin. He focuses on both the text of Principia Ethica and what he takes to be the proper role of the naturalistic fallacy in Moores scheme to determine what Moore meant the fallacy to be. In his book G.E. Moore,31 Baldwin offers three interpretations of the naturalistic fallacy, claiming that each of these interpretations is equally well supported by Moores language in Principia Ethica. He argues that, depending on what bit of Principia Ethicas text you read, you should conclude that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is: (a) to deny that goodness is indefinable; (b) to assert of something other than goodness that it is goodness; [or] (c) to deny that goodness is non-natural.32 Baldwin claims that while each of these interpretations has roughly equal textual support in Principia Ethica, only (c) is philosophically interesting. More importantly, he suggests that since there are (at least) three interpretations of

Thomas Baldwin, G.E. Moore (London: Routledge 1990). Baldwins views on the naturalistic fallacy can also be found in Principia Ethica, editors introduction. 32 Baldwin, p. 70.

31

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Moores words, with no way to choose between them, the naturalistic fallacy has no real meaning at all, or more precisely, there was no one thing that Moore had in mind when he wrote it.33 This is not an entirely absurd conclusion. After all, Moore himself once wrote that it was a he was confused about what he meant in the text itself.34 Baldwin writes that it was Moores recognition that the naturalistic fallacy was unsalvageable in virtue of its vagueness that inspired Moore to drop all references to it in his later book, Ethics, and in his paper, The Conception of Intrinsic Value.35 I accept that Moore may have avoided writing about the naturalistic fallacy in his later works out of a belief that he had been a little incoherent about it in Principia Ethica, although I think it is more likely that his views on the metaphysics of properties had changed in ways which could not be reconciled with his earlier views, in particular the ones underlying his writing on the naturalistic fallacy in Principia Ethica. But if he did think that there were several competing interpretations of his writing, I do not believe that they are the interpretations offered by Baldwin. This is a little hard to square with the material from the Second Preface, but I think there is some reason to think the later Moore ought not to be considered authoritative about his own earlier views. There are several claims he
Baldwin, pp. 70-71. Preface to the Second Edition, Principia Ethica, p. 16. 35 Published in G. E. Moore, Philosophical Studies (1922), reprinted in Principia Ethica (revised edition).
34 33

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makes in the Second Preface which are incorrect. For instance, he claims that since to commit a fallacy is to make a bad inference of some kind, and his earlier views do not require any inference to be made, his earlier views are deficient.36 Proving the thesis that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is actually to make just such a bad inference is the goal of Chapter 4 of this work. He also thinks that many of his arguments are fatally flawed by use/mention problems, while, in fact, they are easily rescued from these problems, as we can see in my reconstructions in Chapters 4 and 5. Besides exaggerating the faults that Principia Ethica genuinely exhibits, Moore also mischaracterizes some of the more controversial material. He writes That I ever actually mean by committing the naturalistic fallacy merely identifying G with some predicate other than G I do not know how to show. But it seems to me that I suggest this constantly by what I say.37 This suggests to me that Moore has refined his view about what it means to commit the naturalistic fallacy, and is looking for and not finding, evidence for this new view in his text. It is not surprising to me that Moore might have forgotten, or grown to doubt, some of his main contentions in the eighteen years between Principia Ethicas publication and his authorship of the Second Preface.

36 37

Second Preface, p. 21. Second Preface, p. 18-19. By G he means intrinsic goodness.

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I expect that all of us have a tendency to view our past work with a critical eye, but it appears that Moore is particularly uncharitable to himself.38 At any rate, I think that finding fault with Baldwins views, though they echo Moores retrospective self-interpretation, is not to find fault with Moores 1903 views. In this section, I take a closer look at each of Baldwins suggestions and see how well supported they are by Moores text. I find that there is some way to derive each of these things from what Moore says in Chapter 1 of Principia Ethica, but there are good reasons to reject each of them as an interpretation.

(a) to deny that goodness is indefinable The first version that Baldwin finds in the text is that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to deny that goodness is indefinable. Baldwin relies on two passages from Principia Ethica as evidence for this interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy. The first passage is from an example Moore uses to illustrate the naturalistic fallacy. Baldwin describes the example this way: Moore, in a hypothetical example, declared that the property of experiences whereby they are pleasant is indefinable. Having declared that this property is indefinable, [Moore] says that the mistake someone would make if he sought to define it

Tom Regan claims that Moore is his harshest critic, and that his criticisms in the Second Preface foreshadow most of the criticisms that would be leveled against Principia Ethica in the following decades. T. Regan, pp 204-05.

38

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would be the same fallacy as I have called naturalistic with reference to Ethics.39 The idea here is that if pleasure40 is indefinable, it is a mistake to try to define it. From this, Baldwin takes Moore to mean that denying the indefinability of goodness is to commit the naturalistic fallacy. The second passage Baldwin relies upon is from Moores analogy between goodness and yellowness. Moore, in introducing us to the naturalistic fallacy for the first time, notes a similarity between the natural property yellowness and goodness. If someone were to attempt to define the property yellowness by describing the effects it has in the world, or by identifying the physical characteristics it corresponds toidentifying, for example, the other properties that yellow objects haveshe would not be giving a definition at all. For example, if one claimed that yellowness was simply a certain light-vibration,41 she would not be defining yellowness, but rather pointing out an effect of yellow things, or a feature that attaches to all instances of yellowness. The most we can be entitled to say of those vibrations is that they are what corresponds in space to the yellow which we actually perceive.42 Goodness, says Moore, is like yellowness with respect to its inability to be defined. Ethicists routinely identify other properties of good things, but in so doing they are not defining goodness. Baldwin cites what Moore says next as his
39 40

Baldwin, p. 70, quoting Moore, Principia Ethica p. 65. Or, perhaps, pleasantness. 41 1903 philosopher-physics quoted from Moore, Principia Ethica, p. 62. 42 Ibid.

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further evidence for his first interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy. Moore writes: 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.43 As in the first example, Baldwin takes from this that denying the indefinability of goodness is what Moore calls the naturalistic fallacy. My concern with this interpretation is that it does not seem to be a big enough problem. The naturalistic fallacy is a problem that supposedly afflicts all naturalistic theories. But it does not seem to be something committed by people who do not offer mistaken definitions. After all, someone who merely denied that goodness was indefinable, but offered no alternative to Moores view would not be offering a naturalistic theory at all. Is it a fallacy to claim that Moore is wrong about the definability of a property he has declared indefinable? If that is the definitive illustration of the naturalistic fallacy, then the fallacy is not that interesting and hardly worthy of a century of debate. We can suggest, on Baldwins behalf, that the proper interpretation is to deny that an indefinable property is indefinable, but this does not help much either. After all, every
43

Ibid.

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instance of the naturalistic fallacy that Moore points out involves not merely denying the indefinability of goodness, but also providing a definition of goodness. This seems to weigh against Baldwins suggestion. Baldwins use of the pleasure example as evidence for this first interpretation of Moores naturalistic fallacy is troubling for several reasons. My first concern with this example is that the person who seeks to define pleasure does not necessarily deny that pleasure is indefinable. For example, she may merely suspend judgment on whether pleasure is definable, but still seek a definition. Certainly, we could claim that such a person was acting rationally in so doing. I am not sure whether someone who acts rationally when attempting to define a property can rightly be said to commit a fallacy when doing so. I suppose that suspending judgment when one should not is irrational in itself, and perhaps it is implicit in Moores argument that we should not suspend judgment about the indefinability of goodness, or in this case, pleasantness. In any case, no such argument is made by Baldwin for this interpretation. Another significant problem with interpreting Moores pleased example as Baldwin does is that the example he calls upon as evidence for his interpretation is not a case of denying that pleasure is indefinable. The example is of actively seeking to define it. Notably, the example is not of someone who asserts that pleasantness is definable after pondering its nature, or of someone even denying that it was indefinable. Given this, why ought we accept that the

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analog for ethics is to deny that goodness is indefinable, as opposed to, say, seeking to actually define it? Reading Baldwin charitably, can we salvage this interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy? We might, for instance, recognize that anyone who seeks to define a property, very likely, at least implicitly, denies that it is indefinable. (Though perhaps not. She might seek to define it as part of a strategy to determine whether such a definition were possible. In this case, she might merely suspend judgment on the definability). And certainly, one who thought she had successfully defined such a property would, again at least implicitly, deny that it is indefinable. So, we might argue that Baldwins first interpretation actually would apply to those who actively tried to define goodness. But this attempt fails. This mistake, if it is a mistake at all, hardly deserves the name naturalistic fallacy. For example, returning to the realm of ethics, someone who denied that goodness was indefinable yet also denied that it was a natural or metaphysical propertya definitional non-naturalistcould not properly be said to have committed the naturalistic fallacy without having engaged in any further philosophizing. The denial just is not the fallacy, and our definitional non-naturalist has done nothing else, yet would still be accused of committing the naturalistic fallacy under Baldwins interpretation. The definitional non-naturalist denied that goodness was indefinable, yet made no

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attempt to offer such a definition; she neither sought nor believed herself to have succeeded in defining goodness. The biggest problem with this interpretation, though, is that in addition to focusing on the denial as opposed to the definition, when read in its entirety, it is clear that a different mistake is being highlighted. Whatever Moores example really shows about the naturalistic fallacy, it can offer no support for the interpretation that Baldwin offers. This is because Baldwin gets the example wrong. Moores example is not of someone who seeks to define pleasure (let alone of someone merely denying that it cannot be defined), but of someone who does an exceptionally bad job of defining it. Baldwin has taken the quoted material out of context, and in so doing, has changed its meaning. In the example, Moore presents us with a subject who recognizes that his emotional state is a pleasant one. He asserts on these grounds that he is pleased. Moore writes that if by I am pleased our subject meant to say that he was the very same thing as pleasedthat is, that he and the property being pleased are one and the same thingthen he would be committing a fallacy analogous to the naturalistic fallacy. Baldwin claims that Moore writes that if a man sought to define pleasure it would be the same fallacy as I have called the naturalistic fallacy. But the example is of a man who has given a particular, very bad definition of a property.

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It is hard to believe that anyone would make such an error. After all, nobody who carefully considered his own nature, and the nature of the property being pleased would think that they were one and the same thing. But this is precisely the point of the example. We all see that that identification would be a huge mistakeperhaps worthy of being called a fallacy. Whatever it is we are supposed to learn from this example, it is not that the fallacy lies in denying the indefinability of goodness. After all, our confused self-identifier did not deny the indefinability of anything at all. What about the response that by having asserted a definition, albeit false, he has implicitly denied the indefinability of some property (or of himself)? As discussed above, I do not take the denial to be made, even implicitly, by asserting a definition. But more importantly, there is no indication that either the confused definer or the property being pleased is incapable of definition. When Moore discusses yellowness as an analog to goodness, he emphasizes its indefinability, but in this example, he emphasizes the confusion, or the mistake, of the definer. Plainly, there are some mistakes being made in this example and in the example of thinking one has defined yellowness by citing its physical characteristics. If these examples are to be used to support Baldwins first interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy, as explicated in Principia Ethica, we must accept that Moore was trying to draw our attention to the implicit denial

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(which may not even be present in the pleased example), and away from the other mistakes. So, I find that there simply is not adequate textual support for Baldwins claim that Moore implies that to deny the indefinability of goodness is to commit the naturalistic fallacy.

(b) to assert, concerning something other than goodness, that it is goodness The second interpretation that Baldwin finds in Principia Ethica is that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to assert, concerning something other than goodness, that it is goodness.44 The textual evidence for this interpretation is somewhat better than that found for the prior interpretation, but there are problems that suggest even this interpretation fails. Again, Baldwin offers two passages. Moore writes if anybody tried to define pleasure for us as being any other natural object . . . . Well, that would be the same fallacy which I have called the naturalistic fallacy.45 In the second passage, Moores wrap-up of Chapter II,46 he writes: In this chapter I have begun the criticism of certain ethical views, which seem to owe their influence mainly to the naturalistic

44 45

Baldwin, p. 70. Principia Ethica, p. 64-65. 46 His assault on naturalism and Spencers Evolutionary Ethics.

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fallacythe fallacy which consists in identifying the simple notion which we mean by good with some other notion.47 Both of these passages seem to offer better textual support for this interpretation than either of the previous passages did for Baldwins first interpretation. Nevertheless, I think I can at least cast some doubt on the support they offer (though, notably, this interpretation seems to be the majority view on the naturalistic fallacy, at least among those who bother to distinguish it from Humes law). I have an idea about what it is to commit the naturalistic fallacy that is consistent with what Moore writes here, and in particular, in his discussion of Mill and Spencer. I take it that stating that the naturalistic fallacy is the fallacy that consists in identifying the simple notion we mean by good with some other notion is akin to saying that the experience of a gourmet meal consists in eating. While technically true (the eating is a necessary part of the experience of a gourmet meal), it is hardly what we mean by the experience of a gourmet meal. Similarly, Moores statement that the naturalistic fallacy consists in the misidentification of goodness with some other property is a gross oversimplification, which is perfectly appropriate for a conclusion of a chapter. In fact, the misidentification is a necessary component of committing the naturalistic fallacy, just as eating is a necessary component of enjoying a gourmet
47

Principia Ethica, p. 109.

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meal.48 It is hardly the whole thing. This discussion is short by necessity. The mere possibility that an alternative to Baldwins interpretation of Moores statement is reasonable is all I need for now. There are reasons to believe that committing the naturalistic fallacy requires more than merely asserting a mistaken definition of goodness that will become evident after analysis of Moores first statement, above. Baldwin elides Moores statement about defining pleasure and the naturalistic fallacy, and, in this case, the omitted material makes a difference to the reasonableness of his interpretation. The elided material comes from the passage discussed above, where a man confuses himself with the property being pleased.49 The omitted material is an example to illustrate what Moore had in mind by if anyone tried to define pleasure for us as any other natural object . . . . The full statement is as follows: And if anybody tried to define pleasure for us as being any other natural object; if anybody were to say, for instance, that pleasure means the sensation of red, and were to deduce from that that pleasure is a colour, we should be entitled to laugh at him and to

48

Of course, I am ruling out the mere olfactory enjoyment, or the visual enjoyment you might get from walking through the kitchen. The mere possibility that these are necessary components of enjoying a gourmet meal proves my contention that consists in represents a narrower sort of relation than identity. 49 Principia Ethica. p. 63.

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distrust his future statements about pleasure. Well, that would be the same fallacy which I have called the naturalistic fallacy.50 It is clear that there are several possible referents of the word that in Moores last sentence. The fallacy may be saying that pleasure means the sensation of red, or it may be deducing from such a belief that pleasure is a color. I am inclined to think that this is a bit of sloppy writing on Moores part. So perhaps this statement, even taken without Baldwins ellipsis, does support the interpretation that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to identify goodness with some other property. But given that the very next sentences elaborate and specify that some other error is paramount, namely deciding that two distinct properties are one and the same by virtue of their being conjoined in a single object, I am hard-pressed to accept Baldwins claim. I think it takes a certain insensitivity to the text51 to adopt Baldwins position. Finally, and this is a relatively minor point, giving such a definition does not look much like a fallacy. We expect of fallacies that they are defects of some sort in an argument. These defects might make them invalid, or otherwise unsound. For example, an assertion that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to deduce ethical conclusions from non-ethical premises might be to assert that it is an issue of argument invalidity. The relationship between the naturalistic fallacy and this kind of argument invalidityviolation of Humes lawis discussed
50 51

Principia Ethica p. 64-65. A text that, admittedly, is hard to address with much sensitivity.

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below. A definition, even a false one, is not a fallacy in this sense. While people use the word fallacy for all sorts of errors, I would expect more of Moore.

(c) to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to deny that goodness is nonnatural The third version of the naturalistic fallacy Baldwin finds in Principia Ethica is that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to deny that goodness is nonnatural. The textual evidence for this comes from Moores discussion of Mills argument for the proposition that pleasure is the sole good. Baldwin quotes Moore as follows: In this argument the naturalistic fallacy is plainly involved. 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.52 Again, Moore uses the consists in locution, but it does appear that he is claiming that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to contend that good is identical with some natural property. This passage seems to mean that the naturalistic fallacy consists in contending that the word good refers to some property, and that property may be defined (is identical with) some natural property. If this is the case, this passage actually supports Baldwins second interpretation, not this one. I have articulated my suspicions about that interpretation, above.
52

Principia Ethica, p. 125.

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This interpretation also suffers from the same defect as the first. I can deny that goodness is non-natural all day long and not have committed any fallacy. When I actually offer a definition in non-natural terms, I may implicitly deny that goodness is non-natural, but I might not. I may even be attempting to offer a non-natural definition but failing by virtue of ontological confusionif I think, for example, that goodness is identical with a mental state and I think all mental states are non-natural. Finally, as is the case with other quotes relied upon by Baldwin, this one suffers from being removed from its proper context. Moore provides this explanation of the naturalistic fallacy in the context of evaluating Mills claim that to think of an object as desirable (unless for the sake of its consequences), and to think of it as pleasant, are one and the same thing . . . .53 This statement, Moore writes, rests on the naturalistic fallacy.54 According to Moore, Mill takes the good to mean that which can be desired. To identify those things that can be desired is to identify the set of all good things. Since the test of what can be desired is what is desired,55 every good thing has the property being desired. If we can find some one thing that is always (and alone) desired, then we shall have found the only thing good as an end. Mill will ultimately claim that this one thing

Moore cites J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism, p 58, 13th edition, 1897. The text can be found, unchanged from the 13th edition, reprinted in John Stuart Mill, Collected Works, Vol. X, J.M. Robson, ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969) pp. 203-59 at p. 234. 54 Principia Ethica p. 124. 55 This is an instance of a philosopher taking the measure of the possible to be the actual.

53

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is pleasure, but it is in the argument, not in the subsequent claim, that Moore claims the naturalistic fallacy is committed. I take this example to show that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to make an invalid inference from the constant conjunction or even necessary coextension of two properties to their identity. I take this suggestion up in detail in Chapter 4. But whether it shows that or not, it seems clear that it is not simply a matter of denying the non-naturalness of goodness. Baldwin claims that there are three possible conceptions of the naturalistic fallacy in Principia Ethica with nothing to recommend any one over the others. He concludes from this that Moore did not have any one thing in mind. I dispute this claim on the ground that the suggestions offered by Baldwin are not wellsupported by the text. Baldwin, for reasons of consistency with Moores ultimate goal of advocating ethical non-naturalism, chooses the third conception as the best version. I will offer a version of the naturalistic fallacy that is both consistent with the text and advances Moores goal of supporting ethical non-naturalism. Regardless of the merits of either Baldwins view or my criticisms, he has provided ample evidence that it is difficult to pin a definite meaning on Moore. Before considering my alternative view, two other philosophers views bear close scrutiny.

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2. Arthur Prior A.N. Prior, in Logic and the Basis of Ethics,56 describes the naturalistic fallacy in two different ways: a) the assumption that because some property (or properties) is (are) necessarily coextensive with goodness, this property is identical with the property goodness, and b) the assumption that because the words good and, say, pleasant (or any other word for that matter) necessarily describe the same objects, they attribute the same property to those objects.57 With regard to (b), he notes that it is to claim that the necessary relation that exists between two words that are so related is that they denote the same property. For example, imagine that balls only came in red and no other objects were red. Someone would commit a fallacy akin to the naturalistic fallacy if they if they thought that red and spherical both denoted the same property of the balls.58 If Prior is right about the naturalistic fallacy, then someone commits the fallacy when they fail to recognize that the word good and whatever naturalistic term is offered do not denote the same property of the object to which they both apply. Given this characterization, Prior takes Moores explanation of the naturalistic fallacy to show one very significant point: that if the naturalist wants
56 57

Oxford University Press, 1949, pp.1-12 These seem to be two ways to express the same error. Priors reading seems exactly right, but he seems to conflate these interpretations with Moores open question argument. 58 Prior, p. 2.

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to give a naturalistic definition of goodness, and desires thereby to show that all other definitions are false, the naturalists definition must be a truism. That is, it must be trivially true and obvious to anyone who considers it, much as pleasure is pleasure. If it is not a truism, it cannot do the work of proving alternate definitions false. For example, consider the sentence: What is good is pleasant If the words 'good' and 'pleasant' mean the same thing, writes Prior if, that is to say, the quality of pleasantness is identical with the quality of goodness then to say that what is good is pleasant, or that what is pleasant is good, is to utter an empty tautology.59 It is merely to assert: What is pleasant is pleasant or What is good is good If, in fact, the naturalists assertion were correct, it would, by virtue of being a truism, imply the falsity of any other view. On the other hand, if it were a truism, it would fail to have the rhetorical force the naturalist desires.60 The naturalist cannot both claim to have discovered a truth of great significance and prove other views are false. Prior writes, They want to regard What is pleasant is good as a significant assertion; and it can only be so if the pleasantness of what is pleasant is one thing, and its goodness another. On the other hand they want to make it
59 60

Prior, p. 3. This is the very crux of the paradox of analysis.

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logically impossible to contradict this assertionthey want to treat the opposing assertion that what is pleasant may not be good as not merely false but logically absurd.61 Interpreted this way, the naturalistic fallacy can only be seen as an argument against those naturalists who want or expect their view to have the logical force of a truism while still seeming significantPrior calls them inconsistent naturalists. This move is a mistake on Priors part. While it may be that some other philosophers take the naturalistic fallacy to be an argument against naturalism, Moore never uses it as such. While he does argue against such theories, he is careful not to assert that they are false simply because they have committed the naturalistic fallacy. In fact, as we will see in Chapter 4, he explicitly rejects the claim that naturalistic fallacy is the false-making characteristic of theories whose advocates commit the fallacy. I think it is worth noting that if one wished to give a naturalistic definition, and then try to argue that it is correct, the arguments in favor of the view would (if they had any merit) likely show others false, but the mere assertion of the definition would not. In this respect, Prior is right, of course. This is the mistake Prior accuses the inconsistent naturalist of committing. This, of course, suggests a way out of the inconsistencyinstead of hoping to achieve a truism with a proposed definition, the naturalist should settle for a significant assertion and
61

Prior p. 8.

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explain away the fact that it does not appear to be a truism. Candidate explanations could revolve around quirks of language use or our inappropriate clinging to the idea of a fact/value distinction. For example, a theory might assert an identity between goodness and some natural property and then rely on the fact that we are simply unable to see the relation between the evaluative features of a property and its natural features. This would be a sort of dual-aspect theory for moral properties.62 Then individual arguments could be made against alternate definitions, rather than relying on the truth of the candidate theory, as the inconsistent naturalist do. A second issue of note is that Priors characterization does not seem to be what Moore had in mind. The inconsistent naturalist was not his only target he wanted to show that any naturalist who made the sorts of assumptions in (a) and (b) committed a fallacy. I believe the error Prior makes is in conflating the naturalistic fallacy with Moores open question test, which I take to be a different argument against naturalistic theories. This is a common thread among Moore commentators, and can be seen in Frankenas work as well.

3. William Frankena The explication of Moores naturalistic fallacy and diagnosis of its failings considered authoritative by most commentators comes to us from William
62

Compare to the dual aspect theories of mind attributed to Baruch Spinoza or Thomas Nagel.

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Frankenas paper The Naturalistic Fallacy.63 The previously discussed philosophers owe much to Frankena. Each ultimately agrees that the naturalistic fallacy, if it is a fallacy at all, is a definist fallacy, i.e., it is the attempt to define an indefinable property; and they agree that to claim that a philosopher has committed the naturalistic fallacy is to beg the question. Each of these ideas has its origin in Frankenas seminal paper. Thus the paper deserves a close read and analysis. To determine the proper place, if any, of the naturalistic fallacy in our moral reasoning, Frankena examines uses of the fallacy by intuitionists and the origins of the idea in Principia Ethica. He concludes that one of the more common uses of the termas a label for violations of Humes law is a mistake. He also offers an explanation of the naturalistic fallacy and argues that in formulating and using it to debunk rival ethical theories, Moore has committed a simple logical error. Frankena claims that Moore assumes the truth of the indefinability of goodness and claims, based on that, that any proposed definition commits the naturalistic fallacy. Frankena's interpretation of the Moores naturalistic fallacy and his account of the error Moore makes in advocating it is held to be the authoritative position. Many others have offered accounts of what is wrong with Moore, but they always come back to Frankena's position. Despite this, I think that Frankena dismisses the view too quickly. Rather than being a

63

Frankena, W.K., The Naturalistic Fallacy, Mind, vol. 48, Issue 192 (1939) pp. 464-477

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mere logical error, I take Moore's view to be a subtle and powerful analysis of a mistake made by too many theorists. Frankena begins his paper by noting the prevalence of early twentieth century philosophers labeling their opponents views as fallacies. The most famous of these fallacies is the naturalistic fallacy. Non-naturalists of all stripes (objectivists, intuitionists, etc.) would, and still do, accuse naturalists of having committed the naturalistic fallacy. The term is still being bandied about, and can be seen recently being applied to evolutionary theorists/ethicists.64 By placing the uses of the term naturalistic fallacy in the context of these other, disfavored uses, Frankena is foreshadowing his ultimate posture.65 Frankena takes the quarrel between intuitionists and naturalists to be founded on a logical error and seeks to dispel that error.66 He points out that Moore made some fairly bold claims about the scope and the importance of the naturalistic fallacy. Moore wrote, for example, that the naturalistic fallacy is a real fallacy and that it must not be committed.67 He also claimed that all naturalistic and metaphysical theories of ethics are based on the naturalistic
In advocating his brand of evolutionary ethics, Spencer may have committed the naturalistic fallacy. (See Spencer, Herbert, The Study of Sociology, (London: Henry S. King, 1873); and The Data of Ethics, London: Williams and Norgate, (1879)). He asserts that that which is more evolved is higher or better. The relationship between being more evolved and the ethical properties denoted by higher and better is left largely uninvestigated, but Moore notes that if Spencer were to choose, he would likely commit the naturalistic fallacy. Principia Ethica, ch. II, 31-34. Contemporary theorists are accused of committing the fallacy as well. 65 On the other hand, it is possible that the persuasiveness of Moores use of the term inspired imitators. 66 Frankena, p. 464. 67 Frankena, p. 465, citing Principia Ethica, p. 116.
64

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fallacy, in the sense that the commission of this fallacy has been the main cause of their wide acceptance.68 Moores combination of claims makes the naturalistic fallacy sound like a strange sort of beast, indeed. Not only must it be avoided, but there is, evidently, something appealing about it that causes defective theories to gain wide acceptance. These claims ought not to be taken entirely literally. For example, the appeal of such theories is that they identify good with something tangiblea property people can more easily wrap their heads around. The simplicity of the theories makes them appealing. But the fact that they commit the naturalistic fallacy does not make them any more attractive. My take on the naturalistic fallacy is that it is a mistake in reasoning. But it is a mistake that is either easy to make or has, as its result, something appealing, so there is an extrinsic reason to commit the fallacy. Taken this way, to commit the naturalistic fallacy is a to make a mistake in defending or even formulating a theory, but it is not why people like the theory. In addition to the questions about the scope and the importance of the naturalistic fallacy, there is confusion, says Frankena, even amongst those who invoke it, about what it is that people who are said to commit the fallacy actually have done.69 To demonstrate the confusion about what the naturalistic fallacy is and what it means to commit it, Frankena cites conflicting uses of the term.
68 69

Principia Ethica, p. 90. Here, Frankena is lamenting the same state of affairs I describe at the start of this chapter.

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Sometimes, the naturalistic fallacy is used as a weapon. That is, non-naturalists hurl it upon naturalists like an epithet. Once a theory has been identified as having committed the naturalistic fallacy (or more precisely, when a proponent of the theory commits it), the theory is given no further consideration, and dismissed out of hand, as though it had violated some axiom of ethics. To use the naturalistic fallacy in this way is to treat it as if it were a logical fallacy on all fours with the fallacy of composition, the revelation of which disposes of naturalistic and metaphysical ethics and leaves intuitionism [or whatever nonnaturalistic theory we are concerned to advance] standing triumphant.70 But in other places, we see that it gets applied to a theory after the smoke . . . has cleared.71 This means that some problem is found with the naturalistic or metaphysical theory in question, and then it gets labeled as an example of the commission of the naturalistic fallacy. This suggests that the fallaciousness of the naturalistic fallacy is just what is at issue in the controversy between the intuitionists and their opponents, and cannot be wielded as a weapon in that controversy.72 Frankena takes this latter use to be the only legitimate use, if there is one at all. Ultimately though, Frankena takes the view that there is no legitimate use because the naturalistic fallacy is no fallacy at all.

Frankena, p. 465. Frankena cites to M.E. Clarkes Cognition and Affection in the Experience of Value, Journal of Philosophy 1938. 71 Frankena, p. 465. 72 Frankena, p. 465.

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To make sense of what the naturalistic fallacy might be, Frankena examines a common use of the term by intuitionists. Sometimes, he notes, intuitionists will call an instance of attempting to derive normative conclusions from natural facts a naturalistic fallacy. Moores own writing seems to endorse this use at times. For example, in his discussion of metaphysical ethics Moore writes: To hold that from any proposition asserting Reality is of this nature we can infer, or obtain confirmation for any proposition asserting This is good in itself is to commit the naturalistic fallacy.73,74 The claim under consideration, then, is that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to disregard the bifurcation between is and ought. This bifurcation is a reasonable position for an intuitionist to take. The bifurcation, if it exists, would provide a metaphysical explanation of the central epistemic idea behind some forms of intuitionism. The gap between the ought and the is (the fact that you cannot derive normative conclusions from non-normative premises) explains the need for a special faculty for detecting moral properties. For example, one form of intuitionism might hold that moral rightness is a special property, not detectable by any of our normal senses, but the presence of which in an object or

73 74

Principia Ethica, p. 165. Incidentally, Gillian Russell has a very good paper on Humes Law and related inference barriers. Her work suggests that Humes law deserves work to resurrect its efficacy in a non-ad hoc way in light of critiques such as that provided by A.N. Prior in his paper The Autonomy of Ethics, the Australasian Journal of Philosophy 38:199-206 (1960).

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state of affairs is only detectable by intuition.75 Further, it might hold that moral knowledge is not inferable from any beliefs formed by the action of our bodily senses. Such a view would be false if propositions about moral rightness could be derived from natural facts to which we have ready epistemic access. If normative moral facts were discoverable by observation of natural facts and inferences drawn therefrom, no special faculty of intuition would be necessary. Such an intuitionist would be keen to accept some version of the bifurcation between the normative and non-normative. The importance of this bifurcation between is and ought was emphasized by David Hume. Following Frankenas lead, let us turn our attention to Humes work for a moment to see the origin of the modern view of the bifurcation. Hume notes that in all the moral theories he has studied, the proponents begin by making observations about God or about human affairsthat is, descriptive, non-normative observationsand arrive at propositions about what ought or ought not be done. That is, the authors of these theories seem to derive normative conclusions from solely non-normative premises. Hume writes: For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for

75

This would be true of an intuitionist theory that held that intuitions are the product of some moral sense faculty.

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what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.76 With respect to the attempt to start from purely factual claims (Torture is painful, Bills beard is flecked with gray) and arrive at evaluative conclusions (Torture is morally wrong, Bill ought to shave), Humes proposal seems to be that you cannot get there (ought) from here (is). The typical reading of this passage is that no ought statement can be validly inferred from any collection containing exclusively is statements. The generalized form of this thesis is that no normative or evaluative judgments can be inferred from factual premises. Thus, Humes law, as it has been dubbed77 is held to be a consequence of the fact/value distinction. We would say that no valid argument can proceed from premises that assert only non-normative facts to a normative conclusion, or alternatively, that any argument that attempts to deduce a normative conclusion from non-normative premises has some suppressed normative-linking premise. Frankena claims that intuitionists are committed to three theses that rely on the is/ought distinction. These theses are: 1) Ethical propositions are not deducible from non-ethical ones. 2) Ethical characteristics are not definable in terms of non-ethical ones.
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III,, part I, I (1739-1740). It appears to have been so named by R.M. Hare in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LV (1954-19 55), 303. See also, Hume on Is and Ought, A. C. MacIntyre, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Oct., 1959), pp. 451-468
77 76

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3) Ethical characteristics are different in kind from non-ethical ones.78 Since Frankena takes (1) and (2) to be inferable from (3), (3) is all the intuitionists really need. Note that, strictly speaking, (3) is not what Hume said. Rather, he said that ought expresses a different relation than is, not that moral properties, in general, were different in kind from non-moral properties. But this is quibbling. Intuitionists accept that the non-moral propositions are different in kind, and therefore there needs to be some explanation for the deduction of moral propositions from them. Moreover it is inconceivable to them, and to Hume, that there could be such a deduction. Of course, the addition of a premise linking the moral to the non-moral would make for a valid argument, but this is not the sort of deduction they rule out. The relation to the naturalistic fallacy is this: Many naturalists, in advocating their views on the relation of natural to moral properties (often, the relation is identity) argue from solely non-ethical propositions to their moral conclusions. This practice might violate Humes law. The supposition under consideration is that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is simply to violate Humes law.79 Frankena contends that intuitionists, seizing upon the importance of

Frankena, p 467. Moore uses the Open Question Test to show that since our idea of goodness and happiness are different, the properties that the words good and happiness refer to are different properties. If the open question test does not show what he thinks it shows, then it may very well be that some of these naturalist arguments are not logically invalid after all. If, for instance, happiness really was identical with goodness, arguments that proceeded from statements about the natural property happiness (a psychological property, hence natural) could be used to reach moral conclusions
79

78

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Humes law, say that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to violate Humes Law.80 Frankena points to two examples of intuitionists making this claim.81 He also notes that Moore generally does not make this claim. Rather than claiming that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to make such a deduction, he claims that making such a deduction involves, implies, or rests upon the naturalistic fallacy.82 Finally, Whittaker, in The Theory of Abstract Ethics, identifies the deduction as the naturalistic fallacy and claims that it is a mere logical fallacy.83 So, is it fair to charge naturalists who deduce moral conclusions form nonmoral premises with committing the naturalistic fallacy? Is it a fallacy to deduce ethical conclusions from non-ethical premises?84 Frankena is asking whether the standard interpretation of Humes law in fact identifies a fallacy. If so, we have our first legitimate candidate for the naturalistic fallacy. The example Frankena considers is an argument in support of Epicurean Hedonism.85 The short version

because their premises would be moral premises. in disambiguating the premises (see below) the argument need not turn on an equivocation. 80 Frankena, p. 467 81 He cites to P.E. Wheelwright, A Critical Introduction to Ethics, pp 40-51, 91 ff. and to L. Wood, Cognition and Moral Value, Journal of Philosophy, 1937 p. 237. 82 Frankena, pp 467-68. See Moore, Principia Ethica pp 114, 57, 43, 49. 83 See Frankena p 468, fn 1, citing to Whittaker, The Theory of Abstract Entities, pp 19ff. 84 Frankena, p 468. 85 The starting point for Mills disastrous analogy. I think a far better example of an argument that purports to violate Humes law would have nothing in it that was derived from a definition of good, as is the suppressed premise Frankena will eventually supply. An argument that proceeded from the pain of childbirth to the conclusion that we ought to stop reproducing would probably be truer to the spirit of What Hume was railing against.

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of the argument is pleasure is good since it is sought by all men.86 Note first that this arguments conclusion, that pleasure is good, is ambiguous in that it may mean that pleasure is identical with the property goodness, or it may mean that pleasure is a good thingthat it has the property goodness, but is not identical with it. Frankena reconstructs the argument as follows: (a) Pleasure is sought by all men. (b) Therefore, pleasure is good. This argument, of course, is fallacious. But the fallacy at work here is not something so complicated as a violation of Humes law. Rather, it is merely that the argument is logically invalid. Nobody claims that the Epicurean argument is a violation of the naturalistic fallacy by virtue of its invalidity. Any philosopher interested in advancing the arguments would fix the invalidity issue first, and then assault the argument.87 The interesting question, and the one Frankena takes up next, is whether there is a fallacy involved when we supply the premise suppressed in the Epicurean argument. The argument, as Frankena reconstructs it is as follows:

86 87

Frankena, p. 468. In fact, since I take Moore to be arguing not that the mere definition of good in natural terms is the naturalistic fallacy, but rather that the fallacy occurs in the defense of that definition, it appears that this is Moores approach as well.

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(a) Pleasure is sought by all men (b) What is sought by all men is good (by definition) (c) Therefore, pleasure is good.88 Premise (b) raises warning flags, just as the conclusion of the original invalid argument did, and for the same reasons. The conclusion, we saw, was ambiguous between being a definition and attributing a property to pleasure, that of being good. (b) is ambiguous between offering a definition of good as being that which is sought by all men, and offering a property attribution to those things sought by all men. Frankena takes the proponents of the Epicurean argument to be offering a definition of good or to be intending to assert a proposition that is true by definition in (b). But note, given this reconstruction, if (b) is a definition, or asserts an identity, then (c) must also do so to preserve validity. In such a case, the argument has no moral conclusion at all. Then there would be no question about whether the argument violated any of the three intuitionists theses. So, to preserve validity and to preserve the Epicureans likely intentions, (b) must be read as a property attribution that follows from a definition or identity statement.89 Frankena writes that the suppressed premise, (b) is the reason that the argument involves the naturalistic fallacy.90 In identifying goodness with the property being-sought-by-all-men, the Epicurean has committed the fallacy.
88 89

Frankena, p. 469. It is easy to recast the whole argument in a way that avoids this difficulty, but doing so is not necessary for our purposes. 90 Frankena p 469.

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Frankena wants to show that in fact, to identify goodness with any other property would be to commit the fallacy. If this is correct, then committing the naturalistic fallacy is not the same as deducing ethical propositions from non-ethical ones. That is, it is not a violation of the first of the three Intuitionists theses about the bifurcation of moral from non-moral. Rather, Frankena takes Moore to be claiming that the identification, itself, is the fallacy. That is, the fallacy is committed when a definition of good in terms of any other properties is given. Frankenas claim is that this argument is a case where there is no longer a violation of Humes law, but premise (b) is supported by an instance of the naturalistic fallacy. If the fallacy occurs where there is no Humes law violation, then committing the naturalistic fallacy is not to violate Humes law. Since Frankena takes Moores claim to be that the identification of goodness is the fallacy, he also claims Moores position is to beg the question on the definability of goodness. Frankena writes that Moore takes (b) of the original argument to be analytic, but not ethical, because he takes goodness to be indefinable. Someone who thought goodness could be analyzed and thought that (b) was a statement of the correct analysis of goodness would take (b) to be analytic but not ethical because rather than predicating a property of that which is sough by all men, it tells us something else. It tells us the logical relationship between that which is sought by all men and goodness. This is a fairly commonsensical view, but Frankena seems dissatisfied. Frankena derives his

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view of Moore from a passage in which Moore notes that two naturalists with competing ideas of the nature of goodness, in trying to refute each other will rely on purely psychological statements. For example, someone who held that goodness was desirableness and who wanted to refute the view that goodness was pleasure would argue that pleasure is not the object of desire. This is not an ethical/moral proposition, but a psychological one. To generalize from this example that Moore takes all statements of the form x is good to be non-ethical is a serious mistake in interpretation. But the proposition that pleasure is morally good most certainly is a moral proposition, whether true or false. So, if (b) were taken as property attributing, then it is ethical. If Moore takes (b) to be analytic and not ethical, it would be because he took it to be a definition of goodness. Regarding Frankenas claim that Moores view begs the question against naturalism, it hardly seems to be begging the question to say that a definition is wrong because the property that is being defined is incapable of definition. It would be begging the question to say that definition X is wrong on grounds that definition Y was correct.91 But to say X is wrong because it is conceptually impossible to give such a definition is not begging the question. If Moore never offered an argument that goodness was indefinable, I might be inclined to agree with Frankena. But he does. It is the open question argument, and perhaps, an induction from multiple iterations of the argument. I examine, in Chapter 5,
91

The position taken by Priors inconsistent naturalist.

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Moores argument that goodness is indefinable, and find that it is significantly stronger than critics claim. To support the claim that Moore takes the commission of the naturalistic fallacy to be to identify goodness with some property (to offer a definition of goodness), Frankena offers a number of passages from Principia Ethica, reproduced here, in full: [F]ar too many philosophers have thought that when they named those other properties [belonging to all things which are good] 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. . . .92 and, I have thus appropriated the name Naturalism to a particular method of approaching Ethics.This method consists in substituting for good some one property of a natural object or of a collection of natural objects.93 and, the naturalistic fallacy [is] the fallacy which consists in identifying the simple notion we mean by good with some other notion.94

92 93

Principia Ethica, p. 62, (quoted in Frankena, p 470). Principia Ethica p. 91-92, (quoted by Frankena at 470). 94 Principia Ethica p. 109, cf. pp. xiii, 125, (quoted by Frankena at 470).

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Finally, he points to another section95 where Moore notes that the fallacy is also involved when someone identifies some natural property with some other natural property. While he would not call this error a naturalistic fallacy, he takes it to be the same mistake. Frankena points out, rightly, that Moore would say the same about identifying metaphysical objects or propositions as well.96 We can see, then, that the fallacy is not limited to cases of defining goodness, and that it can occur when defining many properties, moral and nonmoral. Frankena says that it is really a generic definist fallacy (or, at least, that the fallacy underlying the naturalistic fallacy is a generic definist fallacy). The quoted Principia Ethica passages suggest to Frankena that the fallacy is the process of confusing or identifying two properties, of defining one property by another, or of substituting one property for another . . . . [T]he fallacy is always simply that two properties are being treated as one.97 If this were the proper way to view the fallacy, we can see that it surely is no violation of Humes law. In fact, ultimately, I accept that it has little bearing on Humes law, but I do not accept Frankenas conclusions. Formulated this way, the naturalistic fallacy reflects the literal meaning of Bishop Butlers inscription on Principia Ethica: Everything is what it is, and not another thing.98

Principia Ethica p. 65. If, for example, someone claimed that being a set was identical with being ticklish, or being incorporeal. 97 Frankena, p 471. 98 Frankena, p 472, quoting the motto from Principia Ethica.
96

95

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So Frankena finds that one version of the naturalistic fallacy to be simply the identification of goodness with any other property. While it is clear that identifying two distinct properties is an error, is there a reason to think that anyone who defines goodness does this? Frankena proceeds as though the existence of the fallacy itself is supposed, by Moore, to prove that such a definition is impossible.99 That is, that Moore assumes that goodness is indefinable, and then uses that to claim that any proposed definition is false.100 I reject the claim that Moore does this. His ground, in each case, for accusing a philosopher of committing the naturalistic fallacy is not simply that they have defined goodness. Frankena admits that this version of the naturalistic fallacy may be a misinterpretation of Moore and that the passages cited support a weaker version of the definist fallacy. On this weaker version, it is an error to attempt to define an indefinable property. This just raises the question, what properties are indefinable? If this is the fallacy as Moore intends it, he might be held to be begging the question in favor of his view by assuming goodness is indefinable and then accusing competing views of committing the naturalistic fallacy.
99

This is, I suspect, because he, like Prior, does not view the open question argument to prove anything other than that there is a fallacy. 100 Frankena writes: To be effective at all, it must be understood to mean, Every term means what it means, and not what is meant by any other term. Mr. Moore seems implicitly to understand his motto in this way in section 13, for he proceeds as if good has no meaning, if it has no unique meaning. If the motto be taken in this way, it will follow that good is an indefinable term, since no synonyms can be found. And then the method is as useless as an English butcher in a world without sheep. Frankena, p. 272-73.

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We can see the appeal of such a position. After all, as I have noted, Moore includes an independent proof of the indefinability of goodness in 13. So the supposition is that having proved goodness is indefinable, Moore can accuse anyone who has attempted such a definition of committing the naturalistic fallacy, and thereby, dispense with their views. This would not be an accurate description of Moores method (though other intuitionists might be less careful). Moore does not use the naturalistic fallacy as a weapon. He does not merely assert that Mills view attempts to define an indefinable property and so is false. Rather, he identifies a particular sort of error as the naturalistic fallacy, thereby undermining the argument by which the offending definition was derived. This argument against Mill will be treated more fully in Chapter 4. Another, more important reason to reject the view that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to attempt to define an indefinable property is that Moore points out examples of the naturalistic fallacy being committed in definitions of definable properties. For example, Moore says that the naturalistic fallacy is commonly committed with respect to beauty, just as it is committed with respect to goodness.101 If you think the naturalistic fallacy is a mere definist fallacy, then you would expect that Moore would have to claim that beauty is unanalyzable and indefinable too. But he does not. In fact, three sentences after he makes this pronouncement, he offers a definition of beauty that does not commit the
101

Principia Ethica, p. 259.

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naturalistic fallacy. To commit the naturalistic fallacy with respect to beauty is to suppose that since beautiful objects all cause some certain feeling in us, that to be beautiful is to cause such a feeling, or beauty is identical with a tendency to cause such feelings. I contend that the fallacy here is not in defining beauty in terms of our subjective feelings, but in the inference from the conjunction of beauty and that feeling to the identity of those properties. The upshot for Frankena is that of the possible uses of the naturalistic fallacy he has identified, identification with violations of Humes law is a mere logical fallacy, and not broad enough to capture the full range of arguments and theories to which the term is applied, and of the two versions of the definist fallacy, one seems overly strong, and the other may be refuted by Moores actual practice. We shall see whether this is the case in the next chapter.

Conclusion

Baldwin, Frankena and Prior each offer analyses of Moores use of the term naturalistic fallacy. Of these, Frankenas analysis has been the most influential, with those who think there is some problem with the naturalistic fallacy generally adopting the position that it is a triviality. Typically, those who do not see a problem, simply take it to be the same as Humes law. In the next chapter, I explain why it is not a mere triviality. By noting the proper role of the

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naturalistic fallacy in Moores thought, and placing it within the context of his overall assault on naturalism, I show that, rather than being question begging, it is an explanation of how naturalists arrive at their conclusions. Moores proof that those conclusions are mistaken, the open question argument, is a different argument altogether.

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Chapter 4 The Naturalistic Fallacy: A New Interpretation

In the previous chapter, I showed that there are a number of different interpretations of what Moore means by his claim that naturalistic theories of ethics commit the naturalistic fallacy. In this chapter I offer a new interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy that more closely matches the text of Principia Ethica. Frankenas work demonstrates that of the many possibilities considered for what it means to commit the naturalistic fallacy, two deserve serious consideration. The first is that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to define an indefinable property. As I showed in the last chapter, this interpretation is not consistent with Moores text because he points out that the naturalistic fallacy is frequently committed with respect to beauty, a definable property. The second interpretation we must consider is that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is simply to inaccurately define a property. For purposes of this discussion, lets call this the general definist fallacy. This interpretation has much to recommend it. After all, every example that Moore offers of committing the fallacy is a case of someone getting a definition wrong: There is the example of identifying yellowness with a certain type of light vibration; that of mistakenly thinking that since I am pleased, I am the definition of being pleased; the case of

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believing since oranges are yellow, being an orange is the same as being yellow, etc. Every one of these definitions is supposed to illustrate the naturalistic fallacy and every one is an example of an incorrect definition. This seems like pretty good evidence that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to incorrectly define a property, that is, to think of two properties that they are one and the same.1 Despite this, I prefer a different view. The view I favor is something akin to Priors view, as articulated in the last chapter. Moores examples in the sections in which he describes the naturalistic fallacy, his analyses of individual theories that are said to commit the naturalistic fallacy, seem to stress something besides the misidentification. There seems to be an explanation for why the mistake was made. This suggests to me that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to infer from inadequate evidence that what we think of as two properties really is one. The details of this view are worked out below. Given that the general definist fallacy is well supported by Moores examples, the evidence required to prove this is a bad interpretation would need to be strong. The best evidence would be a Moorean example where someone got the definition right, but was still accused of committing the naturalistic fallacy. This would prove that the general definist interpretation was false, though it would not necessarily prove any alternative. Unfortunately, there are no such
1

In essence, Baldwins second interpretation, generalized to apply to properties besides goodness.

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examples in Principia Ethica. We might also look to examples Moore gives of successful definitions. If we saw that Moore was very careful not to infer from the co-instantiation of properties that they were identical, as seems to be the mistake highlighted in several of the cases weve looked at, we might infer from this that his care was directed at avoiding the naturalistic fallacy. Again, we do not find this sort of care. In fact, it is not clear what process Moore uses to define such properties as beauty or virtue. When he defines beauty, he asks what properties can be removed from an experience while maintaining its beautiful character.2 He also imagines the value of the experience if certain features are added. He seems to be determining what features are necessary to our experience of beauty. But there seems to be no inference from these observations to the definition Moore offers. He writes that the beautiful should be defined as that of which the admiring contemplation is good in itself.3 Note that this is a definition of the beautiful, and does not necessarily define the property being beautiful. Moore then takes the next step and defines being beautiful as being an essential part of an intrinsically valuable experience.4

2 3

Principia Ethica, p. 243. Principia Ethica, p. 249. 4 Presumably, the contemplation.

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One way Moore could have arrived at this definition is by intuition. Sidgwicks use of this method is commended as a route to determining the good,5 so perhaps it could be used to determine the beautiful as well. But if so, we still have to overcome the hurdle of getting from the beautiful to beauty. When it comes to good, Moore says that people theorize about the good and then decide whatever they chose as the good is the very meaning of good. And this maneuver is forbidden, presumably because it involves the naturalistic fallacy. But it looks like that what he has done here. If so, this would weigh against the suggestion that the naturalistic fallacy is a kind of inference from inadequate evidence to a definition. The discussion so far makes the prospect of defending the view I suggested in Chapter 3 look pretty dim. But it is not as bad as it seems. First, the problem raised by the definition of beauty is highly speculative. It is not at all clear that Moore actually made the inference I claim is forbidden. Second, despite Moores protestations that he does not describe a bad inference, and so has not actually found anything that should be called a fallacy, 6 it genuinely seems that he has identified such an inference.7 Moreover, it is hard to believe that Moore does not understand what a fallacy is. I find it easier to believe that he stated his examples in ways that sometimes failed to emphasize the bad inference,

Though his particular conclusion is not embraced. Principia Ethica, p. 145. Second Preface, Principia Ethica, p. 20-21. 7 See example below, p. 102.
6

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instead focusing on the falsity of the view.8 The fact that when he actually accuses particular philosophers of having committed the naturalistic fallacy, he never claims that their definitions are wrong but merely that they committed the fallacy also suggests that the error is not the definist fallacy.9 Finally, the interpretation I favor is consistent with the general definist fallacy for every example we have, while providing a degree of explanatory power, in that it explains why the faulty definitions were proposed. This is certainly not a requirement of a good interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy, but it does not hurt. What remains, then, is to look at the specific examples Moore gives us in more detail, and see if any of them seem to weigh more heavily in favor of either view. Prior and Frankena, despite offering distinctly different interpretations of what it means to commit the naturalistic fallacy, each treat it as though it were an argument against naturalistic theories. In so doing, they share a common error. The first section of this chapter explains the error and shows that Moore was explicit in his assertion that theories are not false by virtue of resting on an instance of the naturalistic fallacy. Evidence for this claim is provided in two
8

When it was a complex definition. A corollary of my view of the open question argument is that Moore cannot prove that any simple property identity is false by use of the argument. He may show that a given simple definition is wrong by means of a specific argument, perhaps by showing that goodness and the property are not even coextensive, so surely not identical, for instance. 9 The closest he comes to claiming that the definition offered by a philosopher is wrong is when he writes The direct object of Ethics is knowledge and not practice; and anyone who uses the naturalistic fallacy has certainly not fulfilled this first object. . . . Principia Ethica, p. 71. Though this could mean either a mistake in the definition, or a failure in its justification.

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formsdirect and indirect textual evidence. By indirect evidence I mean I examine one or two of Moores arguments against particular forms of naturalism, and demonstrate that at no point in these arguments does Moore assert that they are false for resting on the naturalistic fallacy. Examination of such arguments makes it clear that Moore does not intend us to believe that naturalistic theories are false for resting on the fallacy. Rather, it appears that, in each case, Moore is merely pointing out that there is such an error being made that explains where philosophers who advocate such theories have gone wrongwhy it is that they embrace and endorse false theories. But the theories are alleged to be false by virtue of some other error.10 The proof that such identities are false ones is not proved by the naturalistic fallacy, or by accusation that advocates of those theories commit the fallacy. The actual proof is provided by the open question argument. This proof is examined in detail in the next chapter. After demonstrating that Moore does not take the fact that a theory rests on the naturalistic fallacy to be a fatal flaw for the theory, I present my own account of the fallacy. I draw on Moores description of the fallacy, and on his arguments against the theories of Bentham, Mill, and Spencer. I argue that a single interpretation is consistent with each of Moores usages. In the course of this discussion, I consider several criticisms, including those inspired by Moorean
10

The theories, if they are false, are so because they are wrong about what things ought to be done or because they advocate an incorrect theory of the good. And the evidence for their theories are inadequate because by having committed the naturalistic fallacy, the advocates have undermined the possible evidence for their normative claims.

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text that, on an initial read, seems to contradict my interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy.

1) The proper role of the Naturalistic Fallacy

We saw, in the last chapter, that Moore scholars have noted that there is debate about the role of the naturalistic fallacy in Moores ethical theory. Interestingly, while this debate is noted, none of the philosophers whose work we examined attempted to resolve the debate. Moreover, at least two of them, Frankenawho pointed out that there are some intuitionists who use the naturalistic fallacy like a weaponand Priorwho pointed out that the naturalistic fallacy, as he conceives it, is an effective weapon (at least against those he called inconsistent naturalists)take sides on the matter. That is, both assume that the naturalistic fallacy is intended to refute naturalistic theories of ethics. This is the very basis of Frankenas claim that it is question begging. It is also the reason I reject Priors `characterization, despite agreeing with him, by and large, about what it means to commit the naturalistic fallacy. Since the basis of my criticisms of Frankena and Prior rest, in part, on their having gotten the role of the naturalistic fallacy wrong, it is incumbent on me to provide some proof that Moore, at least, did not intend the naturalistic

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fallacy to be a refutation of anything. My claim rests on two different types of supporttext and inference from Moores own practice. Moore, himself, clarifies the proper role of the naturalistic fallacy while discussing Benthams commission of the naturalistic fallacy: Now, I do not wish the importance I have assigned to this fallacy to be misunderstood. The discovery of it does not at all refute Benthams contention that greatest happiness is the proper end of human action, if that be understood as an ethical proposition, as he undoubtedly intended it. That principle may be true all the same; we shall consider whether it is so in succeeding chapters. Bentham might have maintained it, as Prof. Sidgwick does, even if the fallacy had been pointed out to him. What I am maintaining is that the reasons which he actually gives for his ethical proposition are fallacious ones so far as they consist in a definition of right.11 Here, Moore is pointing out that fact that Bentham has committed the naturalistic fallacy is not the feature that makes his theory false. Whether it is true or false rests on other grounds. Moore considers these grounds in Chapter III, under the topic of Hedonism, generally. I examine Moores argument, and in particular, the role of the naturalistic fallacy in that argument below. But regardless of the theorys truth, or lack thereof, the reasons that Bentham gives for accepting that
Moore, Principia Ethica, Ch. I, 14, 4.p 71 (emphasis in original) (all citations to Principia Ethica are to the revised edition, Cambridge 1993).
11

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theory are the proper target of the naturalistic fallacy. This is why Moore writes, when speaking of Benthams reasons that Bentham did not perceive them to be fallacious and that if he had done so, he would have been led to seek for other reasons in support of his Utilitarianism . . . .12 Plainly, the text indicates that Moore considers the role of the naturalistic fallacy to be to undermine the reasons for holding and promoting a theory, and not to prove its falsity. This text is the most direct support for my contention that the naturalistic fallacy is not in any way Moores argument that any particular ethical view is false. Rather it is merely his diagnosis of where a philosopher has gone wrong in forging or defending his theory. Unfortunately, though this passage is helpful in clarifying the proper role of the naturalistic fallacy, it does not support my claim that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is anything other than to commit the general definist fallacy. It does, however, prove that to interpret the naturalistic fallacy in such a way as to make commission of the fallacy the false-making characteristic of the normative theory, rather than a mistake that undermines our confidence in it would be a mistake. It also give us hope that since Moore was so concerned with the reasons given for ethical views, he might be similarly concerned with reasons for accepting definitions of moral properties.

12

Principia Ethica, p. 71.

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Though this passage has been generally overlooked, I have seen it cited two times. The first paper I have found to make appeal to the quote above is Everett Halls The Proof of Utility in Bentham and Mill.13 Hall treats Moore as though he had claimed that Bentham had committed the naturalistic fallacy in its definist configuration. That is, he accepts Frankenas interpretation of the fallacy, and accuses Moore of begging the question against Bentham. Arguably, it is possible that Moore was accusing Bentham of committing a definist fallacy,14 but I consider is a better explanation, below.15 The only other reference I have found to this passage commits a pretty grievous error. Julius Kovesi cites to this passage as proof that Moore thinks the error in Benthams reasoning lies in the fact that he presented an argument wherein he defined the good. The fallacy consists in the reasoning adduced to show what the good is; whereas it should be laid down what the good is as an axiom.16 This is most definitely not what Moore asserts. In fact, Moore writes it might be perfectly consistent for him to define right as conducive to the general happiness provided only (and note this proviso) he had already proved, or laid down as an axiom, that general happiness was the good.17 Moore thinks it is perfectly acceptable to try to prove what the good is, and doing so, in addition to
Ethics vol. 60, No. 1 (Oct 1949) pp. 1-18, at 15. Though I attempt to refute this charge, below. 15 In my detailed explication of Moores analysis of Bentham, p. 113 16 Kovesi, J., Principia Ethica" Re-Examined: The Ethics of a Proto-Logical Atomism, Philosophy, Vol. 59, No. 228. (Apr., 1984), pp. 157-170 at 170. 17 Principia Ethica, p. 70. (Emphasis in original)
14 13

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laying it down as an axiom, is the key to avoiding the naturalistic fallacy for Bentham.18 As I argue below, the fallacy lies in making the inference from what things are good to a definition of goodness. Kolvesi confuses the good, which Moore takes to be those things that instantiate goodness, with goodness itself. The upshot is that a key passage in Principia Ethicaone that effectively undermines some of the most potent criticisms asserted against Moores ethical philosophy and perhaps leaves a little hope for a non-definist view of the naturalistic fallacyhas been rarely cited and, perhaps, badly misinterpreted. Hall accuses Moore of committing the definist fallacy, and Kolvesi takes Moore to reject a proposition that he explicitly endorses. While Moore believes Bentham has committed the naturalistic fallacy, he does not think his normative theory is false on that ground, and he does not take the fallacy to be in attempting to prove that a particular property is the good. Moore gives similarly deferential treatment to the theories of Mill and Spencer. Though he brutally assaults their arguments as artless commissions of the naturalistic fallacy, and argues that each theory is without merit, he does not argue that they are false for being based on the fallacy. Moores refutations of Mills hedonism and Spencers evolutionary ethics are based on other grounds.

18

This is not to say that he thinks such proof is possible. We see in his discussion of intuitionist hedonism that he takes direct proof of propositions about the good to be impossible. Such claims are only open to indirect proof. Principia Ethica, p. 128.

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As is the case with Benthams views, Moore takes Mill to task for committing the naturalistic fallacy. After several pages of accusing Mill of navet and artlessness, and giving him some good-natured ribbing (Well, the fallacy in this step is so obvious, that it is quite wonderful how Mill failed to see it19) for having committed the naturalistic fallacy, Moore turns his attention to disproving the theory. Again, we see that a theorys resting upon the naturalistic fallacy does not demonstrate that the theory is false. It merely undermines our confidence in the arguments mustered for its support. Moore writes So far I have been only occupied with refuting Mills naturalistic arguments for Hedonism; but the doctrine that pleasure alone is desirable may still be true, although Mills fallacies cannot prove it so. This is the question which we have now to face.20 The remaining thirty-five pages of Moores chapter III are devoted to trying to show that Mills principle is false. If Moore took commission of the naturalistic fallacy to be a fatal flaw in a theory there would be no need for such arguments.21 Most importantly, for my purposes, Moore does not claim that Mill has gotten the definition of goodness wrong. Herbert Spencers evolutionary ethical theory gets similar treatment. Moore identifies an instance of the naturalistic fallacy in Spencers identification

19 20

Principia Ethica, p. 118. Principia Ethica, p 126. 21 Nor for the apologies he gives for the sorry state of ethical argumentation. He recognizes that the sort of refutation that we see in logical proofs is not possible in the context of ethics, at least with respect to arguments about what things are good.

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of increasing ethical sanction with being more evolved. In other words, he has defined being more evolved as an end in itself. Moore is unsure whether Spencer has really committed the fallacy because Mr. Spencers language is extremely loose,22 but whether he has or has not committed the fallacy, his theory must be further evaluated for its truth. Again, commission of the fallacy is not sufficient to demonstrate that a theory is false. It is clear that Moore, at least, does not use the naturalistic fallacy as a weapon against naturalists in the way that Frankena and Prior seem to assume. In no case does he dismiss a theory as false on the ground that its proponent has committed the fallacy in formulating or defending the theory. Nor does he claim that the property identities these theorists assert are false on the ground that goodness is indefinable. Surely, to assert that would be to beg the question. Rather, Moore rejects the reasoning behind the theories as being fallacious, and then turns his attention to arguing against the other merits of the theories. Finally, Moore does not claim that any theorist has committed the fallacy merely on the grounds that he has offered a definition of goodness, an indefinable property. This last point is demonstrated in the next section, wherein my positive account of the naturalistic fallacy is presented. Again, nothing in the preceding material proves that Moore does not take the naturalistic fallacy to be a definist fallacy, but neither does it prove that he
22

Principia Ethica, p. 100-101.

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does. In order to be a definist fallacy, in order to avoid begging the question, Moore would need proof that goodness is indefinable. He would also need proof that it is not identical with any natural simple property, because definition is a matter if identifying the constituent parts of a propertyif there are no parts, there can be no definition, but there could still be true identity statements that identify goodness with a simple property. If Moore does not have a proof that goodness is not identical with a simple natural propertyand I contend he does notthen in order to defend his view that goodness is non-natural, he would need a view of the naturalistic fallacy such that commission of the fallacy could undermine confidence in proffered simple identity statements. A definist fallacy would not suffice. The rest of this chapter develops a view that would.

2) The naturalistic fallacy: a close reading

It is not entirely surprising that most interpretations of the naturalistic fallacy are unsatisfying. Moore uses a number of examples to illustrate it, and they do not always appear, at first glance, to demonstrate the same mistake. Furthermore, sometimes his descriptions are downright cryptic, as, for example, when he writes of a particular class of naturalistic theories: In other words they are all theories of the end or ideal, the adoption of which has been chiefly caused by the commission of what I

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have called the naturalistic fallacy: they all confuse the first and second of the three possible questions which Ethics can ask.23 This statement, for all the world, appears to mean that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to confuse two questions. Compounding the confusion is that Moore is not very clear about which two questions he is referring to. The most likely candidates appear in the opening sections of Chapter I, thirty or more pages before this passage, but these same questions appear again, just before this passage, but in a different order.24 Interpreting this is toughMoore may be defining the naturalistic fallacy, he may be offering an alternative way to think about the problem without suggesting it means anything other than what he had previously established, or he may be doing neither of these, and instead merely suggesting an alternative error was committed by the naturalist. Nonetheless, an interpretation consistent with each of Moores uses of the words naturalistic fallacy can be found. In this section, I offer such an interpretation.

a. Goodness and yellow

Moores most clear explanation of the naturalistic fallacy appears in the passage in which the naturalistic fallacy is first introduced. Moore writes:
23 24

Principia Ethica, pp. 89-90. Compare Principia Ethica, Ch. I, pp 54-58, and Ch. II, p 89.

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It may be true that all things which are good are also something else, just as it is true that all things which are yellow produce a certain kind of vibration in the light. And it is a fact, that 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 [belonging to all things which are good] 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.25 We saw in Chapter 3 that Baldwin uses this passage as evidence that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to deny the indefinability of goodness. And we also saw that Frankena relies on this passage (among others), claiming that it means that nothing is identical with goodness26 and that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to assert of something other than goodness that it is identical with goodness.27 Frankenas emphasis is on the act of attempting the definition. This, he thinks, is what Moore has labeled the naturalistic fallacy. But this is not the only reasonable interpretation, nor is it the one that most accurately represents Moores text. The view Moore proposes to call the naturalistic fallacy is not the
25 26

Principia Ethica, 10, p. 62. He takes this passage to be a mere demonstration of Butlers maxim that appears as the motto on the cover page of Principia Ethica, Everything is what it is, and not another thing. 27 Frankena, p. 470-71.

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belief that defining goodness is possible, or even that any particular identity statement is right. Rather, Moore writes that it is the belief that when one names the other properties, those properties that are coextensive with goodness, one is defining goodness. Consider Moores example step by step. The naturalist observes that every instance of goodness is also an instance of pleasure, just as he might notice that every instance of yellow is accompanied by y-vibrations. From this (limited) coextension of goodness and pleasure, the naturalist deduces that goodness is identical with pleasure. I take it that this deduction is Moores target. To commit the naturalistic fallacy is to make the inference from coextension to identity. Moore calls it a fallacy because he takes the deduction itself to be invalid, not simply because he believes the conclusion is false. We know that such deductions are invalid because coextension, even necessary coextension, is not identity. Consider, for example, the properties being renate and being cordate. As it turns out, these are coextensive properties.28 Everything that has a kidney has a heart, and vice-versa. But just a moments reflection makes it clear that they are not identical properties. The same is true for yellowness and y-vibrations; just a second of careful thought dispels the possibility that they are identical. They are merely properties that are coextensive, or perhaps they share an even weaker relation. After all, the
28

At least in philosopher biology.

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yellowness of an object only causes y-vibrations under certain conditions. That is, the y-vibrationality is only a disposition that yellow things have. Now Frankena is quite right that to make the move from this claim about the naturalist to the further claim that her definition is wrong is impermissible. Moore also acknowledges this in the passage discussing Bentham, above. When Frankena claims that Moore begs the question, he seems to have in mind a different Moorean argument. Moore would have begged the question against the naturalist if he argued as follows: 1) Goodness is coextensive with pleasantness 2) Goodness is not identical with pleasantness 3) If (1) and (2) then goodness is not identical with pleasantness. 4) Therefore, goodness is not identical with pleasantness. Since (2) is the very conclusion that Frankena takes Moore to be reaching when he claims that someone who defines goodness as pleasantness is committing the naturalistic fallacy, to make such an argument would be to beg the question against the naturalist. To see this, we need only to look at the reason Moore might assert (2). Frankena thinks the reason Moore believes that goodness is not identical with pleasantness is that to believe such a thing is to commit the naturalistic fallacy. The proof that someone has committed the naturalistic fallacy requires one to deny the naturalists conclusion as one of your premises. This is

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plainly question begging. This is why it is so important to emphasize that this is not what Moore actually does. Actually, this example is worse still for the naturalist, because he has not started from the premise that goodness and pleasantness are coextensive. Instead, the naturalist has started from the premise that all instances of goodness are instances of pleasure. From this, it would be, perhaps, worse to infer the identity of goodness and pleasantness, because all it would take to disprove the identity would be a single disconfirming instance of pleasure that was not good. At least if the properties were coextensive, there could be no such disconfirming instance.29 The mistake our naturalist has made is to believe that goodness and pleasantness are identical on the ground that he has always found them together. This suggests that, in this case, to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to infer from the fact that every good thing also is pleasant that goodness is identical with pleasure. In general terms, it is the inference from the constant conjunction of one property with another to their identity. This constant conjunction is a weaker relationship than coextension, as Moore seems to describe it as a one way relation here.30 I consider the ramifications of this below, in my discussion of Moores

29

Clearly, if the properties were merely contingently coextensive, there could be a possible disconfirming instance of pleasure. But since the inference is bad even if the properties are necessarily coextensive, it seems trivial to compound the trouble. 30 Indeed, in the cases where naturalists have claimed that some natural property is the good (where there is real coextension), Moore proceeds as though they derived that from the identity

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treatment of particular theorists. For the moment, we should progress on the theory that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to infer from either the coextension of two properties or the mere supposition that all instances of one property are also instances of another, that the properties are identical. Symbolically: NF1) x (Px Qx) (P=Q) or NF2) x (Px Qx) (P=Q)

b. I am pleased

The next place we see Moore invoking the naturalistic fallacy is several pages later, in 12. Here, there are two related passages, each of which is relatively easy to misinterpret alone, but when read together, support my interpretations over any others. Suppose a man says I am pleased . . . . We may be able to say how [pleasure] is related to other things: that, for example, it is in the mind, that it causes desire, that we are conscious of it, etc., etc. We can, I say, describe its relations to other things, but define it we

between goodness and the property in question, after having first committed the naturalistic fallacy by inferring the identity from the mere constant conjunction.

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can not. And if anybody tried to define pleasure for us as being any other natural object; if anybody were to say, for instance, that pleasure means the sensation of red, and were to proceed to deduce from that that pleasure is a colour, we should be entitled to laugh at him and to distrust his future statements about pleasure. Well, that would be the same fallacy which I have called the naturalistic fallacy.31 At a first read, it is easy to take Moore to be saying that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is, in this case, to define pleasure. And since he has identified pleasure as being indefinable, we might generalize to the conclusion that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to give a definition of an indefinable property.32 But, as I noted in my discussion of Baldwin, something a little more complex and interesting is going on here. It is not simply that someone is trying to define pleasure. It is that they are attempting to do so by virtue of its relation to other natural properties or objects. That is, she is identifying pleasure with other attendant experiences, like sensations of red, or with its causal relata, like the desire it causes in us. The fact that this is the error Moore has in mind becomes clearer as we read farther in the passage.

31 32

Principia Ethica, 12, pp 64-65. This seems to be the assumption that Baldwin takes from this passage, and it is definitely the interpretation that Frankena accepts.

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Moore goes on, in this passage, to note that while pleasure is indefinable, it is not the case that we cannot meaningfully assert that we are pleased. It is enough to understand that being pleased means to have the sensation of pleasure.33 It seems to me that he is addressing concerns that if we cannot give a definition of a property, we cannot meaningfully assert that we have that property. But Moores point is that of course we can assert that we instantiate a property that is simple and indefinable. But the attempt to define such a property by its connection to other properties we might experience at the same time is an error. Moore wraps up this passage by introducing another mistake, one that at first blush, seems distinct. But once again, a little careful analysis shows that it is closely related to the mistake highlighted above. If I were to imagine that when I said I am pleased, I meant that I was exactly the same thing as pleased, I should not indeed call that a naturalistic fallacy, although it would be the same fallacy as I have called naturalistic with reference to Ethics. The reason of this is obvious enough. When a man confuses two natural objects with one another, defining one by the other, if for instance he
33

Moore phrases this in linguistic terms, quoting off pleased and having the sensation of pleasure. But this is a mistake. He is not making a mere linguistic point. His point is about the property itself. I take it that this is why he admits to making use/mention errors in his discussion of the naturalistic fallacy. But those use/mention errors need not be fatal to the view. We may, with a little sensitivity to the text, discern where he is discussing words versus the properties to which those words refer.

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confuses himself, who is one natural object, with pleased or with pleasure which are others, then there is no reason to call the fallacy naturalistic. But if he confuses good, which is not in the same sense a natural object, with any natural object whatever, then there is a reason for calling that a naturalistic fallacy; its being made with regard to good marks it as something quite specific, and this specific mistake deserves a name because it is so common.34 There are two important things happening in this passage. The first is that Moore provides another example of the fallacy. As I noted in Chapter 3, it is of a case that we might never expect to see actualized. After all, it is hard to imagine anyone mistaking the is of predication with the is of identity when the identifier, himself, is the subject of the identity he asserts. It is hard to confuse myself with something else.35 The man in Moores example has concluded from the fact that he is pleased that he is identical with the property being pleased.36 It appears in this example that the hapless identifier is confusing the is of predication with the is of identity. It seems that he has thought about the true

Principia Ethica, p 65. Though it is not impossible. I once woke up with my arm under my body, and asleep, so I could not feel my weight upon it, and thought that it was not my arm. This, in a sense, is to confuse myself with something else . . . 36 Again, we have a use/mention problem here. But it is clear, from the sentences immediately following the initial description of the confusion, that by pleased offset in single quotes, Moore intends us to understand, not the word pleased, but the property to which that word refers.
35

34

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sentence, I am pleased which means, to him, that he has the property being pleased (or alternately, that he is experiencing pleasure) and derived from it the identity statement I am pleased which means that he is identical with the property being pleased. This passage seems particularly amenable to this sort of reading.37 But such a reading would be a mistake. Moore noted in his preface to the second edition of Principia Ethica that this passage is amenable to such a reading, though it is not what he intended. Rather, he takes confusing the is of predication with the is of identity to be the source of the commission of the fallacy in this particular instance (in my terms, having made that mistake is the reason for the bad inference).38 While confusing predication and identity might be at work here, also at work is the inference from co-instantiation to identity. In this case, our confused identifier instantiates both being pleased and being himself. And on the basis of that he takes being himself and being pleased to be identical. Read in the context of the passage immediately preceding this one, where the error is plainly inferring the identity of properties that occur in the same object, it is clear that this is interpretation is to be preferred over the identity/predication problem. This is an even more dramatic error than inferring the identity of two properties from their uni-directional relation. Here, the
37

Moores use/mention trouble on the following page in discussing oranges, yellowness and sweetness also might lead to one accepting this interpretation. Concluding from the fact that oranges are yellow that orange and yellow are the same property looks like it might be a problem caused by confusing the is of predication with the is of identity. But, again, in context it appears to be a case of confusing coextension with identity (a closely related problem, it seems). 38 Principia Ethica, preface to the second edition, p. 20.

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confused identifier seems to be making the inference from a single instance of the conjunction of two properties. Symbolically, the fallacy looks like this: NF3) x (Px & Qx) (P=Q) The second thing Moore does in this passage is to demonstrate to us that the naturalistic fallacy is a general purpose fallacy. That is, it is a mistake that can be made in many contexts, not merely in the context of ethics. This is important to keep in mind, because it can help keep up from accepting interpretations of the fallacy that will be applicable only to goodness. For example, Frankena claims that an intuitionists accusation that a naturalistic theorist has committed the naturalistic fallacy begs the question against the naturalist because it starts from the premise that no such definition is possible. That is, Frankena takes intuitionists to mean that the indefinability of goodness is an integral part of the naturalistic fallacy. But once we see that the naturalistic fallacy is supposed to be a completely general sort of inference error, we should no longer feel compelled to entertain interpretations like the one Frankena asserts of intuitionists. A philosopher might commit the naturalistic fallacy in offering a definition of a perfectly definable property. If, based on the fact that I have a receding hairline, I determined that definition of forehead is that patch of hairless skin extending from ones eyebrows to the middle of the scalp, I will have committed the naturalistic fallacy, in form NF3. I think the blame for part of the confusion in this regard belongs squarely on Moores doorstep, because in illustrating the

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fallacy, he chooses only those properties he has determined to be indefinable. But in fact, the generic fallacy he highlights would apply equally to definable properties. Take renate and cordate, for example. These are definable properties, but to conclude, based on their coextension, that they were identical properties would be to commit the fallacy. It would be an invalid inference. It is likely that Moore only chooses indefinable properties because he wants to keep the analogy to goodness fairly close, and ultimately, he will argue that goodness is indefinable, but that is a different argument, not to be confused with the naturalistic fallacy.

3. Bentham

The next place we encounter the naturalistic fallacy is in Moores treatment of Benthams hedonism. Moore writes that Benthams theories about rightness, at least as they are interpreted by Sidgwick, commit the naturalistic fallacy.39 This material is fairly denseperhaps the most difficult passage in Principia Ethicaand it is hard to derive an interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy from Moores statements about Bentham. But I think it is possible to show that my claimthat to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to infer the identity

39

Principia Ethica, 14, p. 69. Note that Sidgwick, himself, does not commit the naturalistic fallacy, and is unique in Moores mind for avoiding that error.

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of two properties from their coextension or some weaker relationis at least consistent with Moores criticisms here. According to Moore, Sidgwick has claimed40 that Bentham takes the word right to mean conducive to general happiness. This definition of the word right is permissible, says Moore, if it is asserting that right refers to those actions that are good as a means to achieving some particular end (i.e., they are instrumentally good). Then, asserts Moore, Bentham could choose general happiness as the good, either by proof or axiomatic assertion. This would be a fine theory, and Benthams reasons for accepting it would be as good as his reasons for asserting that general happiness was the good. By the good we mean the collection of those things that are morally goodthat instantiate goodness. If general happiness were the good, this would mean that general happiness was the only thing that instantiated the property goodness. But, claims Moore, Bentham has not proved or asserted axiomatically what the good is. What he has done instead is to assert the definition of right as conducive to general happiness, and then to leverage that definition into a definition of the property moral rightness. He takes the greatest happiness to be the right and proper end of human action. Moore writes: [Benthams] fundamental principle is . . . that the greatest happiness of all concerned is the right and proper end of human
40

In The Methods of Ethics (1874), Bk. 1, Chap. iii, 1.

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action. He applies the word right, therefore, to the end, as such, not only to the means which are conducive to it; and that being so, right can no longer be defined as conducive to the general happiness, without involving the fallacy in question.41 There is simply not enough information here to determine where the mistake is. But if we tease the argument apart, it appears that Bentham may have committed the naturalistic fallacy as represented by NF2, above. Bentham wishes to defend the principle that right means conducive to general happiness. Moore says that this is a perfectly acceptable theory, provided Bentham meant by it that rightness is good as a means to the appropriate end, and provided that he arrived at that conclusion in a particular way. If Bentham had started from the principle that general happiness was the good, by which Moore means that general happiness alone is good (thus it is the endthat for which we ought to strive), and then inferred from this principle and the principle that right means good as a means to that end that rightness is conducive to the general good, Bentham would have committed no fallacy. In other terms, this is an acceptable argument: Permissible Benthamic argument 1) General happiness is the good (axiomatic or proved by other argument) 2) Right denotes what is conducive to the end (to the good, that is)
41

Principia Ethica, p. 70.

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3) Therefore right means conducive to the general happiness.

But, writes Moore, this is not the argument Bentham makes. Bentham wants to show that the greatest happiness is the right and proper end of human action. That is, he wants to prove (1) from the Benthamic Argument. How he goes about it involves the naturalistic fallacy. Moore says the mistake he makes is that the definition of right as conducive to general happiness proves general happiness to be the right enda perfectly invalid procedure.42 Moore accuses Bentham of deriving the end of ethics from the definition of rightness. This does not sound anything like the naturalistic fallacy as interpreted by me or any other critic we have considered. I have cast the naturalistic fallacy as the inference of a definition of a moral property based on its co-instantiation with some other property. What Bentham appears to be doing is deriving the co-instantiation of properties based upon their identity. If right, by definition, means conducive to general happiness, then it is obvious that general happiness is the right end.43 The inference from the identity of rightness and conduciveness to general happiness to general happiness being the right end is logically perfectly acceptable. The question is how did Bentham arrive at that identity? This is where the naturalistic fallacy occurs, if at all.

42 43

Principia Ethica, 70-71. Principia Ethica, p. 70.

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Moore takes Benthams claim that right means conducive to general happiness in two waysright as a means to an end, and right as an end. Since Bentham takes right to mean conducive to general happiness, then every instance of rightness will be an instance of conduciveness to general happiness, thus: Letting R symbolize rightness and H symbolize conduciveness to general happiness, x(Rx Hx). Moore is not certain that Bentham makes this claim. I take this as the reason he is uncertain whether Bentham actually committed the naturalistic fallacy.44 Bentham might not make this claim, and still be on the road to the naturalistic fallacy, however. He might proceed from particular instances of rightness he has identified as being conducive to the general happiness. He could generalize to all instances of rightness, thereby satisfying the antecedent of NF2, or he could fail to do so, and attempt the derive the identity of rightness and conduciveness to general happiness from the more modest claim x(Rx & Hx), thereby satisfying the antecedent of NF3.45

44

. . . I am inclined to think that Bentham may really have been one of those who committed it. Principia Ethica, p. 69. 45 I take Moore to be saddling Bentham with the stronger claim, but the evidence is not clear.

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From either starting point, the inference to the identity of rightness and conduciveness to general happiness would be an instance of committing the naturalistic fallacy in one of its configurations: NF2: x(Rx Hx) x(Rx = Hx)46 NF3: x(Rx & Hx) x(Rx = Hx). Now, I am not convinced that the principle that the general happiness is the right end is deducible from the identity between rightness and conduciveness to general happiness. But that is not central to my argument. That Moore claims this is what Bentham does is enough for my purposes. To recap, Bentham attempts to derive the principle that general happiness is the proper end of ethics. He derives this from the definition of rightness as conduciveness to general happiness. This definition must come from somewhere. Bentham (might) derive it from particular instances of co-instantiation between rightness and conduciveness to general happiness, which he would believe existed given that he took right to mean good as a means to general happiness. If Bentham has so derived the definition, then he has committed the naturalistic fallacy. This schematic might prove useful:

Given the definition of right in the sense of good as a means, the left side might actually be a bi-conditional. That is, the fallacious Benthamic argument might start from the coextension of rightness and conduciveness to general happiness, and infer their identity.

46

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Particular instances of rightness that are conducive to general happiness Naturalistic Fallacy occurs here (Bentham would likely think they all were)

Rightness = Conduciveness to general happiness

General happiness is the proper end of ethics (the good)

While this analysis of Benthams argument and his possible commission of the naturalistic fallacy is somewhat speculative, no other account of the naturalistic fallacy that I have seen is capable of accounting for any commission of the fallacy at all.

4. Confusing two questions

In the chapter entitled Naturalistic Ethics Moore examines several theories all of which are said to either commit the naturalistic fallacy or are accepted readily because of the commission of the naturalistic fallacy. He writes: This discussion will be designed both (1) further to illustrate the fact that the naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy, or, in other words, that we are all aware of a certain simple quality, which (and not anything else) is what we

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mainly mean by the term good; and (2) to shew that not one but many different things possess this property.47 Moore takes it as proof that the naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy that we have a shared conception of goodness. I suppose if we did have such a shared conception and it is what we meant by uses of the word good, then it would be a mistake of some sort to claim that what we meant was some other property. The fact that we have a shared conception of this simple property is evidence that the bad inference Moore has pointed out really is a fallacy. Insofar as an argument with a necessarily false conclusion can be said to be fallacious, I suppose Moore is correct. Moore hopes to convince us that the naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy based, not on our recognition of the invalidity of the inference, but also based on the fact that we take the conclusion to be false. Once again, we see that he does not make the claim that naturalists commit the naturalistic fallacy because they define goodness. Instead, he aims to show us that the fallacy really involves a mistake by independently demonstrating that the naturalists definitions are false. The order of operations is key herefailure to notice this is likely the reason that the naturalistic fallacy has been taken to be a definist fallacy. The second point of his discussionthat many different things possess this propertyis an attempt to show that the good (not goodness) is multifaceted, in that goodness can be instantiated in many things, not only in instances of
47

Principia Ethica, p. 90

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pleasure or any other single thing. The naturalists Moore takes as his primary target in this and succeeding discussions are those that claim that goodness is instantiated in one and only one type of thing. We can call these theories nave naturalistic theories. More important than either of these claims, however, is Moores attempt to give yet another explanation of the naturalistic fallacy. Discussing the nave naturalistic theories, Moore writes: They all hold that there is only one kind of fact, of which the existence has any value at all . . . . [T]he main reason why the single kind of fact they name has been held to define the sole good, is that it has been held to define what is meant by good itself. In other words they are all theories of the end or ideal, the adoption of which has been chiefly caused by the commission of what I have called the naturalistic fallacy: they all confuse the first and second of the three possible questions which Ethics can ask. It is, indeed, this fact which explains their contention that only a single kind of thing is good.48 Reading this quote makes it quite clear what error Moore focused on in Bentham. Bentham posited a theory of the ideal, or end, wherein it consisted of only one thing, general happiness. Moreover, he arrived at his conclusion about
48

Principia Ethica, 89-90.

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the end based on defining a fundamental moral property, rightness, as identical with some other property, one which instantiates rightness. That definition was, itself, fallaciously deduced. To be chiefly caused by commission of the naturalistic fallacy is to be deduced from an identity statement that was itself the result of commission of the naturalistic fallacy. Symbolically, using P for being pleasant and G for being good, 1) x(Px & Gx) 2) x(Px Gx) 3) x(Px Gx) 4) P=G goodness) Something is pleasant and good All pleasant things are good Pleasantness is the good (pleasure is the sole good) Being pleasant is being good (or pleasure is

The naturalistic fallacy is the inference from (1) or (2) or (3) to (4). Nave naturalists compound the error, deriving (4) from (1) or (2) and then deriving (3) from (4). This becomes still more clear when we consider Moores claim that the nave naturalists, in committing the naturalistic fallacy, all confuse the first and second of three questions ethics asks. The three questions are (1) What is goodness (the property)? (2) What things are good in themselves (what is the

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good)? (3) What ought we to do?49 By virtue of committing the naturalistic fallacy, naturalists believe themselves to have defined goodness when, perhaps, they merely noticed that something was both good and in possession of their favorite natural property. And by virtue of their definitions, they believe themselves to have identified the good. That a thing should be good, it has been thought, means that it possesses this single property: and hence (it is thought) only what possesses this property is good.50 Again, nothing in this passage proves that NF1, NF2, or NF3 is the correct interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy, but they are consistent with this passage.51 This passage also suggests that my interpretation of Moores critique of Bentham is right.

5. Spencers Evolutionary Ethics

Moore accuses Spencer of committing the naturalistic fallacy in developing his theory of evolutionary ethics. Moore accuses Spencer of making a number of different errors, and he is not clear about which, if any, is the naturalistic fallacy. I have found two distinct errors which can be taken to be instances of NF2 or NF3. In this section, Moore also gives another explanation of
49 50

Principia Ethica, p. 90. Principia Ethica, p. 90. 51 In fact, it is the first passage that fits well with NF1. I had been on the verge of abandoning it until re-reading this passage.

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the naturalistic fallacyone that appears to make it a definist fallacy after all. Given the surrounding context and previous explanations, I argue that Moores words should not be taken strictly literally in this instance, and that my interpretations still hold. The first error Moore accuses Spencer of committing is possibly identifying being more evolved with being better or higher. Moore is unsure whether Spencer actually this identification because he uses the words better and more evolved inconsistently. But Moore claims that Spencer is likely influenced by commission of the naturalistic fallacy. Though we do not find an explicit definition of being better, we can infer that Spencer relies on one. Moore writes: It may . . . be true that what is more evolved is also higher and better. But Mr. Spencer does not seem aware that to assert the one is in any case not the same thing as to assert the other. He argues at length that certain kinds of conduct are more evolved, and then informs us that he has proved them to gain ethical sanction in proportion, without any warning that he as omitted the most essential step in the proof.52 If this is an accurate description of Spencers approach, he has inferred from the co-instantiation of being more evolved and being (morally) better that these are
52

Principia Ethica, p. 101.

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the very same properties. Once this identity is presumed, he can claim that he has proved that conduct gains ethical sanction in proportion to its being more evolved. This would be analogous to claiming that pleasantness is the good based on the identity of the properties pleasantness and goodness. The inference to the claim about the good is valid, but relies on a bad inference to the identity claim. Here, the claim that conduct is better in proportion to its being more evolved is a claim about the proper end of ethics. It is derived from a claim that being better is identical with being more evolved. And this identity is the result of the naturalistic fallacy. The fallacy, in this case, is in the inference from instances of conduct that are more evolved53 and better (presumably, better than instances that are less evolved) to the conclusion that being better simply is being more evolved. Spencer may have made the intermediate step of presuming that all instances of being better were instances of being more evolved. If so, he may be characterized as committing the fallacy I have labeled NF2. Otherwise, it would be NF3. It is only when we view Spencers argument in light of a particular model of ethical reasoning that Moores claims that the theory rests on the naturalistic fallacy become intelligible. This model begins with observations of the moral status of particular acts and the other properties those acts instantiate: 1) These instances of natural property N are good.
53

Which may or may not mean that they are more conducive to life. This is unclear to me.

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From these observations, general principles about the relation between the moral and natural (or metaphysical) properties may be derived: 2) All instances of N are good. If the naturalist then intuits that N is the good (or the end), as Sidgwick does, there is no naturalistic fallacy. But, if instead of that permissible intuition, the naturalist first defines the moral property and then works back up to the claim about the good, then the fallacy is committed: 3) N is identical with goodness. Once the naturalist has taken this step in furtherance of his claim about the good, he has committed the fallacy. Nonetheless, most naturalists make the further claim about the good 4) Since N is identical with goodness, N is the good. The inference from N=G to x(NG) is valid. But the derivation of the identity is not, so the reasons for adopting the theorists views on the good are bad ones. The second error Moore accuses Spencer of committing is to argue in favor of his evolutionary ethical theory by appeal to hedonism. In order to prove his thesis that Conduct is better in proportion as it is more evolved he relies upon the thesis that Life is good or bad, according as it does, or does not, bring about a surplus of agreeable feeling.54 Here, Moore claims that Spencer is not embracing the naturalistic identification of being better with being more evolved,
54

Principia Ethica, p. 102 quoting Spencer, Data of Ethics, Ch. II, 10.

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but, possibly, identifying goodness with pleasantness. That he does embrace such a view becomes evident when Spencer claims that No school can avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a desirable state of feeling called by whatever name gratification, enjoyment, happiness. Pleasure . . . is an inexpugnable element of the conception.55 Here, we see Spencer explicitly taking a natural property to be the proper end of ethics. We know, based on the analysis in sub-section (4), above, that Moore takes most theories that identify the good with some natural property commit the naturalistic fallacy. Recall, only Sidgwick seems not to have, and he avoids the naturalistic fallacy by arriving at his conclusion about the good by avoiding defining goodness as identical with a natural property. Whether Spencer can be accused, then, of committing the naturalistic fallacy in his embrace of hedonism will depend on how it is that he comes to accept his thesis about the good. Moore does not specifically accuse him of committing the fallacy here because Spencers loose use of language prevents us from knowing how he arrived at his hedonic thesis.56 If, however, he did so from inferring from particular instances of pleasantness being good to the identification of pleasantness and goodness, then he would have committed the naturalistic fallacy.

55 56

Principia Ethica, p 103, quoting Spencer, DE, 16. Principia Ethica, p. 100-101, p.105.

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Once the identity is presumed, it is a short step to the conclusion that pleasure is the sole good.57,58 There is a passage in Moores discussion of Spencer, however, that casts some doubt upon my interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy. In giving a capsule summary of his criticisms of naturalistic ethics, Moore writes that certain ethical viewsnave naturalismsowe their influence to the naturalistic fallacy. This fallacy, he writes, consists in identifying the simple notion we mean by good with some other notion.59 I addressed this particular quotation in Chapter 2, in my discussion of Baldwins interpretations of the naturalistic fallacy. I argued that consists in does not mean is identical to. In short, defining goodness is necessary for committing the naturalistic fallacy, but it is not sufficient for doing so. For example, if someone failed to recognize that goodness was indefinable, and simply intuited a definition, there would be no fallacy. Of course, we would have little reason to believe their views about the good. Their views about the
One of the reasons Moore does not accuse Spencer of definitely having committed the naturalistic fallacy in embracing hedonism is that, sometimes, he asserts that being productive of more life is also an end. If this is the case, he does not take pleasure to be the sole end, and so, he might not claim pleasure is the good. If he does not make this claim, it would be unfair for Moore to accuse him of deriving that conclusion from a definition of goodness arrived at via the naturalistic fallacy. 58 Moore claims Spencer has made another error in supposing that being a law of nature makes a thesis respectable. Here, again, we see that Spencers claim might rest on the naturalistic fallacy. The reasoning is exactly analogous to the cases of hedonism and being more evolved. A particular thing (so called directional evolution) is respected. It is also presumed to be a law of nature. From this is deduced that being a law of nature is to be respected (clearly false, and an instance of the naturalistic fallacy). Then from this, the conclusion that laws of nature are all respectable follows. This example, though a mere side-note to Moores discussion of Spencer, might be a best proof that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to make an inference error of the sort I have characterized in NF1-NF3. 59 Principia Ethica, p. 109.
57

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good are based on a definition of good that (1) we have reason to believe is false (based on the open question argument) and (2) that, itself, is the result of an invalid inference. I take my interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy to be consistent with Moores claim that the fallacy consists is identifying goodness with some other property because my view is that the naturalistic fallacy is to make that identification as the result of a particular pattern of inference.60 I do not claim that my interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy is the only one consistent with the errors Moore accuses Spencer of making. But it is consistent with it, and it is also consistent with each additional instance of the naturalistic fallacys uses and explanations in Principia Ethica. No other interpretation I have found can claim this virtue.61

Moore takes all naturalistic theories that make such an identification to do so on grounds of this particular argument form. He does not recognize any other way to support a property identification for goodness. I suggested that someone might intuit one, but then Moore could claim that she would have provided no reasons to believe the identification. In short, you can intuit the good, but not goodness. This may provide a legitimate source of the criticism that Moore begs the question against the naturalist. 61 With the exception of Moores comments about Mill, the only other discussions of the naturalistic fallacy appear in his discussion of metaphysical theories of ethics (pp. 165 and 169) and in his discussion of Beauty (p. 249), in his chapter on the Ideal. Each of these instances is compatible with my view. With respect to Beauty, the fallacy appears to occur in the inference that since particular instances of beauty have particular subjective effects upon people, beauty is identical with such effects. Then, having committed the fallacy, the subjective aestheticist compounds his error by deriving that the beautiful is all and only that which produces such effects.

60

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6. Hedonism and Mill

The last Moorean claims about philosophers who have committed the naturalistic fallacy that I wish to examine come from his comments about hedonism and John Stuart Mills arguments in favor of hedonism. The first passage is: Moreover, the very commission of the naturalistic fallacy involves that those who commit it should not recognize clearly the meaning of the proposition This is goodthat they should not be able to distinguish this from other propositions which seem to resemble it . . . .62 Just as Moore criticized Spencer for having engaged in loose writing, we may criticize Moore on the same ground here. On any interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy that could be derived from Principia Ethica, whether my own view or views I dismissed previously, the commission of the fallacy need not involve not recognizing the meaning of the proposition This is good. It could very well be that you commit the fallacy while clearly recognizing the meaning. It seems likely that the confusion is because of failing to express properly the difference between a proposition and the sentence that expresses it. But by looking at the further claim that naturalists fail to distinguish that propositionI can only
62

Principia Ethica, p 113

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assume he means the proposition that something is good, by which he means something has the property goodnessfrom others which seem to resemble it, we may find a place for the naturalistic fallacy. His claim is that someone who commits the naturalistic fallacy, say by claiming pleasure is identical with goodness, does so because he cannot distinguish between the propositions that pleasure is good (meaning pleasure has the property goodness) and pleasure is good (meaning pleasure is identical with goodness). Earlier, I showed how this, though looking like confusing the is of predication with the is of identity, can be captured by NF2. Finally, we come to the last significant discussion of the naturalistic fallacy in Principia Ethica. Moore accuses Mill of having committed the naturalistic fallacy in his proof that the desired is the good. The argument pattern is the same here that we have seen in Bentham and in Spencer, but it is more difficult to spot. 1) Mill claims that good means desirable, then (2) asserts that what is desirable is what is desired. From this, we get, via the naturalistic fallacy, (3) the definition that being good is identical with being desired. Therefore, (4) the desired is the good. It is hard to spot this pattern, in part because Moore assaults Mill for making the famously bad analogy between desirable and

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visible.63 Most of Moores demonstration that Mill commits the naturalistic fallacy is mixed up with his proof that it is a mistake to take step (2). Step (1) looks like it would be problematic, but is permissible for Mill to define good as desirable, if the definition is of good as a means to the end of ethics rather than good as an end. This is analogous to what Moore would have allowed for Bentham with respect to right.64 He may also have begun from mere observation of things that are both good and desirable. Had he supposed that all good things were desirable, he would have an adequate first step toward the fallacious proof that goodness is identical with being desired. At step (2), Mill makes the claim that what is desirable simply is what is desired. [T]he sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.65 Moore seems to assert that Mill commits the naturalistic fallacy in this step. Well, the fallacy in this step is so obvious, that it is quit wonderful how Mill failed to see it.66 If he has, I take this to be an instance of the fallacy occurring within another instance of the fallacy. Moore accuses Mill of having argued from the fact what is desirable is actually desired to the claim that desirable means desired. This is to infer from particular instances of things being desirable and being desired that the properties are identicala
63 64

I do not reproduce this here, in part because I am not convinced that Mill really makes this error. See text accompanying fn 41 and 42, supra. 65 Mill, Utilitarianism (1861), quoted by Moore, Principia Ethica, p. 118 and reprinted in John Stuart Mill, Collected Works, Vol. X, J.M. Robson, ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969) pp. 203-59, at p. 234. 66 Principia Ethica, p. 118.

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straightforward instance of NF3. Alternately, since Mill takes the only proof that a thing is desirable to be that it is desired, we might make the stronger claim that all things that are desirable are desired.67 To infer from this that they are identical would be to commit the naturalistic fallacy in its NF2 configuration. Either way, it is clear that to be desirable in the sense of being worthy of desire is a very different thing than being desired. Moore could have left his criticism there, but finding an instance of the naturalistic fallacy as support for a premise in another argument that also relies upon the naturalistic fallacy is rather clever.68 If Mills identity claim between desirable and desired holds, then we can substitute the property being desired for being desirable in the original proposition, yielding that good means being desired. (x (Gx Dx)). By committing a second naturalistic fallacy, in NF2 form, Mill can (3) infer the identity between goodness and being desired. Moore writes The important step for Ethics is . . . the step which pretends to prove that good means desired. Moore is adamant that this step be avoided.

In truth, I am not sure what direction the arrow would go herethe implication might go either direction. 68 I suppose this nested naturalistic fallacy claim only holds if my claim about the naturalistic fallacy is true.

67

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3) Conclusion

In this chapter, I argued that Moores critics make an error when they accuse Moore of using the naturalistic fallacy as proof that naturalistic theories are false. I demonstrated, by text and with examples, that Moore does not take accusations that a philosopher has committed the naturalistic fallacy to do anything more than undermine our confidence in her reasons for her conclusions about the proper end of ethics. My claim relies on a model of moral argumentation that Moore takes naturalists to makeone that involves proving (fallaciously) that goodness is identical with some natural property, and then inferring from that identification that their chosen property is the sole good. I have also offered an interpretation of Moores naturalistic fallacy that more closely fits the text of Principia Ethica than those interpretations I considered in Chapter 2. On this view to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to make an invalid inference from the co-instantiation of two properties, to their identity. It is a general purpose fallacy, affecting any property identification, not just definitions of goodness. Most significantly, the interpretation presented is consistent with each of Moores various descriptions of the fallacy, and with each of his demonstrations that other theorists have committed it. When conjoined with the model of reasoning I highlighted, the view accounts for his claims that even if we reject the definitions of good naturalists offer, we still need

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independent argumentation to prove that they are wrong about the proper end of ethics. The naturalistic fallacy, as I have described it, is well suited to play the role Moore assigned to it. It neither proves too muchthat a theory is false for having committed itnor too little. It is not, however, immune to criticism. While the view I have described is the most comprehensive view of the naturalistic fallacy, it may still be subject to claims of question begging. In particular, when naturalists do not explicitly assert that they are starting from any particular observations about good things, Moore presumes that they are. This is the starting point of each instance of the naturalistic fallacy. But whether this is a fair presumption is unclear. Can a coherent story can be told that avoids assuming that goodness is indefinable when we accuse naturalists of committing the naturalistic fallacy? This will be one subject of the next chapter.

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Chapter 5 Moores Proof that Good Refers to a Simple, Non-natural Property1

I. Introduction I have devoted a significant portion of this dissertation to trying to show that to commit the naturalistic fallacy is not simply to define an indefinable property. Moreover, I have claimed Moore does not wield the naturalistic fallacy as a weapon, cutting down theories that do define goodness on grounds of having committed the fallacy. Even if he does, however, we might find that he was justified in doing sothat is, that he does not beg the question against the naturalistsif he had a reason to believe all naturalistic definitions were false. I believe that Moore had such a reason. Disambiguating the open question argument from the naturalistic fallacy shows us that Moore has an argument that is sufficiently robust to ground even the claims that Frankena attributes to him. Most commentators take the open question argument to be Moores proof that every naturalistic definition fails. Moores actual claim about goodness is that it is a simple and indefinable property. In Chapter 2, I provided an examination into what property it is that Moore claims is simple and indefinable.
1

Throughout this chapter, I use the words denotation, denoting, or denote in the non-Millian sense of the words. By x denotes y I mean the word x refers to the property or object y. In this regard, I use the words denote and connote in the reverse of the Millian fashion. This is to avoid having readers thinking of connotation or meaning in the head when I mean to draw attention to the referent, or meaning in the world.

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This was followed by an examination into what it means to be simple and indefinable. This chapter builds on that material, demonstrating that there are several different arguments supporting Moores claim, some of which are not easily refuted. I begin in section II with a close examination of Moores text, and several defective interpretations of it. In section III, I offer a reconstruction of Moores arguments that maintains high fidelity to the text. It should be noted at the outset that I do not find anything that fills the role the open question argument is usually held to perform. While I do offer an argument that might show that any definition of good in natural terms fails, even those that purport to identify goodness with a simple natural property,2 I find that it was not Moores intention to show this using the open question argument. Interestingly, the words open question never even appear in the section wherein Moore presents his proof that goodness is simple and unanalyzable. The first use of this phrase is in the final sentence of 14, and it is not taken to be a proof of the indefinability of goodness, but as an example of defective reasoning about Ethics.

So not true definitions, according to Moore. Recall that definitions enumerate the parts of complex properties, so a simple statement of property identity is not a definition.

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II. Literature review

A. Principia Ethica 13 Moores entire proof that goodness is simple and indefinable is contained in 13 of Principia Ethica. Since in the rest of this chapter I will rely heavily on the text, I include it, nearly in its entirety, interspersed with some commentary about what I perceive as the appropriate divisions and individual arguments. Moore begins by delineating the possibilities for what sort of property goodness might be: [I]f it is not the case that good denotes something simple and indefinable, only two alternatives are possible: either it is a complex, a given whole, about the correct analysis of which there could be disagreement; or else it means nothing at all, and there is no such subject as Ethics.3 Goodness is simple (and hence, indefinable), or it is complex, or it has no meaning. By this third option, he means that there is no one thing that good denotes. It might be that there are many things.4 It might be best to say that there
3

Principia Ethica, p 66. He makes the same point again as follows: There are, in fact, only two serious alternatives to be considered, in order to establish the conclusion that good does denote a simple and indefinable notion. It might possibly denote a complex, as horse does; or it might have no meaning at all. p. 67. The rest of the cited passages in this chapter are from 13 of Principia Ethica, appearing on pp. 66-68, unless otherwise indicated. 4 Or (perhaps) none, though I do not know whether Moore would offer this as an option. In his early works, words that have no referent in the realm of Existence always have one in the realm of Being (more or less a Meinongian system). While this does not rule out Moores acceptance of

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is no concrete meaning. This would explain his claim that if goodness had no meaning there is no such subject as Ethics. After all, if there were no single thing that is the sole simple object of thought relevant to Ethics, then the discipline would rest on an error.5 The rest of 13 of Principia Ethica is devoted to showing that goodness is not complex and that goodness is not meaningless. The open question argument has been variously identified as performing both of these tasks, though as we shall see, it does not. First, lets consider Moores proof that goodness is not complex. The hypothesis that disagreement about the meaning of good is disagreement with regard to the correct analysis of a given whole, may be most plainly seen to be incorrect by consideration of the fact that, whatever definition may be offered, it may always, be asked, with significance, of the complex so defined, whether it is itself good. This looks like what we would expect from something called an open question argument. To prevent confusion of my analysis of this argument with others treatments, I will call this the Significant Question Argument. It appears that

words with no referent, without seeing any textual support for the position, I hesitate to attribute it to him. 5 This is a bit like saying that if rock meant both rocks and ore, there would be no such thing as Geology (let alone Metallurgy). It is not strictly true, but the idea is clear enough. Such a situation would undermine claims that the discipline was a science.

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Moore proposes that if we can ask meaningfully, with significance whether the definiens of a complex definition of goodness is good (whether it has the property goodnessthis seems to be a question about predication, not identity), then the definition is wrong. I take it that only an open question can be asked with significance. We will consider what it means to be a significant question, below. Moore presents something strangely different from what is suggested by this text when he gives us an example of such a complex definition and the operation of his argument to it. The example he considers is the definition of goodness as that which we desire to desire. [I]t may easily be thought, at first sight, that to be good may mean to be that which we desire to desire. Thus if we apply this definition to a particular instance and say When we think that A is good, we are thinking that A is one of the things which we desire to desire, our proposition may seem quite plausible. But, if we carry the investigation further, and ask ourselves Is it good to desire to desire A? it is apparent, on a little reflection, that this question is itself as intelligible, as the original question, Is A good?that we are, in fact, now asking for exactly the same information about the desire to desire A, for which we formerly asked with regard to A itself. But it is also apparent that the meaning of this second question cannot be correctly analysed into

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Is the desire to desire A one of the things which we desire to desire?: we have not before our minds anything so complicated as the question Do we desire to desire to desire to desire A? This passage has been recognized as the one that Virginia Woolf cited as making her head spin.6 This passage, which is proposed as an example of the significant question argument described in the previous passage, seems to do two other things. First there appears to be an argument that looks very much like the significant question argument. The question Is it good to desire to desire A appears to be an open question. One might think that Moore is suggesting that if it is an open question, then the definition of goodness as that which we desire to desire is wrong.7 Taken this way, the passage seems to be a straightforward example of the significant question argument. But notably absent is a conclusion that indicates that the openness or significance of the question proves that the properties are distinct. Instead, Moore launches into what appears to be another argument. This argument turns on the apparent complexity of the questions we
Story recounted in T. Regan, Bloomsburys Prophet, pp 197-98. We shall see that this is the interpretation given by Brian Hutchinson in G.E. Moores Ethical Theory, (Cambridge 2001), at p. 30. It is also close to that presented by Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton in Toward Fin de Siecle Ethics: Some Trends, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 101, No. 1 (January 1992). Hutchinson takes this to be the standard interpretation. This standard interpretation ignores Moores verbal cues that suggest the multitude of arguments I have identified, and instead treats the entirety of section 13 as presenting one argument that attempts to prove that goodness is not identical with any named or defined property. It takes the partial argument this footnote refers to and combines it with another partial argument that Moore takes as his evidence of a different proposition altogether. An enduring criticism of Moores argument is that it is muddled (Hutchinson, p. 29) and accident-prone (Darwall, Gibbard, & Railton, p. 115). As muddled as Moores presentation of his argument appears, taking parts designed for distinct purposes and combining them into some new argument never explicitly made by Moore does not seem a sound strategy for clarifying the text.
7 6

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are considering. It appears that Moore is claiming that when we substitute for good in Is it good to desire to desire A? the words that refer to the property suggested as a definition (the complex), the resulting question is more complicated than the one we started with. This is evidence that the questions are distinct. If so given the nature of language, the words substituted for good do not mean the same as good. That is, they refer to a different property. Call this the More Complicated Question Argument. There is yet a third argument in 13, also in support of the claim that goodness is not identical with any complex property. Moreover any one can easily convince himself by inspection that the predicate of this propositiongoodis positively different from the notion of desiring to desire which enters into its subject: That we should desire to desire A is good is not merely equivalent to That A should be good is good. It may indeed be true that what we desire to desire is always good; perhaps, even the converse may be true: but it is very doubtful whether this is the case, and the mere fact that we understand very well what is meant by doubting it, shews clearly that we have two different notions before our mind. Here, Moore appears to claim that our ability to doubt whether it is true that some complex property is always good and that every instance of goodness is

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also an instantiation of that complex property demonstrates that that property is not identical with goodness. In other words, if we can doubt a statement that purports to tell us that the good is a complex property, then we have, when considering that statement, two different notions in mind. Call this the Argument From Doubt. In the lead up to this argument, found in the first sentence of this passage, Moore suggests that mere inspection can convince us that goodness and the complex property suggested as a definition are distinct. This may, indeed, be a separate argument to the same conclusion. Call this the Argument From Inspection. Having presented at least three, and possibly four, arguments that goodness is not a complex property, Moore turns his attention to the possibility that it is no property, or rather, that good has no meaning. He begins by describing a mistake some naturalists make. It is the mistake of inferring from what appears to be a universal ethical principlelike whatever is called good seems to be pleasantan identitythat good and pleasant refer to a single notion (that is, that goodness is identical to pleasantness). This is the mistake I have identified as the naturalistic fallacy. But instead of arguing that the identification is always false, as we would expect, and as he has been consistently interpreted to do,8 he says:

Consider, for example, Fred Feldmans paper The Open Question Argument: What it isnt; and What it is, Philosophical Issues, 15, Normativity, 2005, pp. 22-43. Feldman argues that the entire passage which Moore claims to be his argument that good is not meaningless is really simply an

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But whoever will attentively consider with himself what is actually before his mind when he asks the question Is pleasure (or whatever it may be) after all good? can easily satisfy himself that he is not merely wondering whether pleasure is pleasant. And if he will try this experiment with each suggested definition in succession, he may become expert enough to recognise that in every case he has before his mind a unique object, with regard to the connection of which with any other object, a distinct question may be asked. Every one does in fact understand the question Is this good? When he thinks of it, his state of mind is different from what it would be, were he asked Is this pleasant, or desired, or approved? It has a distinct meaning for him, even though he may not recognise in what respect it is distinct. Whenever he thinks of intrinsic value, or intrinsic worth, or says that a thing ought to exist, he has before his mind the unique objectthe unique property of thingsthat I mean by good. This is most definitely not an argument that the identification of goodness and simple natural propertieslike pleasantnessis a mistake. It is, instead, an argument that when we consider any proposed definition (and I supposed Moore
argument that no theory identifying goodness with a simple natural property, like pleasantness, is true. Instead, what Moore does here is to remind us that when we consider whether any proposed definition gets it right, we are considering the same property as definiendum. This is proof that we have a single thing in mind when we say good.

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chooses simple properties as definiens to prevent the risk of confusion) and consider the property alleged to be identical with goodness, the property we are comparing it against is always the same property. That is, we have some particular property in mind when we use the word good (in its moral sense). Call this the Uniqueness Argument. If we have a unique property in mind when we use the word good, from which we may infer that there is such a property,9 and goodness (that property) is not a complex property, then it is a simple property. Simple properties are indefinable, hence goodness is indefinable. I take it that this is the entire argument from 13, with all its subsidiary arguments. It is not clear whether Moore took himself to be making more than one subsidiary argument in his discussion of the claim that goodness is not complex. I do not hope to resolve this question, but rather to see what is there, regardless of what was intended. It is altogether possible that Moore took all of the subsidiary arguments for that claim to be different ways of expressing the same point, or that they amount to the same argument by virtue of turning on the same features of language and metaphysics. In section III, I explicate the overall argument that goodness is simple and indefinable and consider the five subsidiary arguments I have identified in support of the overarching argument. Before turning to that task, though, I consider a

Whether this inference is any good will be considered below.

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number of alternative interpretations of Moores proof and compare them to the text as I have just suggested it be read.

B. Some Problematic Interpretations of the Open Question Argument The first endemic problem in commentary on the open question argument is that philosophers are often not careful to distinguish it from the naturalistic fallacy, or take one to be a consequence of the other.10 That the naturalistic fallacy is commonly confused with the open question argument is proved by Baldwin, who writes in his discussion of the open question that [i]t is notable that the section in which [Moore] advances it is the only part of the opening discussion in Principia Ethica of the naturalistic fallacy which does not come straight from The Elements of Ethics.11 Baldwin characterizes the section of Principia Ethica wherein Moore tries to prove that goodness is simple and indefinable as part of his discussion of the naturalistic fallacy. I have shown that the open question argument is distinct from the naturalistic fallacy, both in
Another is that many are not actually discussions of Moores open question argument, but rather applications of something akin to the Moores open question argument applied against theories Moore did not explicitly consider. Gilbert Harman, for example, describes the OQA and claims that it is an invalid argument. Harman, Gilbert, The Nature of Morality, (Oxford, 1977) p. 19. He notes that someone ignorant about the identity of water and H2O would agree that it is not an open question whether water is water, but that it is an open question whether water is H2O. So here we have a perfectly good identity that appears to be disproved by the OQA. But is this the OQA? The analog for ethics would be that it is not an open question whether goodness is identical with goodness but it is an open question whether goodness is identical with X, where X names a natural property. But it seems pretty clear that Moore does not ask whether it is a significant question whether the identity statement holds, but rather whether an object that instantiates X also instantiates goodness. In fairness, Harman does not claim to be explicating Moore, but merely pointing to a kind of anti-naturalist argument. 11 Baldwin, p. 87.
10

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argument structure and intended conclusion. But Baldwin here asserts that Moores presentation of the open question argument (by which he means his proof that goodness is simple and indefinable) is part of his discussion of the naturalistic fallacy. This might explain why some take it to be a simple definist fallacy. If we view section 13 as proving that all natural definitions of goodness are false, including those purported definitions that suggest that goodness is identical with a simple natural property, then surely offering such a definition would be a mistake. This approach simply gives the attempt to define goodness the name naturalistic fallacy. But this approach makes Moores claims about the naturalistic fallacy trivial, and makes it a complete mystery why Moore would have written so much by way of explaining the naturalistic fallacymore, in fact, than he wrote in 13. In addition to conflating Moores two major arguments, critics make other mistakes in describing the open question argument. The next few subsections provide a cross-section of some of the mistakes typically made.

1. Prior Before turning to Moores proof that goodness is indefinable, we have to return, briefly, to Priors discussion of the naturalistic fallacy. His discussion demonstrates an error common to those who take the naturalistic fallacy to be strictly a definist fallacy. Interestingly, he makes this error even though at least

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one of his characterizations of the naturalistic fallacy is virtually identical to one of mine, NF1. Recall, Prior offers two interpretations of the naturalistic fallacy, one highlighting the linguistic ramifications of the fallacythat the naturalistic fallacy is the assumption that because the words good and pleasant necessarily describe the same objects, they attribute the same property to themand one focusing on the properties themselvesthat the naturalistic fallacy is the assumption that because some property is necessarily coextensive with goodness, it is identical with goodness.12 Despite adopting a position that looks very much like mine, he adopts a different role for the naturalistic fallacy, and in so doing, adopts a mistaken view of the relation of the naturalistic fallacy to Moores proof that goodness is indefinable. Prior takes Moores proof that goodness is indefinable to be support for his claims about the naturalistic fallacy. That is, Prior makes the same error as Baldwin, above. Prior claims that when the naturalistic fallacy is committed, the philosopher who has committed it fails to realize that good and some other adjective, say, pleasant may be applicable to the same things and yet not denote the same property. He takes the argument to show that two adjectives may accurately describe the same object without denoting the same property in that object.13 Stated this way, nothing could be more obvious. Why the open question

See this dissertation, Chapter 2, and Prior, Logic and the Basis of Ethics, p 1. Most people take Moores proof that goodness is indefinable to be the open question argument. Prior does not frame his interpretation of Moores argument in terms of open questions.
13

12

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argument (or a variant of it) is needed as support for this proposition is unclear. The mere fact that black and clicky accurately describe the keyboard upon which I typed this sentence without referring to the same property of that keyboard proves this proposition. The naturalistic fallacy, when taken in Priors property-referring form, is similarly without need for support. Moores proof that goodness is indefinable goes no way toward supporting the claim that inferring the identity of properties based only on their coextension is an invalid maneuver. Recall, the naturalistic fallacy is supposed to be a perfectly general fallacy, and is not simply limited to identifications of goodness. We need only to think about the coextension and identity relations to see that this is true, or reflect on a couple of less controversial examples. If the point of the open question argument is merely to demonstrate that coextension and identity are different relations, it makes no sense at all for Moore to attempt to show this by reference to the property goodnessa property about which there is so much contention. That goodness is indefinable shows only that an argument that concludes that goodness is identical with another property has a false conclusion, but tells us nothing about the reasoning. Given that Prior takes the naturalistic fallacy to be about the inference, not the definition of goodness, it is unclear why he views the open question argument as support for the naturalistic fallacy.

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Nevertheless, looking at Priors version of Moores proof may be instructive. Prior describes the basis of Moores proof that goodness is indefinable as follows: If the word good and the word pleasant apply to the same things, but do not attribute the same quality to them, then to say that what is pleasant is good, or what is good is pleasant, is to make a significant statement, however obvious its truth may appear to many people. But if the word good and the word pleasant not merely have the same application but the same connotation or meaningif, that is to say, the quality of pleasantness is identical with the quality of goodnessthen to say that what is pleasant is good, or that what is good is pleasant, is to utter an empty tautology . . . for both statements are on this supposition merely ways of saying that what is pleasant is pleasant.14 This is more of an observation than an argument, but one can be made based on what is said here. The idea is that if we take any proposed definition, a statement to the effect that what possesses the proffered properties is good is a significant statement. And if this is true, then the proffered definition is wrong. Prior is careful to point out that Moore thinks this approach shows that complex definitions fail. But then Prior goes wrong by claiming that Moore also applies
14

Prior, p. 2.

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this argument to simple definitions (definitions in terms of a simple property only).15 His claim, then, is that the open question argument attempts to show that goodness is not identical with any simple or complex natural property. Rather, the open question argument (or the significant question argument) is a mere part of Moores overall proof that goodness is simple and indefinable. As I have shown, above, it is one argument used in support of the claim that goodness is not identical with a complex property. But it does not appear to be Moores entire proof. Moreover, Priors argument is not exactly Moores open question argument. In fact, as I have noted, it is not clear just what really is the open question argument.16 Note that there is no question asked and nothing that is left open. It may, however, turn on the same intuitions about language at evidence in what I have called the significant question argument. In this case, the significant statement made can be viewed in the same light as an open question. The openness of the question is it good? is a result of the meaningfulness of the assertion. If the claim that what was desirable to desire is good was a mere tautology, the question is it good? would not be an open question.

15 16

Prior, p. 3. Consider, for example, Fred Feldmans paper, The Open Question Argument: What it Isnt; and What it is, in Philosophical Issues, 15, Normativity, 2005, pp. 22-43, wherein Feldman finds no fewer than four unique arguments that might claim this title. Notably, none of these actually turns on the identification of any open questions. He also offers one more that is in the spirit of Principia Ethica, but certainly not to be found within it that does turn on an open question.

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2. Hutchinson Like Prior, Hutchinson treats 13 of Principia Ethica as though it presented one unified argument that no natural definition (or identity statement, in the case of simple definitions) is true, but unlike Prior, he notes that reading the passage this way is to disregard Moores verbal cues.17 Nonetheless, he claims that Moores proof that good is not meaningless is better read as a proof that good is not the name of any simple natural property, and all the arguments of 13 preceding that passage, with the exception of the significant question argument, are non sequitors.18 To note that there is a variety of arguments being offered but to dismiss all but the first and last as trivial seems almost worse than getting them wrong!

3. Sturgeon Nicholas Sturgeon advocates something akin to the standard interpretation of the open question argument in Moore on Ethical Naturalism.19 He summarizes the open question test thusly: [Moore] assumes that [any proposed identification of goodness with a natural property] can be correct only if the two terms used in stating it are synonyms . . . . Substituting synonyms for

17 18

Brian Hutchinson, G.E. Moores Ethical Theory (Cambridge 2001) pp 28-38. Hutchinson, p. 29. 19 Nicholas Sturgeon, Moore on Ethical Naturalism, Ethics 113 (April 2003): 528556, at 533.

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synonyms should not change the thought that a sentence expresses. But, as he cleverly notes, when we substitute into the very statement of these proposed definitions, it seems obvious that in thinking that what we desire to desire is good we are not merely thinking that what we desire to desire is what we desire to desire, and that in thinking that pleasure is good we are not merely thinking that pleasure is pleasant. 20 Sturgeon makes a couple of errors in his analysis of Moores argument. The first is in thinking that the open question test is one single argument. As I have stated above, the open question argument is Moores argument that goodness is simple and indefinable, not his argument that no natural definition is correct. I contend that more is needed to reach that conclusion. My arguments to this effect are found in the final chapter of this work. He also combines two distinct arguments, treating the argument that goodness is indeed a property (that good is not meaningless) with the argument that goodness is not complex. The more significant error is that his explanation of the open question argument suffers from the defect of misinterpreting the substitution Moore engages in when he considers whether the sentences, differing only in the substitution of purported synonyms, actually express the same thought. Here is a proposed definition of good:
20

Ibid.

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[1] Pleasure is good. Sturgeon believes that when we substitute the proposed definiens for good we get: [2] Pleasure is pleasant. Sturgeon is right that these two expressions do not express the same thought. He claims that [1] is the statement of the definition. This is, of course, an identity statement. But [2] is not an identity statement. It is a predication of pleasantness to pleasure. The sentence that should result from a substitution of the definiens for the definiendum is: [2'] Pleasure is pleasure. It is little wonder that a predication and an identity statement do not express the same thought. After all, even with no substitution, [1] read as an identity statement does not mean the same as [1] read as a predication. Regardless of whether the argument turns on the substitution of synonyms in a sentence like [1], we ought to be careful to treat the original and the modified statements both as identity statements or both as predications.

4. Brandt Richard Brandt describes a version of the open question argument.21 For any two terms, P and Q, that are purported to have the same meaning, we may
Brandt, Richard B. Ethical Theory: the Problems of Normative and Critical Ethics (Prentice Hall 1959), p. 164.
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compose a question of the form: Is everything P also Q?22 This question asks whether everything that instantiates P also instantiates Q. If this question is intelligible or significant, then P does not mean the same thing as Q. Note that this does not ask of a single P-ish object whether it is Q-ish, it asks whether every P-ish thing is Q-ish. So on Brandt's version of the open question argument, the test is one of coextensiveness. Since the test is phrased perfectly generally, P and Q could be reversedis everything P also Q and is everything Q also P. If it is intelligible to ask whether P and Q are coextensive, then P and Q are not identical. This does not look much like the test Moore proposes in 13. Brandt suggests a criticism that applies to his version and might attach to more ordinary versions of Moore's test too.23 While most critics emphasize that the open question test fails because there are plenty of analyses, even good ones, that fail the test,24 Brandt focuses on a different problem. There are presumed failed analyses that will pass the test, at least for certain cognizers. For example, many people will incorrectly find that there is no significant question when 'bachelor' and 'unmarried male' are substituted for P and Q, forgetting that divorcees and widowers are unmarried males, but are not bachelors. While I find that this version of the argument has little in common with the arguments to be found in Moores text, it is worth noting that a successful version of the argument
So on this version, the test applies to all definitions, not just definitions of goodness. Brandt generalizes the test in a way that it is not clear Moore would endorse. 23 Brandt, p. 165. 24 Ordinary language users might find that whether Water is H2O is a significant question . . .
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will have to ensure both that successful analyses pass the test, and unsuccessful ones fail.

III. Moores arguments explicated

We have seen that the standard interpretation of the open question argument seems not to capture the full flavor of the argument Moore presented. It combines elements of what appear to be distinct arguments, perhaps in an attempt to create a single argument that accomplishes all that Moores naturalistic fallacy has been interpreted to do. I hold that Moores proof is open to more nuanced interpretations than those. By hewing closer to the text, I believe a better interpretation of the proof that goodness is indefinable can be discerned. With some luck, this new argument will be less susceptible to the traditionally asserted critiques. The first point to notice about the presentation of 13, above, is that Moore clearly intends his proof that goodness is simple and indefinable to be a multi-step proof. It does not proceed by showing that every suggested definition is wrong and to conclude from this fact that no such definition is possible, as has been contended. Instead, Moore sets out the optionsgood denotes a simple property, a complex property, or no property, i.e., it is a meaningless wordand argues that the latter two are false. As I have pointed out, what is usually called

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the open question argument is Moores proof that good does not denote a complex property, or, as is more likely the case, one of the arguments to that conclusion. The overall argument may be reconstructed as follows:

Proof that good denotes a simple, indefinable property 1. Good denotes something simple and indefinable, or it denotes something complex, or it denotes nothing at all. 2. Good does not denote something complex. 3. Good does not denote nothing at all. 4. Therefore, good denotes something simple and indefinable.

This is a valid argument. The first premise presents the three possibilities Moore recognizes for the meaning of good. The proof is framed as about the meaning of the word good rather than about the identity of the property goodness for the sake of clarity and consistency with Moorean convention. It is particularly tricky to talk about the property, itself, if one of the possibilities under consideration is that there is no such property. A property can be complex, having constituent parts and thereby be subject to analysis or definition; or it can be simple, and not admit of definition. Moore cannot engage in talk of properties

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without or existence or being.25 He takes properties to be real things, the objects of thought, and the bearers of meaning.26 So it is very difficult to talk of a property having no meaning. But a word might refer to no particular property, or no property unique to ethics. That would satisfy the third disjunct of (1). The second premise is supported by the arguments I called the Significant Question Argument, the More Complicated Question Argument, the Argument from Doubt, and the Argument from Inspection. It is not clear whether Moore intended these to amount to one argument, or as several arguments to the same conclusion. I will treat them separately, noting their interactions when necessary. Premise three is supported by a different argument, one that is clearly distinct from what has commonly been called the open question argument. I have called it the Uniqueness argument. I turn now to the individual sub-arguments.

This is a limitation we do not share with Moore, in part because we have adopted conventions for talking about properties. He tries throughout the text to distinguish between existent objects and non-existent universals, and one way he does this is by referring to universals as the meanings of words off-set in single quotes. We could, easily enough, recast this argument in terms of properties: 1. Either goodness is simple (and hence indefinable), or it is complex, or there is no such property. 2. Goodness is not complex 3. It is not the case that there is no such property. 4. Therefore, goodness is simple (and hence, indefinable). 26 Technically, propositions are the bearers of meaning, but, at least in the years immediately preceding his writing Principia Ethica, including the years when most of it was worked out as The Elements of Ethics, he took objects to be propositions as well. When it comes to properties, he would accept a proposition containing only a property as an element. See Nature of Judgment, Mind (1899).

25

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A. Arguments in Support of Premise (2)27

1. The Significant Question Argument

I have identified a number of possible arguments in 13 for the conclusion that good does not denote a complex property. The first of these, the significant question argument, claims that for any definition that identifies goodness with a complex property, since it is always a significant question whether the complex so defined is itself good, goodness is not a complex property. This is a troubling way to describe the argument, as it is not clear just what Moore means by the complex so defined.28 The usual interpretation is that Moore means the complex suggested as a definition. This is supported in an example he provides in 26. In that section, he says of the view that goodness is a feeling that It will always remain pertinent to ask, whether the feeling itself is good; and if so, then good cannot itself be identical with any feeling.29 I reconstruct a version of this argument below. Moore aims this argument at the
27

Don Regan claims that modern Mooreans should accept only that the open question argument shows that goodness is normative, so different in kind than natural properties. He asks, Why then does a Moorean believe good is not complex? Just because no definition yet suggested in terms of another normative concept produces as plausible a picture of the moral universe as the picture which takes good as foundational. Don Regan, How to be a Moorean, Ethics 113 (April 2003) pp. 651677 at 658. This is to explicitly reject the view that the open question argument proves that goodness is simple, but to tentatively accept the simplicity of goodness, pending development of a better view. I think Moores arguments for the simplicity of goodness (or my reconstructions, anyway) are worth accepting. 28 At least I am troubled by it. 29 Principia Ethica, p. 93 ( 26 3)

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theory that goodness is identical with a complex property, so I frame the argument in terms of the property being something we desire to desire.

Significant Question Argument 1. If goodness is identical with being something we desire to desire, then the question whether being something we desire to desire is good is not significant.30 2. The question whether being something we desire to desire is good is significant. 3. Therefore, it is not the case that goodness is identical with being something we desire to desire. Premise (1) seems a fair embodiment of Moores view. As we will see in a moment, though, there are hints that Moore means something else. As stated, it is appears to turn on the idea that if the property being something we desire to desire is identical with goodness, then it would instantiate goodness. In other words, it would instantiate itself. We must further suppose that when a property self-instantiates, it is not a significant question whether it does so. But this is a doubtful proposition. If the question of whether a property self-instantiates is not significant, and the question of whether some complex property instantiates

30

Alternatively, the premise might read . . . is not pertinent to conform with Moores second example.

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goodness is a significant question, then goodness is not identical with that complex property. Premise (2) asserts that it is a significant question whether the complex property in questionbeing something we desire to desireis good. This seems right. From this, the significant question argument concludes that goodness is not identical with being something we desire to desire. The fault with this argument lies in premise (1). I think that even if goodness were identical with being something we desire to desire, the question whether being something we desire to desire is good would be significant. Moore does not specify what it means to be a significant or a pertinent question, but there are some hints. Roger Hancock argues that we might draw from the statements I have suggested as belonging to alternative arguments. In the passage I called the argument from doubt, Moore writes that the fact that we understand what it means to doubt whether what we desire to desire is good suggests that goodness and being that which we desire to desire are different properties. According to Hancock, Moore means by this that knowing what it means to doubt whether property F is identical with property G implies that the question whether F is G is significant (and vice versa31).32 This might be what Moore had in mind, but I rather doubt it. The question whether F is G is a question of predication, not

31

After all, the argument we are trying to support is that the significance of the predication question demonstrates that the identity under consideration is false. 32 Hancock, Twentieth Century Ethics (Columbia University Press 1974) p. 30.

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identity. I do not know what reliable inferences we can make about the predication of two properties that are not identical. If F were identical to G, it might not even make sense to ask whether F instantiated G. In fact, without having done a survey of properties, I expect that our doubts about the identity of two properties tell us nothing about whether one can instantiate the other. In other words, whether one property can instantiate another is always a significant question, or at the very least, turns on something other than our knowing what it means to doubt their identity. I do not doubt that Hesperus identical with Phosphorus, and whether being Hesperus instantiates being Phosphorus is not a significant question. However, my lack of doubt about identity does not ensure that the instantiation question is not significant. I do not doubt that being a circle is identical with being a closed plane curve every point of which is equidistant from a fixed point within the curve, while whether the property being a circle instantiates being a closed plane curve every point of which is equidistant from a fixed point within the curve is a significant question.33 Goodness, however, might be an exception. To illustrate, let us consider the properties goodness and pleasantness. I know what it means to doubt whether goodness is identical with pleasantness.

I am told that this example was first suggested as an objection to Moores requirements for successful analyses by Ralph Barton Perry in General Theory of Value, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1926), p. 131. Once we recognize that transparency is hard to come by in a definition, definitions of geometric properties come to mind as paradigm cases, so it is not surprising that I have stumbled across the same counterexample.

33

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The suggestion under consideration would then make the question whether pleasantness instantiates goodness a significant question. That seems fine. But if we consider the property goodness, alone, we can see that this suggestion for the meaning of significance fails. I do not know what it means to doubt whether goodness is identical with goodness.34 We might expect from this that it is not an open question whether goodness is good. But, in fact, this does seem like a significant question to me. Moore does not seem to think it is.35 I contend that it is not clear from these passages what Moore thinks about this question. While he clearly takes it not to be significant, the standard interpretation is that he thinks it is insignificant because it is obviously true, and tautologous.36 This is, I think, a mistake caused by commentators failing to recognize that he was asking questions of predication, not identity. Of course goodness is identical with goodness. To deny this would be a contradiction. But Moore is asking about predication here, not identity. And he cannot believe that goodness is self-instantiating. Moore takes goodness to be a property that things have in virtue of their intrinsic properties. But it is not, itself, an intrinsic property. It is also simple and without parts, so it cannot have
34

Actually, Moores language here is unfortunate. I think I know what it means to doubt it, I just do not actually doubt it. 35 Roger Hancock suggests that Moore thinks sentences of the form Whatever is P is P are always tautologous and cannot be doubted. Hancock, p. 30. Further, Hancock suggests that this is because the denial of such a sentence is self contradictory. While this is true when the sentence expresses an identity, it is not necessarily true when it expresses a mere predication. After all, happiness is not happy. 36 Hancock, p. 30.

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any intrinsic properties by which to instantiate itself. Therefore, the question is goodness good? is not significant by virtue of having an obvious answer. Goodness is not good, itself, because goodness cannot instantiate itself. So, on this theory of what it means to be significant, the significance of a question about whether a given complex property is good does seem to support the conclusion that the complex property and goodness are not identical. Unfortunately, it suffers the defect of being question begging. We ought not rely on a notion of significance that requires the insignificance of a question about the predication of goodness to turn on a feature of goodness we are trying to prove, namely, its simplicity. Moore needs an account of significance such that whether goodness is good is not significant and whether any complex property is good is significant. It is unlikely that Moore can offer such an account because the first condition cannot be met. I contend that no account of significance will do. I expect that on any account of significance that makes the first question insignificant, the second question will be insignificant too. And that on any account that makes the second question significant, whether goodness is good will be significant as well. Based on these considerations, the significant question argument fails.

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2. The More Complicated Question Argument

The preceding argument was based on the very first sentence of Moores argument that goodness is not identical with any complex property. This interpretation seems reasonable, though it does not comport with the example he gives in sentences immediately following, in which it is asked, not whether a particular complex is good, but whether an object or state of affairs, A, that instantiates that complex is good.37 If those sentences are intended as an example of the significant question test, then I have the argument wrong, though I would be in good company. I think, though, that the argument in this passage is different. As in the previous argument, the complex property under consideration is being something we desire to desire. Using A as a placeholder for a description of a state of affairs or an object, Moore asks us to consider a series of questions: (a) Is A good?
Moore seems to apply the argument as being based on the fact that it is an open question whether the definiens is good and also whether an object or state of affairs that instantiates the definiens is good. This has been noted by Connie Rosati as well. See, Agency and the Open Question Argument, Ethics vol. 113 (April 2003) p. 497. Moore seems also to ask whether the state of affairs of the object instantiating the definiens is good. So, is property P good?; Is A (which instantiates P) good? and Is A instantiating P good. This last one is particularly interesting, because the analogous question about goodness is not tautologous, but arguably meaningless. It is not clear to me what it means to ask whether it is good that a state of affairs is good. It is not clear to me that particular moral judgments have any moral value themselves at all. It strikes me that Moore might be on to something here. While the more complicated question argument is interesting in and of itself, the fact that the very complicated questions are intelligible when the same would not be true if good were inserted in place of the words denoting the complex property suggests that Moore can, by asking the right question, get the result that questions involving only good are not significant. (in the sense of making sense to ask).
37

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(b) Is it good to desire to desire A? (c) Is the desire to desire A one of the things which we desire to desire? (d) Do we desire to desire to desire to desire A? Moore points out first that (b) is an intelligible question. It asks the same thing of the desire to desire A as (a) asks about A itself. The theory under consideration is that good means the same thing as something we desire to desire, so we ought to be able to substitute for good in (b) to arrive at (d). (c) is a paraphrase of (d) that is easier for some people to understand. On a theory of meaning that preserves meaning when synonyms are substituted for each other,38 (b) and (d) will mean the same thing if good and that which we desire to desire denote the same property. But, says Moore, (b) and (d) do not mean the same thing. When we assert (b) we do not assert something as complicated as (d).

More Complicated Question Argument 1. (d) is more complicated than (b). 2. If (d) is more complicated than (b), then (b) does not mean the same as (d). 3. Therefore, (b) does not mean the same as (d). 4. If (b) does not mean the same as (d), then good does not mean something we desire to desire.
38

A perfectly reasonable view.

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5. Therefore good does not mean something we desire to desire. I have phrased the argument in terms of the word good rather than in terms of goodness, itself, since the premise this argument supports is also in terms of good.39 In support of (1), we might point to the words that make up the sentence, but that would not be particularly helpful. Doing so would undermine our faith in (2). (d) is syntactically more complex than (b), but that proves very little. Consider the sentence that conveys the definition of a circle, above. This is a circle is far less complicated, syntactically, than This is a closed plane curve every point of which is equidistant from a fixed point within the curve but these sentences mean the same thing. Moore does not tell us why he believes (b) is more complicated than (d). When we consider (b), we have not before our minds anything so complicated as (d).40 This seems right. When we consider the two questions, one just seems simpler. It has fewer relations to keep straight. Unfortunately, this is true also of the sentences about the circle. The difference is that for a person well-versed in geometry, the meaning of the syntactically complex sentence about a circle does not seem any more complicated than the meaning of the second one. On the other hand, a committed naturalist who
39

This argument, like the overall argument that this one supports, can be rephrased in terms of properties rather than words, but it is far easier to treat it, as Moore does, as an argument about what the denotations. Since Moore is a realist about meaning, we can draw the appropriate conclusions about the properties themselves. 40 It is not clear here whether he means for us to consider the sentence that expresses the question or the question itself.

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offered the definition we are considering might stand in the same position as our geometer with respect to (b) and (d)although (d) looks more complicated than (b) to Moore and to me, to an expert naturalist, they might appear equally simple. I reserve judgment on this premise for the time being. Ultimately, even if this argument fails, I think we can construct one from its ashes that succeeds. Premise (2) relies on the implicit claim that no two questions that differ in complexity mean the same thing. They are different questions. I do not know whether this is true or not, but I suspect it is. Premise (4) relies on the view that synonyms can be substituted for each other without a resulting change in the meaning of sentences in which they appear.41 This seems correct. On the whole, this argument looks pretty good. Note an important feature of this argument: it does not work for simple properties offered as definitions of goodness. For example, if the definition under consideration was that goodness was pleasantness we would get: (b') Is it good that A is pleasant? (d') Is it pleasant that A is pleasant? Here, the argument would fail at (1) because (d') is no more complicated than (b'). Without the leverage from their differing levels of complexity, Moore could not show that (b') and (d') did not have the same meaning. But this is no

In Fred Feldmans version of this argument, he sensibly attributes a compositional theory of meaning to Moore that accounts for the substitutivity of synonyms. See, Feldman (2005) pp 3133.

41

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drawback of the argument. Remember that this argument was only in support of the premise that good does not denote a complex property. As I have outlined above, Moore does not present an argument in 13 that goodness is not identical with any simple property.

3. The Argument From Inspection

The entire argument from inspection is contained in one sentence in Principia Ethica. Again discussing the suggestion that goodness means that which we desire to desire, Moore writes: Moreover any one can easily convince himself by inspection that the predicate of this propositiongoodis positively different from the notion of desiring to desire which enters into its subject: That we should desire to desire A is good is not merely equivalent to That A should be good is good. The proposition Moore is writing about is not specified. But given the examples with which he follows, it appears that he means the proposition expressed by an affirmative answer to (b). On the other hand, we do not think of words as being the subjects or predicates of propositions, but of sentences.42 We

42

This is a picky point. Moore is pretty clearly not talking about the words good and desiring to desire, but the properties to which they refer, which can make up the subject and predicate of the resulting proposition.

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can cure this defect in one of two ways. We can take Moore to mean either that we can tell by inspection of the properties that enter into the appropriate places in the structured proposition that the denotations of good and being something we desire to desire are different, or that we can tell by inspection of the meanings of propositions that result from affirming (b) and substituting the definiens and the definiendum that good and being something we desire to desire are different. The first possibility ought to be rejected. If we had that kind of epistemic access to the properties themselves, there would be no need for argumentation. Whether goodness was identical with any complex property would be immediately ascertainable. It seems to me that the very point of Moores dialectical device to substitute the properties in propositions and recognize that the resultant propositions have different meaningsis to provide a way to see that the properties are different when it is not apparent by direct inspection of the properties themselves.43 We have, instead, to make use of the second route. Recall (b): (b) Is it good to desire to desire A? The affirmative answer to the question posed might be:

43

In fact, there may be little reason to think that it is any easier to see that the meanings of whole sentences are different than it is to see that the meaning of constituent parts of those sentences are different. Given the compositionality of meaning that seems to underlie some of these arguments, direct inspection of the individual properties is likely what allows us to discern a difference in the meanings of the sentences. If so, then what I have called the argument from inspection may be two distinct arguments. One relies on direct inspection of the properties, and the other on inspection of the properties in the context of a whole sentence.

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(e) It is good to desire to desire A. If we substitute good for to desire to desire we get: (f) It is good that A is good.44 If the definition under consideration is true, we would expect that (e) and (f) have the same meaning. But we can tell by inspection that they do not. From this we proceed exactly as in the More Complicated Question argument.

Argument From Inspection 1. (e) does not mean the same as (f). 2. If (e) does not mean the same as (f), then good does not mean something we desire to desire. 3. Therefore good does not mean something we desire to desire. This argument is slightly less satisfying than the More Complicated Question argument. This is because we have so little support for (1). In the previous argument, we had the fact that one question was more complicated than the other to bolster our intuitions that (b) and (d) were distinct in meaning. Here, we have inspection of (e) and (f). I am not convinced that we can discern a difference. Moore claims that we can see that one is not merely equivalent to the other, but I am not convinced. I expect that someone who really believed that goodness and being that which we desire to desire were the same property would
44

Again, I think the real puzzle here is how (f) is meaningful at all.

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not see the difference even after close inspection. To tell the difference between the propositions expressed by (e) and (f) we would need the same privileged epistemic access that I doubted above.

4. The Argument from Doubt

The last argument I find in 13 in support of the claim that good does not denote a complex property is the argument from doubt. Moore claims that the fact that we understand what is meant by doubting that goodness and that which we desire to desire are coextensive shows that we are thinking about distinct properties. He writes: It may indeed be true that what we desire to desire is always good; perhaps, even the converse may be true: but it is very doubtful whether this is the case, and the mere fact that we understand very well what is meant by doubting it, shews clearly that we have two different notions before our mind.45 I have framed the argument in terms of coextension because Moore seems to grant that it might be true that what has the complex property is always good,

45

Principia Ethica, p. 68, 13, 2.

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but he doubts whether the relation goes the other way. He doubts whether every instance of goodness is an instance of something we desire to desire.46 We can construct a fairly simple argument from this.

Argument From Doubt 1. We doubt whether goodness is coextensive with being that which we desire to desire. 2. If (1) then goodness is not identical with being that which we desire to desire. 3. Therefore, goodness is not identical with being that which we desire to desire. Premise (1) is uncontroversial. Many people doubt that the properties are coextensive. That is, they either doubt that all instances of goodness are instances of desiring to desire, or they doubt that all instances of desiring to desire are instances of goodness. Premise (2) is problematic. The fact that we doubt that two properties are coextensive does not prove that they are not identical. It does show that we doubt that they are identical because you cannot have identity without coextension. It might be objected that I have mischaracterized the argument. Instead of arguing from the presence of doubt to the non-identity of

46

It is not necessary to frame the argument this way. Moore certainly seems to doubt both propositions. But he doubts one more than the other. Framing the question as I have takes care of both.

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goodness and the given complex property, Moore argues from the fact that we understand what it means to doubt the coextension that the properties are not identical. The argument would go as follows: 1'. We understand what it means to doubt whether goodness is coextensive with being that which we desire to desire. 2'. If (1') then goodness is not identical with being that which we desire to desire. 3'. Therefore, goodness is not identical with being that which we desire to desire. Unfortunately, this argument is no better than the first, and in fact, I think it is somewhat worse, in that it really amounts to the traditional interpretation of the open-question argument, and fails for the same reasons. That is, given the most likely explanation for (2'), the argument will be plagued by Frege problems. Presumably, we cannot understand what it means to doubt that two identical properties are coextensive. An understanding of the relations identity and coextension seem to guarantee this. If so, to understand what it means to doubt whether two properties are coextensive is, presumably, to be open to the possibility that one property can be instantiated without the other, and hence, the possibility that they are not identical. But, as we know, this willingness to entertain the non-identity of properties does not demonstrate that they are not identical. Many of us understand what it means to doubt that Hesperus is

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Phosphorus. But this does not show that Hesperus and Phosphorus are nonidentical. Being Hesperus is identical with being Phosphorus. So premise (2') is false. Perhaps it may be objected that competent reasoners cannot know what it means to doubt that Hesperus is Phosphorus, and that, generally, when we consider properties that are identical, we cannot know what it means to doubt their coextension. Such a proposal amounts to amending premise (1'), removing We and substituting Competent moral reasoners in its place. I think this modification fails as well. Even a competent moral reasoner may understand what it means to doubt whether goodness is coextensive with, say, intrinsic value. Then, the argument would conclude that goodness is not identical with intrinsic value. But Moore takes these to be the same property.47 Finally, a Moorean might object to the argument on grounds that the explanation offered for premise (2') fails. She might claim that there is no general principle about doubting that justifies the result here, but rather, the argument only holds for goodness and proposed complex properties offered as definitions. I see no reason to limit the reasoning for premise (2'). Without an account of goodness that explains why our understanding what it means to doubt its coextension with a given complex property has any bearing on whether the properties are identical, the argument will fail. I do not see a plausible explanation forthcoming.
47

He takes good and intrinsic value to be names for the same property.

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5. Conclusions regarding the arguments above

The upshot of this discussion is that in support of the claim that good does not denote a complex property, we can construct four arguments using Moores text. Of these, only one, the significant question argument, seems to turn on anything that looks like an open question. Three of the argumentsthe significant question argument, the argument from inspection, and the argument from doubtsuffered from defects that seem insurmountable. The more complicated question argument looked pretty good. If the defective arguments could be supported, there is a minor difficulty that I mention only as an aside. Two of the arguments, the significant question argument and the doubt argument, conclude that goodness is not identical with being that which we desire to desire. In order to be support for the overall argument that good neither denotes a complex property nor is meaningless, the arguments would need additional premises to bring us from the claim about the distinctness of the properties to the claim that the word good does not denote some complex property. But the required premise is both easy to supply and plausible. For example, we might try If goodness is not identical with being that which we desire to desire, then good does not denote the property being that which we desire to desire.

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A more significant problem for all of these arguments is that none of the arguments conclude that no complex property is identical with goodness.48 Each one argued for the conclusion that a specific property was not identical. So, for instance, while the more complicated question argument might be sound, it does not, in its current form, support the premise that good does not denote anything complex. There appear to be several ways to resolve this problem. Moore would need to represent each of these as general arguments, or as inductive arguments, or perhaps, he could claim that after we perform the argument on a number of different complex properties, we begin to see that no complex property can be a satisfactory definition. I expect that the first option holds out the most hope. Unfortunately this hope is misplaced. For example, to generalize the more complicated question argument, we might start with generalized versions of (b) and (d). Where X is the definiens of any definition wherein good is made to denote a complex property, we would get: (b'') Is it good that A instantiates X? (d'') Is it X that A instantiates X?49 My intuitions about whether (d'') is more complicated a question than (b'') do not help in this situation. I cannot motivate the first premise of the argument because I simply do not find (d'') to be more complicated. Of course this is
48 49

Or alternatively, that good does not denote any complex property. This is equivalent to, (d''') Is As instantiating X a thing that instantiates X? but this, though it looks more complicated that (b'') does not fare any better than (d'') when (b'') is reformulated to mirror (d''')s structure. Consider, (b''') Is As instantiating X a thing that instantiates goodness?

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because by substituting X for the name of a complex property, I have masked the syntactic complexity of (d''). And it turns out that my intuitions are tied to how complicated the question looks syntactically. But this actually highlights a real problem that afflicts this argument. The complexity of the expression used to refer to the complex property seems to make a difference to this argument.50,51 So, while this argument is convincing to me for certain properties, if generalized, it is less convincing. I have little faith in my ability to make judgments about the complexity of questions that are perfectly general. This might suggest favoring the Argument From Inspection but I am afflicted with a similar problem there. I am not confident in my assertions that statements of the appropriate generalized forms have different meanings. Moore, himself, seems to favor the third strategy I suggested for solving the problem. We should apply the argument to a number of different complex properties. After multiple applications, we will see that no definition wherein

In retrospect, I can think of at least one complex property with a simple-sounding name, and it is such that competent geometers might find (d'') more complicated. It is the property Being prismatic. I suggest the following analysis of this property: x is prismatic iff x is a triangular prism, or x is a rectangular prism, or x is a pentagonal prism. Even a non-disjunctive analysis would be quite complicatedbeing a three dimensional object having a polygonal cross section, etc. The point is that properties with simple names might be extremely complex, and such properties are the ones to look at to judge whether the More Complicated Question argument and the Argument from Inspection fail. 51 The property named plaid is a complex property consisting of having several colors and some sort of recurring geometric pattern, etc. If being plaid were offered as a definition of goodness, we might find the question is x plaid? no more complicated than is x good?

50

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good denotes a complex property will be true.52 I find this suggestion unsettling. It amounts to yet another argument with a premise I find dubious. We might construct the following argument on Moores behalf. Moores Generalized Conclusion argument 1. We can apply the More Complicated Question argument against a number of proposed complex definitions. (Go ahead. Try it. We have seen it work with being that which we desire to desire. We can apply it also, with good results, to the properties being in conformance with the collective will, being such that at least 4 out of 5 people surveyed would approve, being what Jesus would do, etc.) 2. If (1), then we can see that no complex definition will survive the More Complicated Question argument. 3. If we can see that no complex definition will survive the More Complicated Question argument, then good does not denote any complex property. 4. Therefore good does not denote any complex property. I see no reason to accept (2) or (3). And this concern is not limited to the More Complicated Question argument. For any argument we have considered so far, the Generalized Conclusion argument seems to fail. Of course, this is rather unfair of me. Inductive arguments of many sorts, even ones we have no real
52

See Principia Ethica, the first sentence of 13, 2.

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doubts about, when reframed as deductive arguments suffer from the defect we see in (2). Consider, for example, the argument that the sun will rise tomorrow morning: S1. The sun has risen every morning in historical memory. S2. If (1), then the sun will rise tomorrow. S3. Therefore, the sun will rise tomorrow. I am quite confident of the conclusion, but not because I find the argument convincing. In fact, I think (S2) is false. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. However, since the conditions underlying the former dawns still obtain, and will obtain (in all likelihood) tomorrow, the conclusion is justified. And even without knowing about those conditions, the inductive argument would be pretty good. Moore likely intends some sort of induction here. We are supposed to see that the consequent of (2) is true, but not for any deductively valid reason. The expectation is that we will simply become aware of the fact that there is something about complex definitions that make them fail the More Complicated Question argument. I have suggested that the most likely reason, that our intuitions about the complexity of the question are based on the syntax of the question, is unsatisfactory. But perhaps there are other reasons.

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6. Final thoughts and the Revised General Significant Question Argument

Before leaving arguments in support of the claim that good does not denote any complex property, I consider the comments of one of Moores critics, and I offer a version of the significant question argument that has a better chance of succeeding than the one I presented above. Roger Hancock considers what I have called the Argument From Doubt in his book Twentieth Century Ethics.53 His explanation of the argument fails in two instructive ways. First, he fails to distinguish this argument from the significant question argument. Instead, he treats it as an explanation of what Moore means by a significant question. Hancock thinks the question Is F good? is significant if the claim F is not good is never self-contradictory. The idea here is that for any complex property F, it can always be asked with significance, whether F is good because F is not good is never self-contradictory.54 Unfortunately, as I mentioned in footnote 35, this suggestion for what it means to be a significant question fails. Moore would not accept it because he thinks the question whether goodness is good is not a significant question, but I contend, he would reject the claim that Goodness is not good is self-contradictory.

Cited above. This, in turn, is based on the claim that Whatever is F is F is a tautology. And this claim is false, at least with regard to predication.
54

53

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Hancocks second error is that he fails to distinguish between the following statements: That we should desire to desire A is good and Whatever is F is good, where F is substituted for that which we should desire to desire. Hancock makes this error on his way to his conclusion about what it means to be a significant question. Moore asserts: That we should desire to desire A is good is not merely equivalent to That A should be good is good.55 Hancock generalizes these as (g) Whatever is F is good and (h) Whatever is F is F.56 His argument is that Moore claims that if good were synonymous with some non-ethical expression, F, then (g) and (h) would mean the same thing. (g) and (h) do not mean the same thing because (h) cannot be doubted and (g) is doubtable. (h) is not doubtable because the denial of (h) is self-contradictory.57 Why Hancock does not treat this as a distinct argument is unclear to me. He
55 56

Principia Ethica, pp 67-68. Hancock, p. 30. 57 Alternatively, because (h) expresses a tautology. One reason to think Moore did not intend this particular argument is that nowhere in his discussion of the arguments in 13 does he use the word tautology or tautologous. In fact, the word does not appear in the entirety of Chapters I and II. I find it surprising that his commentators attribute to him this claim or ones like it.

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seems to have all he needs to motivate an argument against the definition of good as F. Notice, though, that his argument does not faithfully recreate Moores. The mistake is in not recognizing that Moores statement asserts that something other than what (g) asserts. (g) asserts that something that instantiates F is good. Moores statement asserts that it is good that something (A) instantiates F. It ought to be easy to see that one asks about the goodness of A and one asks about the goodness of the state of affairs of A having property F. I highlight this mistake because it demonstrates a possibility for a Significant Question-style argument that does not suffer from the defects we identified in the original. The question whether it is good that a state of affairs is good is not equivalent to the question whether it is good that a state of affairs is F, where F is a complex property. This is because it is a category mistake to ask whether it is good that a state of affairs is good. But it is not such a mistake to ask whether it is good that a state of affairs is F, where F is a complex property. Why do I say that it is a category mistake? This is not the same claim as my contention that goodness is not good, itself. Instead, this is the claim that moral value simply does not attach to moral facts. Moral value attaches to acts and states of affairs, but not to facts about what acts or states of affairs are or are not good. Moral value might attach to my believing a certain moral proposition, but not to the

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proposition (or the underlying fact) itselfit might be morally obligatory to believe that torture is wrong. Other normative properties might attach to moral propositions. For example, the proposition that charitable giving is good might instantiate the property being a justified belief in Bill. Or a moral proposition might be self-evident. These would be two different normative properties epistemic propertiesthat can rightly be predicated of moral propositions. Consider the proposition that it is morally wrong to pay taxes in support of war-mongering governments. This proposition may be true or false, but the proposition itself is not morally wrong. Neither is it morally right, permissible, nor any other moral property.58 In short, the proposition that it is good that it is good that A is neither true nor false. As a result, the question whether it is good that it is good that A (alternatively, whether it is good that A is good) is not a significant question. I have, therefore, been arguing that what it means to be a significant question is that the question can be answered by a statement that has a truth value.59 I cannot say with any degree of certainty that this is what Moore had in mind. But it is an explanation that utilizes the example sentences he gave without the modifications that others, like Hancock, have introduced. It also has the benefit of being useful for creating a version of the Significant Question argument that succeeds without being question begging.

What I am objecting to is second-order moral properties. Either true or false. I do not admit, for purposes of this discussion, the possibility of multivalued logics.
59

58

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Consider the following questions: (i) Is it good that A is a thing we desire to desire? (j) Is it good that A is a thing that is good? I contend that (i) is a significant question. An answer, yes or no, to that question will be either true or false. This is because moral values can and do attach to propositions about complex properties, including complex psychological properties. If I assert that it is good that we desire to desire A, I am asserting something true or false. Therefore, (i) is significant. (j) is not significant. This is because, as I have argued, moral value does not attach to moral propositions. Note that since the feature of goodness that I am exploiting in this argument is not one we are trying to prove, the resulting argument will not be subject to claims of question begging. Note also, that goodness is unique in not being able to be truthfully predicated of a state of affairs being good. I know of no complex property that shares this feature. Consequently, for any complex property, the question whether it is good that A instantiates that complex property is always significant. Now we are in a position to construct a version of the Significant Question argument that is general and not obviously unsound.

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Revised General Significant Question Argument 1. For any complex property F, we may ask with significance Is it good that A is F? 2. We may not ask with significance Is it good that A is good? 3. If (1) and (2), then good does not denote any complex property. 4. Therefore, good does not denote any complex property. This argument has a conclusion written in terms of the word good, as required by the premise of the overarching argument that this argument is intended to support. It is also a general conclusion, applicable to any definition that attempts to define goodness in terms of a complex (non-simple) property. And finally, it does not turn on an account of significance that requires us to accept that goodness is simple. The unique feature of goodness that I have pointed out does not require any particular metaphysical commitments, at least about the sort of definitions that are acceptable. Finally, premise (3) is supported by considerations of meaning discussed above.60 This argument is also sufficient to show that many simple properties are not identical with goodness as well simply by removing the word complex from (1), (3) and (4). There are instances, of course, where such a modification would

60

Preservation of meaning through substitution of synonymous terms.

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prove problematic. If good were substituted for F, the argument would fail, because (1) and (2) would be contradictory. Even without that modification, we might doubt (1) on grounds that there might be a complex property about which the question whether it is good that A instantiates the property is not significant. While I suppose this may be true, I am completely at a loss to think of one, and until this situation changes, I am inclined to accept (1). Based on this argument, primarily, and perhaps on particular instances of the More Complicated Question argument, I think the claim that good does not denote any complex property is well supported. This leaves the possibility that good is meaningless, or that it is simple and indefinable. Premise (3) of Moores 13 argument is that good is not meaningless. A revised version of my Revised General Significant Question Argument might suffice to show that most simple properties are not identical with goodness, but I do not take this to be Moores purpose in 13. That is, if successful, the argument I offered on Moores behalf shows a good bit more than he intended, and maybe as much as most commentators think he intended. I do not pursue this argument further at this time, as it generally undermines any motivation for construing the naturalistic fallacy in the way I find most consistent with the text.

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B. Argument in Support of Premise (3)

Here, Moore is more economical and offers only one argument. This argument, like the ones already discussed, has been fairly well misconstrued. I very briefly describe three bad approaches to the argument before presenting the one that best comports with the text. All three approaches share a common errorthat of not treating the argument as what it claims to be, that is, not treating the argument as supporting the view that good is not meaningless. Hancock uses the first two sentences of the passage in which Moore makes his argument61 to argue for a view of significance, in support of his version of the open question argument. He writes . . . Moore is attacking the view that ethical words are synonymous with non-ethical expressions. And his argument is that when we ask Are Fs good? we can recognize on reflection that there are two distinct things before our mind . . . . The question Is S P? is significant, then, if S and P designate two distinct things . . . .62

Reproduced here: But whoever will attentively consider with himself what is actually before his mind when he asks the question Is pleasure (or whatever it may be) after all good? can easily satisfy himself that he is not merely wondering whether pleasure is pleasant. And if he will try this experiment with each suggested definition in succession, he may become expert enough to recognise that in every case he has before his mind a unique object, with regard to the connection of which with any other object, a distinct question may be asked. Principia Ethica, p. 68. 62 Hancock, p. 31.

61

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It is understandable how Hancock might take this passage to make this argument. But doing so requires ignoring the second sentence which makes it fairly explicit that Moore is focusing on recognizing that the thing we are comparing against many different properties is the same property in each case. Instead of emphasizing the distinction between goodness and any other property under consideration, Moore is emphasizing the sameness of the property we referred to by good in each case. Thomas Baldwin claims that Moores argument that good is not meaningless really shows something else altogether. He writes that Moores argument is really that because we can distinguish in thought between the meaning of good and that of any putative non-ethical analysis, all such analyses must be incorrect.63 He claims that this argument, like the other Moorean argumentby which he means the traditional interpretation of the open question argument64hinges on the failure of reflective substitutivity of proposed definitions, which is evidenced by our ability to doubt their identity. In other words, since we can doubt that good and P where P refers to any (natural) property, goodness and P are not identical. This is certainly not what Moore has done here. He never ever asserted that the proof shows that we can distinguish in thought between the meaning of
63 64

Baldwin, T., G.E. Moore, Routledge, 1990 (London), p. 89 Baldwin ignores the division of arguments I have advocated, arguing instead that there are only two arguments, both having equal claim to the title open question argument and both to the conclusion that no definition of good is correct.

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good and that of any putative non-ethical or natural analysis. What he did assert is that if we keep at it, repeatedly considering the question Is P after all good?, after a while, we may see that the word on the right side of the sentence goodalways refers to the same property, in case after case. And this, supposes Moore, proves that good is not meaningless. We will consider whether he is right in a moment. Finally, Fred Feldman, who does a very good job of distinguishing the various arguments in 13, fails to see the point of the argument. Rather than taking it to show that good is not meaningless, Feldman takes the argument to be an attempt to refute the view that goodness is identical with some simple, natural property.65 Perhaps this is because Moore offers only Is pleasure . . . after all good? and alludes to other questions of the same form about pleasantness, being desired, and being approved as an examples of the sort of question one should consider. But he does two things that clarify his true purpose. First, he writes that the question we consider is Is pleasure (or whatever it may be) after all good? The phrase or whatever it may be does not imply that the question can only be asked of simple, natural properties. It can be asked of any property, simple or complex, natural or non-natural. I take it that the example questions were all about simple definitions of goodness because they are easier to ponder, and we are less likely to get bogged down in considering the
65

Feldman, p. 35.

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question so that we can focus on the appropriate thingthat good means the same thing in each question. And this is because the point of asking the question is not answering it. It is recognizing that we are asking, every time, whether the property under consideration instantiates the same property, goodness. The second clue Moore provides is in the first sentence of the paragraph from which the example comes. Moore writes And the same consideration (our ability to doubt whether those things that instantiate the property offered as a definition instantiate goodnessWP) is sufficient to dismiss the hypothesis that good has no meaning whatsoever.66 The very point of the argument that follows is to show that good is not meaningless. It is not to show that proposed simple definitions fail.67 I have already described the idea behind the argument in my comments about Hancock, Baldwin, and Feldman. All that remains is to present the argument. Consider the following questions: (k) Is pleasure after all good? (l) Is desire after all good? (m) Is being approved after all good?

Principia Ethica, p. 68. Prof. Feldman does not describe the material where Moore tells us the point of this passage. Instead he writes In any case, after a bit of introductory commentary . . . . and then launches into the argument. In this case, that introductory commentary demonstrates the real point of the passage. I suspect Feldman had a different axe to grind. He presents an argument that is not Moores but is an interesting argument nonetheless. It goes toward his overall thesis that commentators have done a miserable job of presenting the open question argument.
67

66

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(n) Is being that which we desire to desire after all good?

Uniqueness Argument 1. (k) (n) ask the same unique question of each property. 2. If (1) then good denotes the same property in every context. 3. Therefore good denotes the same property in every context. 4. If (3) then good is not meaningless. 5. Therefore, good is not meaningless. Premise (1) is supported by our basic intuitions about what we are asking when we entertain questions like (k) through (n). I phrased each of these questions as questions about properties, but we could instead ask whether particular states of affairs were good and still achieve Moores desired conclusion. That is, we do not have to consider questions based on attempted definitions of goodness. Premise (2) is a stretch. Moore writes that when we ask enough of these questions, we may become expert enough to recognize that good denotes the same property in each question. The idea is simply that we always have the same idea in mind when we ask such questions. And the only way this would be the case is if good meant a single thing. So, in fact, (2) is somewhat stronger than Moores claim.

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This is a modest argument.68 Note what this argument does not do. It does not prove that goodness is not identical with any simple natural property. In fact, there is no explicit argument for that proposition in this section. This argument rules out nothing as a definition of good. It merely shows that there is some one thing to which good refers in each of these moral uses.

IV. Conclusion I have argued that rather than being one unified argument that goodness is not identical with any non-natural property, Moores open question argument really consists of two arguments. The first is that goodness is not a complex property. The second is that goodness is not meaningless. The first argument is supported by a number of distinct sub-arguments. These are not all sound, especially when we consider versions of the argument with general conclusions (as opposed to arguments that particular complex definitions fail). However, problems with Hancocks notion of significance suggest an account of that results in a very robust argument, the Revised General Significant Question Argument. I believe this argument poses a significant challenge to definitional naturalists.
68

There might be a sub-argument in here. The primary argument shows that you always have a unique property in mind when you wonder whether pleasure is good. The sub-argument notes that everyone understands the question is X good? And their state of mind is different when they ask that question than it would be when they asked is X pleasant? or is X desired? But this seems to invite us to do something like the Argument From Inspection but to the conclusion that Good is not meaningless. I resist this impulse because it is not clear to me that distinctness of state of mind yields distinctness of meaning, and further whether this implies that good has a meaning at all.

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Chapter 6

Conclusions

I. Concluding remarks about the relation between the open question argument and the naturalistic fallacy In the previous chapter, I argued that rather than being one unified argument that goodness is not identical with any non-natural property, Moores open question argument actually consists of two arguments. The first is that goodness is not a complex property. This claim is supported by at least five subarguments, most of which turn on our intuitions about language and meaning. The second is that goodness is not meaningless. This claim amounts to the claim that there is a unique property which goes by the name goodness. It appears that at least one of the sub-arguments that can be reconstructed from Moores writing is sound and may prove significantly more than Moore intended.1 Rather than merely proving that goodness is not identical with any complex property, it may be sufficient to show that goodness is not identical with any simple property that can be referred to by any natural property referring name. If this is the case, then Frankenas question begging claim can be
1

Though it is not clear that it is exactly what he had in mind. My notion of what it means to be significant is not what most commentators attribute to Moore.

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dispensed with because Moore will have shown that goodness is indefinable. Recall that Frankena claimed the naturalistic fallacy was question begging because when conceived as a definist fallacy, it seems to presuppose that goodness is indefinable. While I strenuously object to this conception of the naturalistic fallacy, if Moore can show that goodness is indeed indefinable by a method that does not invoke the naturalistic fallacy, he will have avoided begging the question. The version of the open question argument I called the Revised General Significant Question Argument, while turning on a conception of significance that I am not sure Moore shared, seems to show that goodness is indefinable without invoking the naturalistic fallacy. Hence, I believe that even if we construe the naturalistic fallacy as Frankena urges, Moore can avoid the criticism that he has begged the question. My interpretation of Moores open question argument has consequences for Priors argument as well. Prior correctly believes that Moore takes the open question argument2 to show that goodness is both simple and incapable of definition. This is a reasonable claim because, for Moore, being incapable of (analytic) definition is a consequence of being simple. As I pointed out in Chapter 4, Prior invokes something akin to the traditional interpretation of the open question argument. His complaint with the argument he reconstructs on
When I refer to the open question argument in this section, I am referring to the entire argument of Section 13 in Principia Ethica, despite the fact that the arguments in that section do not turn on the openness of any particular question or questions, but rather on some other features of language, such as the presumptive complexity of questions containing property names.
2

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Moores behalf is well founded, although his point can be made clearer. The central problem for the view is that it turns on a feature of language that is simply untrue. In order for the standard version of the open question argument, and Priors version as well, to succeed, language would have to be transparent. That is, the argument requires denying referential opacitya feature of language that contemporary philosophers by and large accept. When we consider analyses such as water is H2O, or a brother is a male sibling, we find that it is possible to create questions that at least some people would take to be open ones. We might argue, though, that the fact that the open question argument seems to fail in these contexts is irrelevant because moral language is unique that we have privileged epistemic access to moral properties, and as a result, the sort of transparency that does not exist with non-moral properties and objects does not plague our moral language. Whereas ordinary language is referentially opaque, moral language is transparent. In other words, if two expressions of moral language, ML1 and ML2, mean the same thing, and an individual understands the expressions,3 then she will know that any two sentences (or questions) which differ only in the substitution for ML2 for ML1 (or vice versa) have the same meaning.
As I have phrased this transparency thesis, the privileged epistemic access implies that understanding an expression means knowing its referent and recognizing that it is the same as that of any of that expressions synonyms. For example, if I had such privileged epistemic access to astronomical objects, I would not make the Hesperus/Phosphorus error because I would know, by virtue understanding the names Hesperus and Phosphorus that each referred to the planet Venus.
3

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This response does not succeed. Two problems suggest themselves. First, and less decisively, Moore might be loathe to accept the principle underlying this response. Moore would not want to claim that moral language is unique in this way. He was, after all, attempting to put Ethics on similar footing to other sciences, in part by employing rigorous thought and process to moral reasoning. Carving out a special epistemic niche for moral properties and special status to moral language would run counter to this project. Second and more significantly, the transparency problem plagues even moral language. Consider the words goodness and intrinsic value. Moore takes these words to be synonyms that each refer to the property moral goodness. But if we perform the open question argument on these words, which do refer to the same property, they would fail the test. That is, most people would find the question, x is intrinsically valuable, but is it good? an open question. If the openness of this question is an indication that goodness and intrinsic value are not names for the same property, then presumably, they do not name the same property. Moore cannot accept this. This suggests that we do not have special epistemic access to moral properties that would defeat the lack of transparency concerns. This is a point recognized by Prior.4 So, if the open question argument is given its standard interpretation, Priors criticisms are well-founded.

Prior, p. 3.

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Once we place the open question in its proper context, and properly disambiguate the many arguments contained within it, we can see that Priors objection fails. The open question argument is Moores proof that goodness is simple and indefinable. And although one of the arguments I reconstructed on Moores behalf seems to have as a consequence that goodness is not identical with any natural property, Moore did not take this to be the point of the argument. The point of the open question argument really seems to be to show that goodness is simple. But a simple property, while incapable of analytic definition, is nonetheless still susceptible to successful property identifications. For example, the property yellowness is simple, and it is identical to the property being the color that when mixed with blue yields green. Moore is concerned to limit this kind of definition (definition as identification with a simple property) of goodness as well. After all, his thesis that goodness is a non-natural property would be false if it turned out that a successful property identification between goodness and some simple natural property could be made. This is where Moores claims about the naturalistic fallacy become important. And it is the reason I devote two chapters to justifying an alternative to the traditional definist interpretation. Moores claims about the naturalistic fallacy do not show that any such property identification is incorrect, only that a particular form of argument, one which might be the only one available, does not provide adequate support for any such identity claim. The

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picture that emerges on my view of the open question argument and the naturalistic fallacy is very unlike that conceived by Prior. That the naturalistic fallacy is commonly confused with the open question argument is proved by Baldwin, who writes, in his discussion of the open question argument, that It is notable that the section in which he advances it is the only part of the opening discussion in Principia Ethica of the naturalistic fallacy which does not come straight from The Elements of Ethics.5 I have shown that the open question argument is distinct from the naturalistic fallacy. But Baldwin here asserts that Moores presentation of the open question argument (by which he means his proof that goodness is simple and indefinable) is part of his discussion of the naturalistic fallacy. This might explain why some take it to be a simple definist fallacy. Rather than taking the open question argument to be the proof that it is a fallacy to try to define goodness, I reverse the concepts. The open question argument is Moores proof that goodness is simple, and hence indefinable, and Moores claims about the naturalistic fallacy show that identifying goodness with any simple natural property is epistemically problematic. Recall that for Moore, the way that philosophers who commit the naturalistic fallacy proceed to define goodness is to recognize that goodness and a given natural property are instantiated in the same objects or states of affairs, and
5

Baldwin, p. 87.

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to infer from this that they are identical. Moores complaint with this approach is that it gives you no reason to accept the identity of goodness and the natural property in question. So analytical definitions are inapplicable, by virtue of the success of the open question argument (in one or more of its variations), and simple definitions are of dubious value by virtue of the commission of the naturalistic fallacy by philosophers who offer such definitions. Recall also that Moore recognizes that we might engage in reasoning about the good without defining goodness at all. This was the tactic employed by Sidgwick, for instance. This suggests a question: May we arrive at a property identification, that is, a definition in terms of a simple property, that does not commit the naturalistic fallacy? I suggested in Chapter 3 that we might avoid the naturalistic fallacy by relying on intuition to arrive at our definition. This might not be particularly satisfying either, given that we may not share much commonality in our intuitions. Moore has no objection to identifying the good with natural properties, and doing so by intuition. But he does not suggest it as a method for arriving at property identities or definitions. Consider his discussion of Sidgwicks view that pleasure alone is good as an end. This propositionthat pleasure is the good is held as an object of intuition by Sidgwick.6 Moore writes that his own intuition arrives at a different result. It may always be true notwithstanding;
6

Principia Ethica, p 126, 45.

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neither intuition can prove whether it is true or not . . . .7 Moore is left trying to offer reasons capable of determining the intellect rather than to offer conclusive refutation or even indubitable intuitions in opposition to Sidgwicks intuitively derived thesis. If intuition is not a reliable way to arrive at the coextension between goodness and some natural (or metaphysical) property, then it is surely inadequate as a route to certainty with respect the identity of goodness and a natural (or metaphysical) property. Is there another way to support such a property identification? One obvious one would be to mount a Leibnizs Law style argument in favor of the identity of goodness with a given property.8 This sort of argument would not suffer the defect of an inference from co-instantiation of goodness and a natural property to identity of those properties. Instead, it turns on the Identity of Indiscernibles.9 An example follows: 1. Goodness has every property that pleasantness has. 2. Goodness has no property that pleasantness does not have. 3. If (1) and (2) then goodness has exactly the same properties as pleasantness.

Ibid. Note also that Moore claims that, propositions about the good are all of them synthetic and never analytic. Principia Ethica, p 58, 6. If this is so, then Sidgwicks claim, a proposition about the good, cannot be true by definition. If it is true at all, it could only be contingently so. 8 This, it seems to me, might exhaust the possibilities. Coextension, even necessary coextension, does not give sufficient reason to accept an identity. Intuition seems inadequate. Inferring from a relationship weaker than coextension surely will not do. 9 Symbolized as F(Fx Fy) x=y.

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4. Therefore, goodness has exactly the same properties as pleasantness. 5. If goodness has exactly the same properties as pleasantness, then goodness is identical with pleasantness. 6. Therefore goodness is identical with pleasantness. The only unobvious premise in this argument is premise (5).10 (5) is an instance of the principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles. This principle states that for any two objects, if they share all of their properties, that is, if each has exactly the same properties, they really are simply one single object. In this argument, the principle is applied to properties. If two properties have exactly the same properties, then, we might think, they really are one and the same property.11 While this argument runs afoul of one of the arguments I offered as a possible reconstruction of Moores open question argument,12 if my claims about Moores real intentions with that argument are correct, since it identifies goodness with a simple property there can be no complaint that the arguments conclusion is barred by the open question argument. And it does not present a problem for the naturalistic fallacy, because it does not involve any inference from the coinstantiation or coextension of goodness and pleasantness.

10 11

(1) and (2) might not be obviously true, but their meaning is obvious enough for our discussion. There are some reasons to doubt whether this principle is applicable to individual properties and, in fact, whether the principle is true at all. Max Black has argued that a universe containing only two exactly similar objects would prove the Identity of Indiscernibles false because while the two objects would be indiscernible, they would clearly not be identical. The Identity of Indiscernibles, Mind, New Series, Vol. 61, No. 242 (Apr., 1952), pp. 153-164 at 156-161. 12 The revised general significant question argument.

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Of course, Moore would not accept this argument. First, Moore would just reject premises (1) and/or (2). One easy way to show that (1) or (2) is false is to provide a counterexample. If Moore could offer an example of a state of affairs or an object that was pleasant, but not good, or vice versa, then that would show that goodness and pleasantness are not identical. If such an example could be found, then one property would have a property that the other did not possess. For example, if donating blood was good, but not pleasant, then goodness would have the property Being instantiated by instances of blood donation, but pleasantness would not have this property. This would show that (2) is false, and hence, the argument is would be unsound.13 Moore would be more inclined to take a different approach to refuting this argument. He would deny both (1) and (2) but not on grounds that there is a counterexample, but rather on the ground that goodness simply has a quality that no natural property can possess. That is, goodness is a normative property and pleasantness is not. This is, according to Darwall, Gibbard and Railton, the enduring lesson of the open question argument.14 They believe that even if the

13

One must be careful when utilizing this strategy. This is, in essence, to turn the argument on its head and rely on the non-identity of discernibles principle. The danger becomes apparent when we consider another property that goodness has that pleasantness does not, namely, being believed by Moore to be non-natural. It is well established that this sort of property causes trouble for arguments utilizing the non-identity of discernibles principle. We need only think of the Lois Lane, Superman/Clark Kent arguments to remind ourselves of this. 14 Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton, Toward Fin de Siecle Ethics: Some Trends, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 101, No. 1 (January 1992), pp 116-117. Note that Frankena arrived at this conclusion fifty years earlier in his contribution to P. A. Schilpp (ed.) The Philosophy of G. E. Moore. See, W. J. Frankena Obligation and Value in the Ethics of G.E.

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argument is ultimately unsuccessful in exposing a fallacy,15 Moore has shown that goodness is irreducibly normative.16 Since goodness is supposed to be unique in this respect, we might conclude that goodness does not share all of its properties with any natural property, so again (2) is false. I expect that this is how Moore would reply, but it does expose him to yet another claim of question begging. Nicholas Sturgeon has pointed out that even if we grant that the open question argument successfully shows that good refers to a different property than any natural term does (a proposition that Sturgeon is not willing to accept), this does not prove that goodness is non-natural. Good is certainly co-referential with good, and if good happens to refer to a natural property, then Moores argument goes no way toward proving that goodness is non-natural.17 Sturgeon argues that Moore has begged the question by assuming that no natural properties have the normativity associated with goodness. Without an argument that natural properties do not have normative force, Moore is

Moore, in Schilpp, p. 102. And Prior reached the same conclusion in 1949. See Logic and the Basis of Ethics (1949) p. 5. Note that Frankena also argues that the fact that goodness can be defined in terms of ought means that it is not a simple property. I believe this is a mistake. Frankena seems to be offering the wrong kind of definition. A definition in terms of ought would be a conceptual analysisit tells us a way to think about the property goodnessbut it is not a definition in the Moorean sense. Moorean definition requires an enumeration of the component properties that make up the definiendum. I can give a definition of yellowness in terms of greenness, but this does not prove that yellowness is not simple. 15 They, too, treat the open question argument as part and parcel with Moores claims about the naturalistic fallacy. 16 See also, Connie Rosati, Agency and the Open Question Argument, Ethics 113 (April 2003): 490527 at 495. 17 Nicholas Sturgeon, Moore on Naturalism, Ethics 113 (April 2003): 528556 at 536.

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foreclosed from arguing against the Identity of Indiscernibles argument on the grounds set forth in the preceding paragraph.18 Finally, Moore might object to the argument on the ground that he does not accept the method as a way to define goodness. In all of Principia Ethica, we never see an instance of identifying the properties that goodness has. There are, however, certain features asserted of goodness. For instance, Moore asserts that goodness is the property that is the proper subject matter of Ethics and that it is that property whose instantiation in a state of affairs gives us a reason to act in such a way as to bring about that state of affairs. But these are not intrinsic properties of goodness. These are relational properties of goodness. They tell us things about how goodness is related to our philosophizing, or about its causal relation to our motivations,19 but they do not tell us about the nature of the property itself. On Moores scheme, this is a consequence of the simplicity of goodness. If the property had intrinsic properties which we could enumerate, it would have parts, and be susceptible to the sort of analytic definition Moore claims is impossible. So, in fact, the sort of enumeration of properties required to motivate this Identity of Indiscernibles argument is ruled out as a consequence of the open question argument.

This is not quite true. Moore could easily make such an argument for any particular natural property. Sturgeons argument only forecloses claiming that (2) is false on the ground that no natural property is normative. 19 Assuming for purposes of this example only that we are motivated to do that which we ought to do.

18

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The same is true for natural properties. Consider, again, the simple property yellowness. We can assert of yellowness that it is the color of lemons and sunflowers, or that paint instantiating this color, when mixed with blue paint, yields green paint. These properties are not intrinsic properties of yellowness, but rather, they tell us how yellowness is related to other things. More importantly, they are not necessary to yellowness, and hence, do not uniquely identify that property. In all, these are rather potent reasons to reject this sort of approach to defending a property identity for goodness. This suggests that the only way open to naturalists20 who wish to define goodness is to proceed from the coinstantiation of goodness and their preferred natural property, and in so doing, commit the naturalistic fallacy. If my interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy is correct, committing the naturalistic fallacy does not guarantee that the proffered view is false. It merely means that it cannot be supported by a well-justified, deductive argument.

II. Overall Conclusions The purpose of this dissertation was to offer an interpretation of what it means to commit the naturalistic fallacy that is maximally consistent with Moore's text and examples, to distinguish Moore's claims about the naturalistic fallacy
Again, we are discussing reductive naturalists here, those who attempt to define goodness in terms of natural properties.
20

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from the open question argument, and to correct mistaken interpretations of the open question argument. In pursuing these goals, I found that the naturalistic fallacy and the open question argument are complementary, rather than redundant, arguments. Moore uses the open question argument to show that goodness is not identical with any complex natural or metaphysical property. But this still leaves the possibility that goodness is identical with a simple natural or metaphysical property. His claim that philosophers who attempt to define goodness commit the naturalistic fallacy undermines support for any such identification, even if it does not conclusively refute such definitions. My first chapter provided justification for this dissertation. I noted that Principia Ethica has had an enduring legacy, though there is little agreement on what Moore claimed or how he attempted to support his claims. I identified Moores discussion of the naturalistic fallacy as the most celebrated yet least wellunderstood portion of the text, and so began my examination of his moral philosophy with this concept. In Chapter 2, I explained the rudiments of Moores view on the nature of goodness, and considered some implications of his view. Goodness is a simple property, meaning it has no constituent parts, and hence it is indefinable. I also explained what a successful definition might look like for Moore. In Chapter 3, I examined rival interpretations of the naturalistic fallacy provided by Baldwin, Prior and Frankena, and interpretations provided by Moore,

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himself, finding that none of them maintains high fidelity to the text of Principia Ethica. Baldwin offers three possible interpretations, none of which were particularly appealing. Each relied on taking a particular bit of Moorean text out of context. Where the interpretations were consistent with the text, they did not offer a fallacy, that is, there was no bad inference being made. Prior offered two interpretations similar to the view I defend. One of Priors interpretationsthat to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to infer from the necessary coextension of goodness and some natural property that they are identicalseems to me to be a correct statement of one version of the naturalistic fallacy. However, Prior attributes far too much to Moore, claiming that the naturalistic fallacy is Moores entire argument that all forms of naturalism are false. Naturally, Prior finds that the naturalistic fallacy is not well suited to this task. What Prior did, we saw, was to conflate the naturalistic fallacy and the open question argument, which together, make some significant strides (yet, fall short as we have seen) toward proving non-naturalism. Finally, we looked at Frankenas influential views on the naturalistic fallacy. Frankena takes the most methodical approach of Moores critics, but ultimately attributes too much to Moores claims about the naturalistic fallacy as well. Foreshadowing Prior, Frankena takes the naturalistic fallacy to be Moores argument against all forms of naturalism, and finds that such an argument cannot be sustained without assuming non-naturalism from the start. I argued that Moore

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need not provide an argument that naturalism is false before he accuses a philosopher of committing the naturalistic fallacy, because committing the fallacy does not entail the falsity of the view. The naturalistic fallacy was not intended to refute any theory, but rather to show that any attempt to define goodness is based on a bad inference. In Chapter 4, I offered a close read of Moores statements wherein he describes the naturalistic fallacy and of his examples of philosophers who commit the naturalistic fallacy. I found that in each case, to commit the naturalistic fallacy is to infer from either the coextension (necessary or otherwise) of two properties or the mere supposition that all instances of one property are also instances of another, that the properties are identical. My interpretation of the naturalistic fallacy suggests that while it is a common enough error, it is not wellsuited to play the role that many of Moores commentators assigned to it. As we have seen above, it does have a role, and the contours of that role are shaped by the open question argument. In Chapter 5, and concluding in this chapter, I offered a reading of Moores open question argument that emphasizes fidelity to the text (despite the fact that I retain the ill-deserved name) and rejects the traditional interpretation. Rather than proving that all naturalistic definitions of goodness are wrong, I find that the argument really only demonstrates that no complex definition is correct. Where Moore does deploy an argument that can rightfully be called an open

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question argument21 against a simple definition, it fails, and for the usual reasons cited. We are left, then, with an array of arguments, some of which are fairly robust, in support of the proposition that goodness is a simple property. It seems likely that one of the arguments that is effective against complex definitions will be effective against some simple ones as well, but it is not clear that this was Moores intention. Nevertheless, we are now in position to deploy the naturalistic fallacy against the naturalist. Any naturalist who offers a simple definition of goodness, i.e., a property identity in terms of a simple property, is likely to commit the naturalistic fallacy, thereby undermining support for her position. This does not disprove all versions of reductive naturalism, but it suggests that no version can cite as support for its definition a robust deductively valid argument. There will always be some reason to doubt the inference from the co-instantiation of goodness and the proffered natural property to their identity.

21

In sections 14 and 26.

211 Bibliography

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