Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction: Irony, Naïveté, and Moore
- 1 Simplicity, Indefinability, Nonnaturalness
- 2 Good's Nonnaturalness
- 3 The Paradox of Ethics and Its Resolution
- 4 The Status of Ethics: Dimming the Future and Brightening the Past
- 5 The Origin of the Awareness of Good and the Theory of Common Sense
- 6 Moore's Argument Against Egoism
- 7 The Diagnosis of Egoism and the Consequences of Its Rejection
- 8 Moore's Practical and Political Philosophy
- 9 Moore's Cosmic Conservatism
- 10 Cosmic Conservatism II
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Good's Nonnaturalness
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction: Irony, Naïveté, and Moore
- 1 Simplicity, Indefinability, Nonnaturalness
- 2 Good's Nonnaturalness
- 3 The Paradox of Ethics and Its Resolution
- 4 The Status of Ethics: Dimming the Future and Brightening the Past
- 5 The Origin of the Awareness of Good and the Theory of Common Sense
- 6 Moore's Argument Against Egoism
- 7 The Diagnosis of Egoism and the Consequences of Its Rejection
- 8 Moore's Practical and Political Philosophy
- 9 Moore's Cosmic Conservatism
- 10 Cosmic Conservatism II
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Background
The topic of this chapter is Moore's claim that good is nonnatural. Our aim is to achieve a deeper understanding of Moore's views on the nature of nonnaturalness and of the entire ontology within which Moore places his theory of value, a sense of the difficulties imposed upon his conception of intrinsic value by nonnaturalness, and finally, some clues as to how we might deal with these difficulties in a manner enriching to his theory.
To remind ourselves, according to Principia, the difference between natural and nonnatural properties has to do with their relation to time. Simply, natural properties exist in time while nonnatural properties do not. Since a natural object is completely exhausted by its natural properties, no nonnatural property can be a part of a natural object. The two kinds of property best satisfying the criteria of naturalness on this account are: 1) the most determinate properties of colors, textures, sounds, etc. exemplified by objects in the physical world and 2) such mental items as feelings of pleasure and pain. When it comes to the consideration of properties more general or abstract than these, Moore's bare-bones analysis of the distinction between natural and nonnatural properties must be greatly extended and refined. Moore does a little of this work implicitly in Principia and much more of it explicitly in later work, without nearly doing all of it.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- G. E. Moore's Ethical TheoryResistance and Reconciliation, pp. 39 - 60Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001