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Principia Ethica 2nd Edition

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G. E. Moore (Author)
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G. E. Moore (Author), Thomas Baldwin (Editor)
3.9 out of 5 stars 23 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0521448482
ISBN-10: 0521448484
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 2 edition (November 26, 1993)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0521448484
  • ISBN-13: 978-0521448482
  • Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,429,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Top Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsModern Ethical Thought Begins With This One!
By Kevin Currie-Knight VINE VOICE on April 4, 2005
Format: Paperback
George Edward Moore has the unfortunate privilege of having spawned one of the most uninformedly invoked ideas of all time - the naturalistic fallacy. Like Thomas Kuhn's "paradigm shift," the naturalistic fallacy is tirelessly invoked by writers to mean any number of things, not many of which agree with the author's original usage. That is perhaps one reason to read G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica. Another, of course, is that it is a classic of twentieth century ethics!

Most of the chapters, of course, deal with Moore's idea about the naturalistic fallacy. Contra those numerous authors that use it to mean simply the fallacy of supposing what is natural to be de facto good (that is one manifestation of it, but not it), the naturalistic fallacy has a much broader meaning. The fallacy, in Moore's view, is to explain what is "The Good" in any way other than to say "it is The Good," - to suppose, that is, that "The Good" is definable in any way. To Moore, "The Good" is simply "The Good" because it is good and that is all we can say. Any attempt to equate "The Good" with something else - pleasure, a metaphysical entity, what is natural, etc. - is a manifestation of the naturalistic fallacy.

Moore uses the first chapter to explain why the naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy. The answer is similar to Hume's is/ought gap. That is that any attempt to say what "The Good" is - i.e., the Good is what causes pleasure; The Good is what exists in the natural order - is nothing other than a criterion for recognizing things that are good; what explanations of this sort are not are actual definitions of the good. (In other words, saying that things which give pleasure tend to be good is much different than saying that "The Good" is constituted by what gives pleasure and that alone.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsA Seminal Text in Twentieth-Century Philosophy
By ctdreyer on February 21, 2004
Format: Paperback
Moore's Principia Ethica is a central text in twentieth-century meta-ethics. According to the familiar history of the subject, the story of much of twentieth-century meta-ethics can be understood as a series of reactions to this book. In this book Moore argues for non-naturalistic intuitionism. He argues that moral properties are an irreducible part of reality, and that they are sui generis. And he argues that we can acquire knowledge of these sui generis moral properties only through intuition.
The first chapter includes Moore's famous Open Question Argument, his argument that intrinsic goodness is a simple, unanalyzable, non-natural property. There appear to be two strands of the OQA; both of them appeal to our linguistic intuitions. The first focuses on our intuitions about whether certain claims about intrinsic goodness are tautological. Borrowing Moore's own example, suppose someone tries to define 'good' as 'what is pleasant'. All competent users of the language can see that this definition must fail. How? They simply need to ask themselves if "the good is what is pleasant" has the same meaning as "the pleasant is what is pleasant," for these two sentences would be synonymous if 'good' could be correctly defined 'what is pleasant.' And, Moore claims, these sentences clearly aren't synonymous: the claim that "the good is what is pleasant" is not a tautology like "the pleasant is pleasant." This shows that 'good' and 'what is pleasant' have different meanings. Furthermore, Moore argues that thinking about other examples will show that, in principle, we could develop that a structurally similar argument against any other attempted definition of 'good'.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsGreat...
By Pedro M. Rosario Barbosa on September 23, 2000
Format: Paperback
G. E. Moore offers a great evaluation of all the ethical philosophies, from the psychologist propositions (John Stuart Mill), to the naturalist, evolutionary ethics, utilitarianism, hedonism, etc. You see how they all fall into the "naturalistic fallacy", that the "good" is somehow related to some physical, psychological, emotional or evolutionary aspect. Bright refutation of all of these positions. Very good for those who want to start knowing about ethics, specially analytical ethics.
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5.0 out of 5 starsCAN WE EXPLAIN WHAT IS MEANT BY "GOOD"?
By Steven H Propp TOP 100 REVIEWER on October 6, 2014
Format: Paperback
George Edward Moore (1873-1958) was an English philosopher of the analytic tradition in philosophy, who later became known for his defense of "common sense" concepts. He also wrote G.E. Moore: Selected Writings. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 232-page Cambridge University paperback edition.]

He wrote in the Preface to this 1903 book, "It appears to me that in Ethics, as in all other philosophical studies, the difficulties and disagreements, of which its history is full, are mainly due to a very simple cause: namely to the attempt to answer questions, without first discovering precisely WHAT question it is which you desire to answer... I have tried in this book to distinguish clearly two kinds of question, which moral philosophers have always professed to answer, but which... they have almost always confused both with one another and with other questions. These two questions may be expressed, the first in the form: What kind of things ought to exist for their own sakes? the second in the form: What kind of actions ought we to perform?... there appears to me to follow a second more important result: namely, what is the nature of the evidence, by which alone any ethical proposition can be proved or disproved, confirmed or rendered doubtful... I have endeavoured to discover what are the fundamental principles of ethical reasoning; and the establishment of these principles, rather than of any conclusions which may be attained by their use, may be regarded as my main object."

He argues, "If I am asked, `What is good?' my answer is that good is good, and that is the end of the matter. Or if I am asked `How is good to be defined?Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsA magnificent reference point

Moore's "Principia Ethica" is famous for claiming that questions about what one ought to do are questions about how to promote the good, with good being a simple... Read more

Published 6 months ago by HH
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

excellent text and service

Published 18 months ago by Kurt Pond
1.0 out of 5 starsAmazon are becoming envious obscurantists who dumb down America like...

Amazon are becoming envious obscurantists who dumb down America like the rest of the greedy liberals who took over Academia - turning morality upside down!!

Published 20 months ago by kurt slotkowski
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

good

Published 20 months ago by Nan Zhang
3.0 out of 5 starsRough road to drive on.

I ordered this book for my ethics course. Can we properly define the term 'good'? Moore doesn't think we can. Read more

Published 23 months ago by Joel Ontiveros
5.0 out of 5 starsCAN WE EXPLAIN WHAT IS MEANT BY "GOOD"?

George Edward Moore (1873-1958) was an English philosopher of the analytic tradition in philosophy, who later became known for his defense of "common sense" concepts. Read more

Published on October 6, 2014 by Steven H Propp
5.0 out of 5 starsCAN WE EXPLAIN WHAT IS MEANT BY "GOOD"?

George Edward Moore (1873-1958) was an English philosopher of the analytic tradition in philosophy, who later became known for his defense of "common sense" concepts. Read more

Published on October 6, 2014 by Steven H Propp
5.0 out of 5 starsCAN WE EXPLAIN WHAT IS MEANT BY "GOOD"?

George Edward Moore (1873-1958) was an English philosopher of the analytic tradition in philosophy, who later became known for his defense of "common sense" concepts. Read more

Published on October 6, 2014 by Steven H Propp
5.0 out of 5 starsCAN WE EXPLAIN WHAT IS MEANT BY "GOOD"?

George Edward Moore (1873-1958) was an English philosopher of the analytic tradition in philosophy, who later became known for his defense of "common sense" concepts. Read more

Published on October 3, 2014 by Steven H Propp
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

the book is good and cheap, the delievery is quick.Thanks

Published on December 26, 2013 by Wu Xiulian

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