Moore\'s Principia Ethica and its Aristotelian Critics

Hahn 1 Karl Hahn Moore’s Principa Ethica and its Aristotelian Critics “Good is good, and that is the end of the matter.” The Principia Ethica is a watershed text in the history of academic moral philosophy. This it is undoubtedly by virtue of its consequence upon the academic moral imagination, though perhaps only quite contestably by virtue of the truth and cogency of its arguments. For while it cannot be denied the Principia that it established, or at least helped significantly to establish, that peculiar turn in discourse about moral matters which has since championed the title of metaethics and flourished as a sub-discipline of analytic philosophy, it can of course be denied that this turn is a sound one. In brief, meta-ethics of the sort which Moore began could be characterized as an independent position of analytical philosophical reflection for which the various theoretical meanings of the “moral” terms of good and bad, right and wrong, ought and duty, are held under close conceptual scrutiny, characteristically at a level of high abstraction from real social practices and from the uses which such moral terms enjoy within these practices. One of the claims I should like to make in this paper is that this sort of theoretical reflection upon the conceptual subject-matter of ethics, especially as this form of reflection is developed by Moore, is indeed unsound. In support of this claim, I offer the paper that is to follow and the history of argument which it is to adumbrate. I should like first to present the arguments and theses of which G.E. Moore availed himself in constructing his philosophy of ethics and I should like subsequently to subject these arguments and theses to the criticisms that can and have been levelled against them by moral philosophers of an Aristotelian species. Afterwards, I will conclude with certain comments of my own. To begin, I shall attempt first to make clear the precise nature of the

Hahn 2 project in the philosophy of ethics raised by Moore of which Moore supposed his theoretical considerations to provide the best known defense and formulation. “I have endeavored to write ‘Prolegomena to any future Ethics that can possibly pretend to be scientific.’ In other words, I have endeavoured to discover what are the fundamental principles of ethical reasoning.”1 Such is Moore’s judgment. By what then is this attempt to set the conditions for the possibility of a scientific ethical discourse to be characterized? Principally by a clear formulation of that set of questions peculiar to ethics by which ethics is uniquely itself and not another thing.2 The questions belonging to this set are most basically of two sorts. The first sort of question asks: what are the things that are good in themselves? Or, what are the things which ought to exist? The second sort of question asks: given some set of objects which are good in themselves and which ought to exist, what are the actions which one ought to perform in order to bring it about that these objects do in fact exist to the greatest extent possible?3 While the second sort of question is, as it stands, already in its most reduced form, the first sort of question admits of another two-fold division into two separate questions about what are for Moore two conceptually distinct objects: 1) What is good? Or, for what object or idea does the adjective “good” stand? And 2) What things are good? Or, what are the complex wholes of which this unique adjective “good” must always be predicated? Or again, what are the things that ought to exist? It would be to preempt the later developments of this paper to enquire here and now whether Moore’s spade has indeed hit ethical bedrock with the concepts of “right,” “ought,” and of the predicative adjective “good.” One is inclined to be doubtful, given the species of argument

1

Moore, G.E., Principia Ethica, Dover Publications, Inc., Mineola, New York: 2004, pp. v. Original publication 1903. 2 Moore begins his work with a citation of Bishop Butler: “A thing is itself, and not another thing.” Ibid., pp. i. 3 Ibid., pp. iv.

Hahn 3 which Moore adduces for the construction of the above schema of questions. For example, the latter multiplication of the objects of ethical enquiry into that object constituted by the meaning of the unique adjective “good” and that object constituted by those things which possess this adjective is first justified by appeal to what Moore believes the exercise of reflective understanding simply to elicit. It is argued that, upon adequate reflection, we will clearly see that any good thing is a thing of which “good” is predicated, and so we will furthermore see that good things seen to be good are good by virtue of the univocal predicate notion “good”, about which one must enquire in independence of one’s enquiries about which things possess this predicate or not. So I will for the moment simply note this curiosity in Moore’s ethics, namely that here and elsewhere in it one finds by happy coincidence that the most basic resources for all ethical discourse that can possibly pretend to be scientific happen to be constituted by the conceptual vocabulary and reflective self-evidencies natural to the mind and armchair of a Cambridge gentleman at the turn of the 20th century, a curiosity which makes Moore’s association of his work with Kant’s own text in metaphysics perhaps all the more apt as an analogy. It is in any case not just a set of foundational questions which Moore proposes, but also and significantly some methodological considerations aimed at answering them. It is with Moore’s considered and delicate elaboration of the best way to understand and defend his original questions that the rubber hits the road. In evaluating this complex elaboration, I shall attend first to that, with which can be most easily dispensed. Moore proposes that all questions of his second sort, questions of right conduct, are questions which admit of a definite answer by way of a calculus of means. Such is the method of Moore’s scientific ethics applied to the sphere of action: Supposing I admit of the ethical proposition X, where X asserts that Y is good in itself, then the proper place of a scientific ethics concerning matters of right conduct consists of sound

Hahn 4 reasoning with regard to those causal judgments by which I might identify those actions which possibilize Y or not, those actions which conduce to Y or not, and those actions which are themselves the cause of Y or not.4 What I ought to do is thus always that which will have the best possible result in terms of Y, and so the right and the useful are parts of a married pair, different only with respect to certain psychological niceties associated quite accidentally with the former term.5 Such a calculus is furthermore always a probabilistic, empirical affair,6 and it involves a consequentialism of a kind about how “right” is to be determined in any given case, such that no actions are right or wrong as such, but rather only right or wrong circumstantially.7 Nonetheless, given (a) certain socially accidental sanctions and legalities, and (b) certain anthropological constants, and (c) the limitations of knowledge in matters of empirical estimation, there are some general rules of conduct by which it is always reasonable, barring extraordinary circumstances, for a human being to abide without question. Such is the status of the general prohibition against murder, for example. These are, as is plain, highly contestable claims, though they are just as much claims over which Moore passes as if they were more or less obvious. One peculiarity of Moore’s calculus of right conduct is that though it is of course Utilitarian, such is a label which this calculus can carry only with some small ambiguity in tow. For Moore did not believe, as Moore believed Utilitarians such as Mill to have believed, that the ends of ethical enquiry are in truth also the means to happiness. Certain goods are ends in themselves for Moore and they are justified by

4

Ibid., 37. Ibid., 146-147 6 Ibid., 155. “An ethical law has the nature not of a scientific law but of a scientific prediction: and the latter is always merely probably, although the probability may be very great.” 7 Ibid., 25. “In short, to assert that a certain line of conduct is, at a given time, absolutely right, or obligatory, is obviously to assert that more good or less evil will exist in the world, if it be adopted than if anything else be done instead. But this implies a judgment as to the value both of its own consequences and of those of any possible alternative. And that an action will have such and such consequences involves a number of causal judgments.” 5

Hahn 5 virtue of their existence simpliciter. Moore held Mill’s Utilitarianism to rest upon a dire confusion of means and ends, a confusion such that what one desires for its own sake is always, once achieved, shown to be in fact ten or so paces ahead of where one stands.8 One might say, more simply, that while Moore’s calculus is somewhat ordinarily Utilitarian, his ethics as a whole is not, for it is rather a kind of Ideal Utilitarianism, a utilitarianism of conduct wedded to a non-utilitarianism of ends. But to all this I will return later. For the moment, I will let questions of Moore’s first sort retake the primary place of attention, since while Utilitarianism, even Utilitarianism of a curiously Ideal sort, is more or less ordinary, Moore’s elaboration of his first set of questions is not so. What then does Moore have to say about the meaning of “good” and about what things are in fact good in themselves? “To readers who are familiar with philosophic terminology, I can express the importance [of my answers] by saying that they amount to this: That propositions about the good are all of them synthetic and never analytic; and that is plainly no trivial matter.”9 So it is plain that Moore’s basic contention about the good is a straightforward consequence of the way in which Moore raised his original questions. A bad omen, one might surmise, but in truth it is better to say that in drawing the consequences of his prior preconceptions Moore was just exceptionally skilled. Of these consequences skillfully drawn there are three which are of interest here. These are (1) that “good” is a univocal, unitary notion of quality,10 (2) that “good” denotes a simple, indefinable, and non-natural quality or property, and (3) that propositions about the good, i.e. propositions asserting that certain things are good, are unprovable and that the only direct reason

8

Ibid., 72. Ibid., 6-7. 10 Though Moore does not much discuss the adjective “bad”, he does assert that is the only other “simple notion” peculiar to ethics. Ibid., 5. 9

Hahn 6 for the assertion of such an ethical proposition is provided by an intuition. I shall discuss each of these points at greater length in precisely the same order in which I have here listed them now. (1) Moore contends that one primary condition for the possibility of a scientific ethics is that the unique character of ethical judgments, and not just this or that ethical judgment but all ethical judgments as such, be once and for all made clear. So the ethical enquirer must first identify that object or notion by which ethical judgments are ethical rather than anything else and the task most foundational to ethics thus becomes the task of unveiling by analysis that object or notion both (a) peculiar to ethics and (b) common to all judgments which, again, we discern to be ethical. With what kind of judgment is Moore here concerned? Relevant examples are that soand-so ought to write his paper on time, that such-and-such is a good X, that pleasure is good, that so-and-so acts rightly or wrongly, etc. and so on.11 By which unique ethical notion are such judgments to be united? By the notion comprehended in the adjective “good,” an adjective whose primary use is constituted by the expression of the ideas of intrinsic value or of “ought to exist”12 and whose secondary or derivative use is constituted by the utilitarian notion of “good as a means” seen earlier to be so central to Moore’s ethics of right and wrong conduct. For such an adjective to denote that object both peculiarly ethical and universally common, it must, so Moore, denote some conceptually singular quality, a quality which does not vary in kind whether predicated of a book, a burglar, or a bungalow.13 Again, this point can be seen to be another formulation of Moore’s original discursive commitment to the notion that every and all goods things are complex wholes composed first of some thing and second of the property of “good.”

11

Ibid., 1. Ibid., 17. “Whenever he thinks of ‘intrinsic value’ or ‘intrinsic worth,’ or says that a thing ‘ought to exist,’ he has before his mind the unique object – the unique property of things – which I mean by ‘good.’” 13 Ibid., 2. 12

Hahn 7 (2) But Moore wishes to show furthermore that such a quality can only be what it needs to be for a scientific ethics if it is (a) simple, (b) indefinable, and (c) non-natural. By simple, Moore means that the notion of “good” denotes an object without parts, where notions such as those of a “horse” are clearly complex notions of objects with many parts.14 By indefinable, Moore means that the adjective “good” admits of no “real definition.”15 It may be verbally defined in this way or that, but in the final analysis that object for which the adjective “good” stands is the property of “good” and nothing else. For the notion of “good” is without conceptual substitute. “Good is good, and that is the end of the matter.”16 By non-natural, Moore means, in a purely negative way, that the notion of “good” does not denote a natural property of things. All of this is to say that the adjective “good” is the non-natural equivalent of the color-predicate “yellow,” for just as “yellow” is without parts and without real definition, such is the case with “good.”17 Moore’s arguments for the simplicity and indefinability of “good” are, however, circular. Good is indefinable because it is simple,18 and good is simple because of any complex whole offered as a definition of good we may significantly ask: “But is it good?”19 i.e., we see the definition inexhaustive of its object, that is, we see that “good” is indefinable. This latter defense is what is often referred to as the Open Question Argument, and such an argument is worth mentioning, not because it is a good argument, but because it is a very famous argument which

14

Ibid., 7. Ibid., 8. 16 Ibid., 6. 17 Ibid., 7. 18 Ibid., “And in this sense ‘good’ has no definition because it is simple and has no parts.” 19 Ibid., 15. “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 be offered, it may be always asked, with significance, of the complex so defined, whether it is itself good.” 15

Hahn 8 has often not been seen to be very bad.20 Moore’s additional arguments for the non-naturalness of “good” are no less plagued by a certain circularity, but they are of interest because they are the arguments with which Moore did the most to solidify his reputation has an academic ethicist. So what then are these arguments? To articulate the force of Moore’s position, I must begin with the two truisms that it is characteristically natural objects of which assorted ethical judgments are proposed and that such natural objects are distinct from one another by virtue of certain key differences in the natural properties of which they are composed. Moore takes it to follow from these two truisms that “good” cannot be simply equivalent in meaning to any natural property without failing to conform to both of the two conditions for its scientific meaning outlined in (1). For if “good” were equivalent in meaning to some natural property, then of “good” we would have to say (a) that it is no longer peculiar to ethics but rather just as well subsumed under some such or the other natural scientific enquiry and (b) that the adjective “good” is limited in its predication to certain natural objects and excluded from predication of others and is thus no longer a property common to all ethical judgments, of whatever natural object they assert the possession of “good.” To put the point another way, Moore contends that should “good” be proposed as equivalent in meaning to some other property, then there is simply no room for genuinely, i.e., uniquely, ethical discussion. So it is Moore’s position that should “good” fail with respect to the conditions of peculiarity and commonality, ethics would just as much be made unreasonable and confused, as it would be made simplistic unto anodyne. This unreasonableness results even if the property with which good is made equivalent is not physical but metaphysical, not sensible but

20

See the often obtuse but nonetheless helpful discussion of the issue in Irwin, Terrence, The Development of Ethics, Vol. 3, Oxford, Oxford University Press: 2009, pp. 632-636.

Hahn 9 supersensible. The muddled assertion of such false equivalency of meaning between “good” and some other property, natural or metaphysical, Moore proposes to call the naturalistic fallacy,21 and it is by way of exposing all previous ethical philosophers, from Aristotle, to Kant, to Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill, as victims of the naturalistic fallacy that Moore advances his contention that we are only now, in the end-times of Cambridge, 1903, first getting clear on the questions of and conditions for sound ethical enquiry. All such past thinkers, Henry Sidgwick excluded, failed to see that it is never by virtue of some natural or metaphysical fact that a thing is good in itself, but rather only by virtue of a simple moral fact, the fact communicated by the presence of the property of goodness.22 What Moore failed to see, of course, is that the naturalistic fallacy is only a fallacy if one already accepts that good is a singular predicate adjective common to all ethical judgments as such. Should one not accept Moore’s starting point, one is not obliged to consider the naturalistic fallacy a genuine fallacy at all. But that is another story. There is for the moment still more to say about Moore. (3) Ethical propositions about ends are those propositions by which some thing is asserted to be good. In ethical proposition Y, it is asserted that X is good, or that X has the simple, non-natural, and indefinable property of good. But because of the peculiarly scientific nature of the property which is in any such proposition being predicated of X, all such propositions are unprovable.23 Intuition alone supplies cognizance of the reason for asserting or

Principia Ethica., 10. “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’ and of it I shall now endeavor to dispose.” 22 Ibid., 37. “[Naturalistic Ethicists] all hold that there is only one kind of fact, of which the existence has any value at all.” (emphasis original). Moore does not, to my knowledge, ever deploy the phrase “moral fact,” but from the above quote I take it to be licit to conclude that, since he held natural facts inconclusive in the field of ethics and nonetheless believed in the objectivity of value, Moore can be taken to espouse a version of “moral realism” of the sort characterized by belief in, and never-ending quest for, moral facts. 23 Ibid., 144. “My intuition of [the falsehood of Intuitionistic Hedonism] is indeed my reason for holding and declaring it untrue; it is indeed the only valid reason for so doing. But that is just because there is no logical reason 21

Hahn 10 rejecting such propositions, which reason can only be the presence of the absence of the property of good. Ethical discussion about ends and philosophical analysis of the terms involved in such discussion do thus only provide a kind of indirect argument ordered toward the elicitation of those decisive, reason-providing intuitions of which we ethical enquirers must be so anxious to gain possession. Thus while an empirical calculus of the evidence is available for all possible ethical propositions about right or wrong conduct, the justificatory reason for any ethical proposition about what is good in itself can only be self-evident, for there simply is no evidence from which such a reason might be deduced. I may note that this conclusion, the conclusion that ethical propositions about the good are unprovable, is such as must follow from Moore’s dual and difficult commitments to the simultaneous indefinable non-naturalness and objectivity of value. Of those ethical propositions which Moore himself holds on intuition, there are two of central importance. These are, taken together, that the complex wholes of affectionate friendship and aesthetic enjoyment contain the best and are the greatest good.24 With the announcement that these goods alone constitute the rational end of human conduct, the sole criterion of social progress, and the raison d’être of virtue, Moore concludes the substantive argument of his Principia.25 Such is the distinctive content of Moore’s Principia Ethica. I should like next to present what seem to me to be pressing and plausible systematic criticisms of Moore’s work from the

for itl because there is no proper evidence or reason of its falsehood except itself alone. It is untrue, because it is untrue, and there is no other reason.” (emphasis original) Or again, page 65: “Anything which is good as an end must be admitted to be good with proof. [Mill and I] are agreed so far.” 24 Ibid., 189. “That they are truths – that personal affections and aesthetic enjoyments include all the greatest, and by far the greatest, goods we can imagine, will, I hope, appear more plainly in the course of that analysis of them, to which I shall now proceed.” (emphasis original) 25 Obviously, Moore makes a great many minor points about mixed and unmixed goods, the nature of pain, and so on, before he in fact ends his book. Indeed, the most final section of the final chapter is in fact nothing more than an even-tempered summary of that chapter. But all of these minor points have seemed to me to be unimportant for any portrayal of the central contentions and arguments of Moore’s Principia Ethica, and so I hold the substantive argument of that text to end with Moore’s analysis of friendship and aesthetic enjoyment.

Hahn 11 point of view of Aristotelian moral philosophy. In this section, I will have recourse to and will largely rely upon select texts by the Aristotelians Peter Geach, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Alasdair MacIntyre. For it is principally the work of these Aristotelians which, in my judgment, enables a profound criticism both of the basic conceptual vocabulary which Moore and his fellow Cambridge ethicists deployed and of the theory of intuition-directed reasoning which Moore and his adherents defended. My presentation of these criticisms will be brief and limited, but I hope all the same to indicate in some small way just what it is that an Aristotelian point of view requires of its constitution, to what precisely it is opposed, and of what difficulties in academic moral philosophy it provides an external and compelling answer. Now, to this overall Aristotelian rejoinder there are two parts. The first is a critique of “good” as the kind of property which Moore says it is, and the second is a critique more generally of Moore’s theoretical standpoint in philosophy. I turn first to a critique of Moore’s use of the term “good” to denote a unique “moral” adjective. I will begin with a question: Are there good and compelling reasons for accepting the primary use of good which Moore proposes, as Moore proposes it? I argue that there are not, and in the course of making this argument I will follow and rely heavily upon a single text of Peter Geach’s, namely, the short essay entitled “Good and Evil,” first published in 1956.26 In it, Geach’s first intention is to propose a logical distinction, which I here re-propose for consideration, namely, the distinction between predicative and attributive adjectives. A predicative adjective is any adjective whose appearance in the complex whole “X is an AB”, where A is the adjective and B is the noun which it modifies, could be analyzed into “X is a B” and “X is A.” Any adjective for which such analysis is impossible is an attributive adjective.

26

Geach, Peter, “Good and Evil,” Analysis, Vol. 17 (1956), pp. 32-42.

Hahn 12 Color adjectives and certain adjectives expressing material composition are predicative adjectives, as is clear from such propositions as “X is a blue raincoat” or “X is a metallic lamp,” both of which can be split up into the distinct propositions of “X is a B” and “X is A.” Attributive adjectives are equally commonplace, “big” and “small” being familiar examples. For “X is a big mouse” and “Y is a small whale” cannot be split up into “X is a mouse” and “X is big” nor into “Y is a whale” and “Y is small”, since it would otherwise follow from that X is an animal and Y is an animal, that X is a big animal and Y is a small animal, a conclusion which is clearly false and which can therefore act as a reductio ad absurdum for the view that “big” and “small” are predicative adjectives. Further examples of attributive adjectives are given by such propositions as “X is a putative father,” a proposition which cannot become “X is a father” and “X is putative,” precisely because the sense of “putative” with regards to X is only as a limitation of what can genuinely be predicated of X in terms of X’s (putatively) being a father.27 Upon the basis of such a logical distinction, it is obviously open to contend, as Geach in fact does contend, that good and bad are always attributive adjectives, never predicative, and that this is plainly no trivial matter. But how is such a contention to be understood? I shall follow Peter Geach again in arriving at an answer to the question I have just raised. I will therefore first note, as he does, that uses of the term “bad” are analogous to the use of the term “putative” analyzed above. A “bad father” is, like a “putative father”, one of whom all that we predicate of a father cannot genuinely be predicated, precisely because this is the modified sense given to his being a father by the adjectives “bad” and “putative.” So, just as the adjective “putative” is an attributive adjective, so too is the adjective “bad.” The case that the adjective

The examples given above are mixtures of my own and of Geach’s. Obviously, no example of my own is indeed uniquely my own: I have followed closely Geach’s own argument because it is good and because clarity concerning the logical distinction between predicative and attributive adjectives is indispensable for the development of Geach’s criticism of the position originally outlined in Moore’s Principia. 27

Hahn 13 “good” is similarly attributive can be made by way of the argument that knowledge of an X, that it is a good Y, is not knowable independent of our knowledge that X is a Y, and that if “good” were predicative this would not need to be the case. So it is possible to know of a car in the distance that it is red, without knowing that it is a car (should one’s distance vision be of such a sort that it is unclear whether the red object is a car or a very fat, stationary man in red clothing). It is similarly possible to know of it that it is a car without knowing that it is red (should one suffer from colorblindness, for example). But it is impossible that one should acquire such independent knowledge of the car’s being a good car. For it is non-sensical to say: “Well, I sure don’t know what it is, but I know that it is good.” But all of this is of course simply to say that “good” and “bad” are adjectives, the primary meaning of which cannot be had independent of some context of object-attributive use. Thus it is clear, if the above is true, that good and bad are attributive adjectives, and it is a short run from here to the assimilation of all common grammatically predicative uses of good and bad into the form of the logically attributive. 28 It follows from the above that “good” is an adjective which does not, because it cannot, satisfy the conditions for the possibility of some putatively scientific use as Moore would have them stipulated.29 For if “good” is an attributive adjective of primarily descriptive force, then “good” is not univocal and universal in meaning. A good book, a good burglar, and a good bungalow are all of course analogously known to be good, but that with respect to which each is a good whatever it is, is not shared by each, because there is no predicative adjective at play in whose object-independent meaning all good objects share simply by virtue of being good X’s and good Y’s and good Z’s. A good X is good because it is an X of a certain sort, and not

28

Should one be interested in making such a short run, then the essay by Geach comes with full recommendation for the endeavor. 29 So Geach writes: “It is mere prejudice to think that either all things called “Good” must satisfy some one condition, or the term “good” is hopelessly ambiguous.”

Hahn 14 because it “has goodness.” So a good bungalow is good because it has the natural properties SPQR, which properties are the properties of a bungalow which excels at fulfilling what bungalows are for. To say that it is a good bungalow, is to say that is a bungalow which one should choose, if one wants a bungalow and not another thing. So it is as well that “good” is neither indefinable nor non-natural, since the attributes of any object of which we are offering intelligible descriptions written in terms of the confirmation or disconfirmation which they provide of the object’s being or not being what it is are bound to be definable, else how could we describe them? just as they are bound to be natural, for what else could they coherently be? Yet such a view of the multifarious attributive/descriptive significance of the adjective “good” is nothing more than a refinement and restatement of what Aristotle thought and said about the matter. Thus an Aristotelian conception of good requires of the adjective “good” that it commit precisely those fallacies which Moore called naturalistic and that it violate precisely those restraints upon our moral utterance which Moore took to be imposed by the Open Question Argument. Curious is this fact for the very simple reason that such violation appears to entail neither muddle nor serious unreasonableness, Moore’s concerns to the contrary notwithstanding. But for now, allow me to turn from this criticism of Moore’s notion of good and instead to turn to the second part of the Aristotelian rejoinder, to a critique of the general theoretical position which Moore espouses, the actual practice which it engenders, and the relationship between the two. But to pursue this line of argument, I shall need first to outline that perspective on the nature of practices in light of which such an argument is possible. “[My] first [thesis] is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy…the second [thesis] is that concepts of obligation, and duty…and of the moral sense of ‘ought,’ ought to be jettisoned…because they are survivals…from an earlier conception of

Hahn 15 ethics which no longer generally survives.”30 Such is the apocalyptic message of Elizabeth Anscombe, a philosophical bad news, if you will, one which at least sparks the Christian impulse for repentance, if it does not yet contain the arrival of a savior in whom we can rejoice, though perhaps, one might surmise, it is Aristotle who is up for election to the role. In this she is not alone. Having described an imaginary situation of disorder in the natural sciences, a situation involving riots and lynchings and generally widespread thoughtlessness, Alasdair MacIntyre next reveals: “The hypothesis which I wish to advance is that in the actual world which we inhabit the language of morality is in the same state of grave disorder as the language of natural science in the imaginary world which I described.” 31 So there is here what I will risk to call an historicist apocalypticism, one which stands in opposition to the ahistorical apocalypticism of G.E. Moore. It is thus not, as Moore concluded, that we are only now getting it right, but rather that we are just now getting it seriously, dangerously wrong, in part because we are in the situation to believe that “we” are “finally” getting it right. Such an historicist apocalypticism bears many if not all of the telling symptoms of implausibility, yet it constitutes a position in philosophy which I hold to be in the main quite true, in spite of the appearance of symptoms to the contrary. An adequate defense of its central contentions and of my own belief in them, as well as a complete elaboration of how one is to arrive at such contentions and of what is entailed by them, lies far afield of the scope of this paper. For my purposes here, I will focus upon a single such contention, that of the inseparability of conceptual history from the history of social practices. This is the contention that practice is primary in the evaluation of theory, and I focus upon this contention because I wish to show,

Anscombe, G.E.M., “Modern Moral Philosophy,“ Philosophy Vol. 33, No. 124, 1958. MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue, 3rd edition, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press: 2007, pp. 2. Original publication 1981. 30 31

Hahn 16 however incompletely because briefly, that it is in light of this contention and the method of philosophical enquiry which it entails that it is possible to formulate a criticism of Moore’s metaethical standpoint as seriously flawed, not just in this or that respect, but essentially and foundationally. To formulate such a criticism, I shall follow Alasdair MacIntyre and claim of emotivism both that it represents first a major and significant challenge to Moore’s position and that this challenge admits of a compelling evaluation from an Aristotelian standpoint. I shall follow MacIntyre again in arguing that this Aristotelian evaluation provides a compelling characterization of the failures of Moore’s ethical position. So what are the claims advanced by emotivism? Emotivism represents a non-cognitivist response to G.E. Moore. To summarize the disagreement is easy enough. Where Moore saw a second kind of fact distinct from obvious natural facts, namely that species of fact whose instantiations are moral facts or facts of value, Emotivists such as C.L. Stevenson saw no such thing. Such moral facts and all non-natural properties are mere fictions, and to say that cognizance of the reason for their assertion is unprovable is simply to concede, in scarcely veiled terms, that propositions about such moral facts are not at all truth-apt and that we therefore have no good reason to suppose that there is an objective truth of which they are the cognition. Special moral predications of good and bad to this or that other thing, on an emotivist view, simply are not cognitive acts of primarily descriptive force, but are rather evaluative acts of primarily commendatory or exhortative force. To say of an X that it is bad is to say something of the sort as: “Boo on that X! What a ghastly X that is!”, while to say of a Y that it is good is to say something of the sort as: “Hooray for that Y! I fancy that Y!” or even: “Those who fancy Y’s are certainly going to fancy this one!” Moral

Hahn 17 utterance thus has the meaning of non-descriptive approval or disapproval, non-cognitive recommendation or dissuasion. It is first of all of significance that the emotivist rejoinder to Moore’s ethics questions the meaning which that ethics ascribes to the moral predicative adjectives good and bad without questioning whether good and bad are indeed logically predicative adjectives. Emotivism thus articulates a position which shares certain of Moore’s central preconceptions about the subjectmatter of ethics. This fact is all the more significant when it is paired with a second fact about this rejoinder, namely, that it could be accurately be reformulated as the criticism that the terms of evaluative discourse deployed within Moore’s ethics only purport or appear to mean or express some such or the other objective state of affairs, while what they in fact are used for is the expression of some such or the other personal preference. So we might say that the emotivist argument is motivated by the claim (or perhaps the simple recognition) that no coherent account can be given of the special moral predicate good, in light of which account this predicate can be ascribed an objective cognitive value. Thus, on the emotivist view, the only true theory of moral utterance is a theory of and about the gap between purport and use. Here it is possible to articulate the second part to the distinctively Aristotelian rejoinder. Such a rejoinder would here be motivated by the claim (or perhaps the simple recognition) that such a gap between meaning and use is not historically inevitable. This gap is rather engendered precisely by Moore’s meta-ethical standpoint.32 Emotivism appears to be the truth of IdealIntuitionistic-Utilitarian moral utterance, but it is not therefore and for that reason the truth of moral utterance as such.33 The meta-ethical isolation of “moral” predicates from the historically

Ibid., 17. “There is evident here [with Moore] precisely that gap between the meaning and purport of what was being said and the use to which utterance was being put to which our reinterpretation of emotivism drew attention.” 33 Ibid., 13. 32

Hahn 18 variable and ordinarily practice-embedded use of such terms just is that which creates the conditions for the possibility of a theory of meaning which systematically obscures the reality of use. So the very nature of Moore’s position is such that it apparently must and in fact does entail a misapprehension both of external and rival ethical alternatives and of itself as a historically specific form of ethical reasoning. But such a propensity for systematic misapprehension is a kind of serious theoretical failure, a failure which ought rationally to prompt abandonment of the theory of which it is the expression. Such is the history of argument in light of which I contended at the outset that the opinion, according to which Moore’s ethical project is to be rejected as inadequate, is capable of justification. To develop this line of enquiry to the fullest would require, if not a book, at least a much lengthier paper. I should be satisfied to have made a small contribution to the wider ethical discussion, of which an evaluative history of Moore’s Principia Ethica and its Aristotelian critics can be a valuable part.

Hahn 19 Works Cited Anscombe, G.E.M. (1958), “Modern Moral Philosophy” in Philosophy Vol. 33, No. 124. Geach, Peter (1956), “Good and Evil” in Analysis Vol. 17, pp. 32-42. MacIntyre, A. (1981), After Virtue, 3rd edition, Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. Moore, G.E. (1903), Principa Ethica, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications Inc. Terrence, Irwin (2009), Development of Ethics, Volume 3: From Kant to Rawls, Oxford, Oxford University Press.