4. Meta ethics: Intuitionism: G.E. Moore

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  • Created by: Alasdair
  • Created on: 25-06-17 19:40
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  • 4. Intuitionism: G.E. Moore
    • Outline of theory
      • 'Principa Ethica'
      • Ethics comes from intuition
      • "We know what good is, but we cannot actually identify it"
      • Good is indefinable:
        • Example
          • The colour yellow
          • We know what is yellow and can recognise it
          • But we cannot actually define yellow or describe particular qualities of it
      • Did not believe human intuition was infallible
      • Cognitive
        • Statements can be true/false
      • Cannot use senses to tell whether something is good but moral intuition
    • Strengths
      • Moore's theory was incredibly influential in ethics and his theory of Naturalistic Fallacy was accepted without question by many philosophers
      • Mary Warnock
        • Argued Moore's theory of duty has 'extreme beauty and economy and fits many of the facts of moral life'
      • His theory gives a clearer understanding of the place of the term 'good' in ethics
      • Moore accepts that our intuition may be wrong
        • i.e. intuition is not infallible
      • Moore's theory is subjective and allows certain duties to be overruled by others others if the other actions will bring about more good
        • e.g. the duty to keep promises may be overruled by the duty to avoid doing harm
    • Weaknesses
      • Warnock
        • has argued that Moore's criticism of Utilitarianism is for large part unfounded and that Moore finds himself to have more in common with Utilitarian position than he would have first admitted
      • Moore does not answer the problem of ethical motivation
        • This means that he does not tell us how we move from a belief that something is good, to actually doing it
      • Moore was an ethical teleologist
        • Forces him to only consider the consequences, not the (possibly immoral) actions that lead you there
      • Moore was ethical subjectivist
        • Many disagree with this position claiming that there is an objective goodness and that there are certain intrinsically good and bad actions

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