Can Ethical Terms Be Defined? :: Philosophy Philosophical Papers

Can Ethical Terms Be be? The answer might seem obvious. Ethical terms can be defined because they bugger off been. Good manner pleasure cracking means utility comfortably means self-realisation, or self interest and so on. Classical moral philosophy philosophers have apparently had no clog at all in defning terms like entire. It was hardly this multitude of different and incompatible definitions however, which led Moore to have some doubts around whether philosophers knew what they were doing when they attempted to define good. Is it really possible to define good as one might define triangle or provide? Are thither non some important differences? Moore is convinced that there are. In the first place, when we define triangle or horse we distinguish what we are defining in the sense that we can see or at least(prenominal) formulate an empirical representation of what we are public lecture about. We arent able to see goodness, or point to it, at least in the same way. Fur thermore when we define triangle as an enclosed collar sided plane figure, it makes no sense to ask, that is an enclosed troika sided plane figure a triangle? not at least if we know what we are talking about, i.e. a triangle. But if we define good as pleasure for instance, it does seem to make sense to ask but is pleasure (really or always) good? Moore is convinced that it makes sense to ask this question, not merely because we may happen to be ignorant of what goodness is, and have thus made a mistake such as would be the case if we defined a triangle as a quartette sided figure rather the error occurs because we have confused two preferably different kinds of things with one another. We have confused a natural berth (pleasure) with a non natural property (good). He calls this kind of error a naturalistic fallacy. Since it is bound to occur whenever we attempt to identify good with something that isnt, all purported definitions of good commit this fallacy. Good he concludes is indefinable This does not mean however that the term good is meaningless. On the contrary it is no more meaningless than the term yellow which is also indefinable in the requisite sense. Still the question remains. What does good then refer to ? sure enough not to any sensed property like yellow. It refers, according to Moore, to an intuited and unanalysiable property of goodness which some things have and others do not have.