Not that it is impossible to define the good, i.e., the things which are good but that what we mean when we say that a thing is good, cannot be explained in any other terms. The chief contention of the first chapter is that good itself is indefinable: an ultimate, simple notion, like yellow. Moore begins by dismissing the notion that ethics is solely concerned with human conduct, or with the goods attainable by human beings: ethics is the general inquiry into what is good, and into what good is.
In accordance with this theoretical spirit, Mr. What I am concerned with is knowledge only – that we should think correctly and so far arrive at some truth, however unimportant.” “It may be thought,” he says on one occasion, “that my contention is unimportant, but that is no ground for thinking that I am not in the right. In the present author, no trace of this mistake is to be found. Thus attention is concentrated on results, and a hasty, practical tone of mind is generated. The premises, when found, do not interest them on their own account and any questioning of the premises is regarded as trivial and carping. Most philosophers are interested, almost exclusively, in establishing some apparently valuable conclusions, for which they seek to find premises. It is a merit rarer, perhaps, than is supposed, to aim solely, in philosophy, at the discovery of truth. But, in spite of the subtlety, all the discussions are admirably clear, and are intelligible, except in one chapter, without any previous knowledge of philosophy.
There is throughout a frank appeal to what appear as ethical facts, combined with an extra ordinary subtlety and care in the analysis of their implications.
#This extraordinary notion meaning code
From a desire for system and simplicity, reinforced by logical confusions, they flagrantly outrage common sense in their estimate as to what things are good in themselves and then, from a dread of consequences which are felt to be immoral, they endeavour, by flimsy and inconclusive arguments, to prove that their estimate of goods leads to the usual code of duties and sins. WORKS on ethics suffer, as a rule, from two opposite defects. Review of Principia Ethica, by George Edward Moore, Cambridge University Press, 1903
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