I’ve been reading G E Moores Principia Ethica, which at first I thought was just a dumb analytic trying to get all smug about ethics (it actually is that, but there is more), then on closer inspection I realized the guy was making some pretty substantial points.
First off, he articulates the notion of an “unanalyzable-concept”, this concept has meaning in relation to other concepts (being-for-another) but it cannot be understood on its own (being-in-itself).
To illustrate this, he gives the example of “yellow”, there can be a yellow orange, we can understand yellow in relation to the orange, but what is yellow-in-itself? How can we define “yellow”?? To him, we reached an unanalyzable concept.
Now I’m not sure if he gave a method to determine which object is analyzable and which one is complex, I suppose it is somewhat implicit, but basically it is a concept which does not posses attributes, it is a complete unity (sounding more theological than you’d expect).
His thesis is that Good is an unalyzavle object.
Now this is not to say that we cannot talk about good, “this food is good”, makes perfect sense, “the orange is yellow”, sure. But what IS Good?
There have been a number of answers throughout history, I wish to illustrate some.
Aristotle: the Good is that which all beings strive towards.
Here we have another confusion, there is no understanding of good, but only of an adjective, good is still left unanalyzed.
Hedonists: the good is pleasure.
Now, is pleasure the good? Does one mean the other? There is always doubt here.
The problem here lies in taking one object (pleasure) to be something broader (good).
Suppose a utilitarian would come along, how would they argue with each other?
Utilitarian: x is good.
Hedonist: y is good because x is not good.
A similar argument;
P1: a square is a circle.
P2: a square is not a circle because a triangle is a circle.
There is the commitment of the naturalistic fallacy (one which deuntology falls into as well);
“ The naturalistic fallacy is the assumption that because the words ‘good’ and, say, 'pleasant’ necessarily describe the same objects, they must attribute the same quality to them.”
I would put it, that it is the misunderstanding of something absolute to be a finite object.
A similar issue would be with god (of course theologically God and the Good are closely intertwined).
The theological point here, I think, is that of the neo-Platonists, Good is not something “natural”, it is not something in the world, it is beyond such categories, wholly transcendent, just like “the One”(/God).
This was the most striking aspect of his analysis to me, not the ethics or what have you. What’s interesting here is, we have a concept that, the more it is explicated about, the more predicates or attributes it is given, the more we do not understand it, for it is a simple unity, not a complex whole.
This too is the notion of God in various traditions (particularly this has been elaborated on in Islamic and Jewish theology of the 10th century, and has been developed by many others ever since), the notion of God is something that is precisely not a thing that could be understood in a naturalistic sense, therefore god cannot be “spoken” about (negative theology), god cannot be given attributes in himself.
Moore goes further than this, not only are Good and God unanalyzable, but he has no problem to say that these unanalyzable objects are at the very core of any definition, it is the atomic unit. The atomic word which lies at the essence of a thing must be the in-itself.
It is a Monad.
To go beyond Moore, lets use this same logic to understand the most basic questions of philosophy, the ones which have launched its starting point, Socrates comes to mind.
He asks the same question, “what is Justice?”, “what is the Good?”, in doing so, he is questioning the very implicit nature of reality in attempt to divorce it of its being and will therefore lead to an eternal regress or exponential growth.
For information grows exponentially, from One we get, from two, three, from three, a myriad of things.
It multiplies and generates, by having to define “justice”, he must define “is”, etc etc. every part implies the whole, and the whole is in essence unalyzable to its atomistic units. Leaving reality in some sense open, the elaboration of all reality leading into an, unending-end, not a composite object, in-itself, being unalyzable.
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