A Level Religious Studies - Intuitionism by G. E. Moore revision notes

G. E. Moore

Intuitionism argues that morality is objective and cognitive. Intuitionists argue that we just know what goodness is.

G. E. Moore simply states that the word 'good' cannot be defined. He likened it to the colour yellow - we know what yellow is, but we can't define it. He said quite simply:

"Good is good, and that is the end of the matter."

Moore said that we work out right and wrong by looking at the impact consequences have upon an action. If the consequence is right (Moore argues you'll simply know if it is right), then it becomes good.

Good comes from consequence, not reason. This presents Moore's version of intuitionism as teleological.

Moore criticised other ethical theorists of creating a naturalistic fallacy when they try and define good. By naturalistic fallacy, Moore means that we shouldn't define 'good' by certain properties that we like or desire. If something makes us feel happy, Moore said that we can't therefore define it as 'good'. This could be seen as a criticism of utilitarianism, which argues that something is good if more people experience pleasure from it.

GE Moore, in Principia Ethica (1903) famously countered naturalism. He said that you can’t move from is to ought. In other words, any observation of how people behave cannot tell us about how people SHOULD behave. He called this the ‘naturalistic fallacy’. 

Moore went on to say that ‘good’ is indefinable. In the same way as yellow is just, well, yellow, ‘good’ is not a complex term that can be broken down further, you just recognise that something is good by intuition. If ‘good’ was a complex idea, we could ask of it whether it was itself good. For example, Bentham defined good as pleasure (the greatest pleasure for the greatest number). But you can ask “Is pleasure good?” Because the question makes sense, pleasure can’t mean the same as good.