Ethics and G. E. Moore

I’ve learned today from Moore that in ethics, ‘good’ is indefinable, but what is good can be defined, e.g. pleasure is good. But pleasure is also indefinable. But something like ‘chocolate is good,’ is a definition about chocolate, good describing the sensation. Yet still we cannot define good, although we know what it is—well, I would think that Hitler, somehow, didn’t understand ‘good’ in any sense.

This has led me to think about other things that cannot be defined, but that define other things, such as pleasure. For example, the massage was pleasurable. We can define a massage, yet we cannot define pleasure. So there are words that, like atoms, are basic units of definition. ‘Quality’ is another word. Quality can be used to define a certain property of some thing. In this case a quality seems to be synonymous with property. But when you use quality in the following way, “This item has quality,” or “That extremely flawed diamond lacks the quality of this flawless one.” What then is quality in this sense? It describes a grade of excellence, but then what is excellence?

If Ethics has to do with what is ‘good,’ then it must also have to deal with what is not good, or what is ‘bad.’ Again we know something is bad when we experience it, but how do we define bad?