G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica is an ambitious work. Moore hopes to understand normative ethics through axiology; he identifies one fundamental value concept – intrinsic goodness – and provides accounts of rightness of action and excellence of character in terms of it.Footnote 1 Moore's view is well known: he says we act rightly when we make the world as good as we can, and that we are virtuous when we are disposed to perform right actions. There is, then, a structure to normative ethics: axiology first, deontology second, and virtue theory third.
As even its most ardent opponents admit, there is something attractive about Moore's project.Footnote 2 But its popularity is fading. Most critics attempt to halt the project after it gets started: they accept Moore's conception of goodness, but reject the significance he gives it.Footnote 3 However, increasingly, philosophers hope to stop the project at its beginning. In her influential ‘The Right and the Good’ and elsewhere, Judith Jarvis Thomson claims that Moore's account goes wrong because ‘there is no such thing as goodness’.Footnote 4 Her arguments build upon Geach's work: she says that facts about the adjective ‘good’ give us reason to reject the concept at the heart of Moore's system.
I am a Moorean – I think there is still promise in the project of the Principia. I hope to defend my position; I want to show that, despite its popularity, Thomson's objection does not undermine the Moorean programme. This is because Thomson's target is not Moore's intrinsic goodness but rather generic goodness. And this concept is not needed, I believe, to construct Moore's system.
Still, Moore's critics are unlikely to accept defeat. Some note that most accounts of intrinsic goodness seem to appeal to a generic notion of goodness – including Moore's own account. And if this is true, then some version of Thomson's argument may make contact with the Moorean project after all. Others claim that though Moore does not require the concept of generic goodness, he does require the similar concept of absolute goodness or goodness simpliciter. And this notion, they claim, is just as objectionable.
I hope to defuse these concerns. I first show how we may dispense with generic goodness without losing intrinsic goodness. And while I accept that Moorean intrinsic goodness is a kind of absolute goodness, I argue that the objections marshalled against the concept are unsound.
THOMSON'S ATTACK
Thomson claims that Moore's system is built upon a naïve concept of goodness. She writes:
Moore's story begins with the good. Some things are good, Moore said, and some things are not good; so there is such a property as goodness – all good things have it and all things that are not good lack it . . . The second part of the story flows from the first: there being such a property as goodness, there is also such a relation as being better than, or betterness . . . Moore's story then concludes: the right is analyzable in terms of the relation betterness. Thus for it to be the case that Alfred ought to do a thing at a time is for it to be the case that the world will be better if he does the thing than it will be if he does any of the other things it is open to him to do at the time.Footnote 5
Since the kind of goodness Thomson speaks of is undifferentiated or generic, let us call it generic goodness.Footnote 6 She characterizes this notion by appealing to three principles, each of which she claims Moore endorsed. First, as Thomson says above, generic goodness is the property all good things have in common.Footnote 7 Thus any good thing, whether it be a good act, a good dryer, or a good lesson, is generically good. Second, generic goodness is the property we attribute to a thing when we say ‘that's good’, without a qualifier like ‘to eat’ or ‘as an example’ – it is the property of being ‘just plain good’.Footnote 8
Third and finally, on Thomson's interpretation, Moore is a kind of axiological monist: he denies that there are many kinds of goodness. Rather, everything that is good in any respect is good because it possesses this property of generic goodness. Thomson writes:
[According to Moore] for a thing to be a good person is for it to possess the properties being good and being a person, for a thing to be a good tennis player is for it to possess the properties being good and being a tennis player, and for a thing to be a good toaster is for it to possess the properties being good and being a toaster. More generally, for a thing to be good in a respect is for it to possess the properties being good and being the relevant kind.Footnote 9
But, Thomson says, there is an immediate problem: there is no such thing as generic goodness; the concept is, she claims, unintelligible. Thus Moore's project is ‘incoherent from the outset’.Footnote 10
I do not want to examine Thomson's case against generic goodness now. For the sake of argument, I am willing simply to agree – I admit that there is no such thing as generic goodness; nothing that all and only good things have in common. But I want to show that, even given this, Thomson's argument against the Moorean position does not succeed.
A DISTINCTION: INTRINSIC VALUE AND GENERIC VALUE
Generic goodness is a strange property. Thomson's third principle guarantees that it attaches to anything that is good in any respect. It therefore necessarily attaches to everything that exists. Assume for reductio that there is something that fails to be good in any respect. Then this thing would be a good counterexample to the thesis that everything is generically good. It would thus be good in some respect, and would therefore be generically good.Footnote 11 For similar reasons, everything is generically bad.
We may conclude that generic value does not come in amounts – for a thing cannot possess both a positive and negative amount of the same kind of value. But if this is so, then it is unclear how generic goodness could be maximized – and thus unclear how the concept could possibly do what Moore hoped. If, as Thomson claims, this was the notion Moore was concerned with, then he has made a profound mistake.
But does Moore's system truly depend upon the concept of generic goodness? Thomson's interpretation is grounded in just one passage, which she cites each time she discusses Moore's programme:Footnote 12
Ethics is undoubtedly concerned with the question what good conduct is; but, being concerned with this, it obviously does not start at the beginning, unless it is prepared to tell us what is good as well as what is conduct. For ‘good conduct’ is a complex notion: all conduct is not good; for some is certainly bad and some may be indifferent. And on the other hand, other things, beside conduct, may be good; and if they are so, then, ‘good’ denotes some property, that is common to them and to conduct . . .Footnote 13
I agree with Thomson: this passage does suggest that Moore was interested in some generic kind of goodness. But granting this does not justify Thomson's interpretation of the Moorean project. She needs to show that generic goodness is the notion of importance for Moore; that it is the concept the Principia is dedicated to understanding; that it is the concept he invokes in his accounts of right action and virtuous character. But she does not provide evidence for these claims. And they are, I believe, mistaken.
Consider the second preface to the Principia. Moore writes:
[I]t cannot be too emphatically insisted that the predicate which . . . I call ‘good,’ and which I declare to be indefinable, is only one of the predicates for which the word ‘good’ is commonly used to stand . . .Footnote 14
He then declares:
[T]he predicate I am concerned with is that sense of the word ‘good’ which has to the conceptions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ a relation, which makes it the sense which is of the most fundamental importance for Ethics. Let us call that predicate G.Footnote 15
Finally, Moore states what he thinks is most important about G:
It now only remains to try to say, as clearly as I can, what it is that I am really anxious to say about G . . . G is a property which depends only on the intrinsic nature of the things which possess it.Footnote 16
This, I believe, makes it clear that Moore was sensitive to the fact that there are many kinds of goodness; he was not a monist in the way Thomson suggests. Rather, he wanted to pick out a particular kind of goodness, a kind of goodness he was eager to characterize. And this is the kind of goodness that depends only on the intrinsic properties of a thing – intrinsic goodness.Footnote 17 When he uses ‘good’ without a qualifier it is this kind of value – not generic value – that he hopes to express.Footnote 18
Indeed, Moore repeatedly makes plain that it is intrinsic goodness that is fundamental to his moral programme. In the first chapter of the Principia, Moore states what he takes to be the dual concerns of ethics: first, the nature and bearers of instrumental value, or value as a means, and second, the nature and bearers of intrinsic value, or value as an end. He writes, boldly:
The primary and peculiar business of Ethics, the determination what things have intrinsic value and in what degrees, has received no adequate treatment at all.Footnote 19
This is, of course, too bold. But we are concerned only with the subject of Moorean moral philosophy. And as this and other passages make clear, the subject of Moorean moral philosophy is intrinsic goodness.Footnote 20 This is why Moore speaks so often, and so carefully, about the nature of intrinsic value; this is why he tries to understand the relations between the intrinsic value of a whole and the intrinsic values of its parts; this is why he spends chapter after chapter examining – and dismissing – views about what things are intrinsically good.
Further, pace Thomson, I do not believe that Moore invokes the notion of generic goodness in his account of right action. Rather, his account appeals only to the notion of intrinsic goodness.Footnote 21 ‘An action is right’, he says, ‘only if no action, which the agent could have done instead, would have had intrinsically better results: while an action is wrong, only if the agent could have done some other action instead whose total results would have been intrinsically better’.Footnote 22
Of course, those attracted to Thomson's position may reply that Moore equated intrinsic and generic value. But there is no textual evidence to support this claim. And there is significant evidence against it. Recall that something is generically good if it is good in any way. But consider one of the other types of value Moore speaks of: extrinsic goodness, the kind of goodness something has in virtue of its extrinsic properties. When things are good in this way, they are, a fortiori, good in some way. So extrinsic goods are generically good. But we cannot, on pain of contradiction, maintain that this is because of their intrinsic features. Thus, to claim that Moore conflated intrinsic and generic value would be to accuse of him of contradicting himself. Without textual evidence, we should, I believe, avoid such accusations.
I therefore reject Thomson's argument. I think that the fundamental notion of Moorean moral philosophy is intrinsic goodness, not generic goodness. And I think that Moore did not conflate these notions.
INTRINSIC GOODNESS WITHOUT GENERIC GOODNESS
I suspect Thomson is aware of this objection. But she does not address it until her most recent work, and restricts her response to a footnote:
I am sure that some readers will say that there is another, and better, alternative at the bottom of the barrel, namely that the property [Moore] takes ‘good’ to stand for is . . . intrinsic goodness. We might well suppose [this kind of goodness] to be nonderivative goodness . . . This does seem to be what Moore had in mind when he used the term in Principia. So understood, however there is no such property as intrinsic goodness if there is no such property as [generic] goodness.Footnote 23
This is a surprising admission: Thomson has argued in her ‘Goodness and Utilitarianism’, ‘The Right and the Good’, Goodness and Advice, ‘The Legacy of the Principia’ and in her Normativity – up to this point – that Moore's project fails because his fundamental notion, generic goodness, is illegitimate.Footnote 24 But if the Moorean project does not make use of this notion, as Thomson seems to suggest, then it is unclear how her objection may succeed.
However, Thomson clearly believes that there is some tie between generic goodness and intrinsic goodness – without the first, the second cannot exist. But we are not given an argument for this claim. Still, we might be able to fill in this lacuna. Consider Thomson's suggestion:
Non-Derivation: Something is intrinsically good just in case its goodness is non-derivative.
What kind of goodness is being invoked on the right hand side of this biconditional? No qualifier appears. It cannot be intrinsic goodness: this would render the principle circular. Nor can it be instrumental goodness, or goodness as a means: such value is always derivative. So, we might think, this mysterious kind of goodness must be generic goodness. What else could it be?
This problem may appear unique to Thomson's non-derivation account. But it is not: nearly all accounts of intrinsic goodness seem to invoke some unexplained kind of goodness. In the Ethics we read:
By saying that a thing is intrinsically good it means that it would be a good thing that the thing in question should exist, even if it existed quite alone.Footnote 25
Let us understand this principle as a biconditional. Then we will say:
Isolation: Something is intrinsically good just in case it would still be good, even if it were the only thing that existed.
The kind of goodness on the right-hand side of this biconditional is not specified. But it is not qualified in any way, either. So, even friends of Moore admit that it may be generic goodness.Footnote 26
But if this is true of Moore's isolation principle, then it is likely true of the rest of the Moorean principles about intrinsic value, all of which invoke this unexplained concept of goodness. So it seems that Thomson's strategy may succeed: by attacking generic goodness, she has attacked intrinsic goodness too.
However, I believe that we should not understand Moore's principles in terms of generic goodness; such interpretations render the principles absurd. Begin with Moore's isolation principle. If we understand it in terms of generic goodness, we will say:
Generic Isolation: Something is intrinsically good just in case it would still be generically good, even if it were the only thing that existed.
But this principle is indefensible.Footnote 27 Everything is such that, if it were the only thing that existed, then it would be generically good. This is because generic goodness is the property that all things that are good in any way have in common. Thus to be generically good, a thing must simply be good in some way or another. So imagine anything, and then imagine it existing all alone. Such a thing would then be a good example of a thing that exists all alone. It would therefore be good in some way, and thus generically good. So this thing, whatever it is, will be intrinsically good.
Similar problems will infect Moore's other principles. Consider the necessity principle: it says that something is intrinsically good just in case it is necessarily good.Footnote 28 If we formulate this claim in terms of generic goodness, we obtain:
Generic Necessity: Something is intrinsically good just in case it is necessarily generically good.
But, as I have argued, a thing cannot fail to be generically good, since a thing cannot fail to be good in some way.
We should not accept an interpretation of the Moorean principles that makes them absurd. So we should not understand these principles in terms of Thomson's notion of generic goodness. Rather, we can endorse a different version of the Moorean claims; we use the principles to differentiate between kinds of value. We say:
Intrinsic Isolation: If something is intrinsically good, then it would continue to be intrinsically good, even if it were the only thing that existed. But this is not true of other kinds of goodness.
And:
Intrinsic Necessity: If something is intrinsically good, then it is necessarily intrinsically good. But this is not true of other kinds of goodness.Footnote 29
These principles are defensible and attractive; they show us how intrinsic goodness differs from other sorts of goodness. And they make no appeal to Thomson's notion of generic value.Footnote 30
Further, if we wish, we can reformulate Thomson's principle in the same way:
Intrinsic Non-derivation: Intrinsic goodness is non-derivative: if something is intrinsically good, then it is not intrinsically good because something else has value. But this is not true of other kinds of goodness.
Admittedly, it is unclear that the principle is true when stated so strongly. We should perhaps say instead that intrinsic goodness is one kind of non-derivative value, not that it is the only kind. But this should not worry us: the original version of Thomson's principle has this same consequence. Further, the non-derivation principle is not stated or defended in Moore's work. Thus, even if Thomson's suggestion were to be rejected entirely, this need not damage the Moorean project.
I conclude that the Moorean may explicate the concept of intrinsic goodness without appealing to the notion of generic goodness. He may, therefore, avoid this second version of Thomson's objection.
A NEW CHALLENGE: ABSOLUTE GOODNESS AND THE MOOREAN SYSTEM
Thomson's challenge appeals to a particular interpretation of the Principia. I have claimed that we should reject this interpretation – generic goodness is not the fundamental notion of Moorean moral philosophy, nor is it required to understand Moore's primary concept, intrinsic goodness. And yet many have been attracted to Thomson's conclusions; they believe there is something deeply wrong with Moore's system.Footnote 31 What grounds their conviction?
I believe their worry is not truly about generic goodness, as Thomson has described it. Rather, I think their concern is about a similar concept: the notion of absolute goodness or goodness simpliciter.
The concept is understood negatively. Many goods are valuable in relation to some particular, or universal: they are good for a particular person or purpose, or good as a member of a kind. We attribute relational value to a thing when we say, for example, that it is good for Jones, or good for cutting the lawn, or a good as an umbrella. But the value of some goods is not relative to a person, purpose or kind. Such things are valuable absolutely; they are good simpliciter. Aristotle said such goods are valuable ‘without qualification’;Footnote 32 Ross that they are good ‘sans phrase’;Footnote 33 Sidgwick that they are valuable ‘from the point of view of the universe’.Footnote 34
The concepts of absolute and generic value are similar. Indeed, Arneson, Klocksiem and Rowland (among many others) simply identify Thomson's notion with the concept of absolute value.Footnote 35 But this is a mistake. Generic goodness is supposed to be (i) the property all good things have in common, (ii) the property of being ‘just plain good’, and (iii) the property that makes a thing good in any respect. The tension between these three principles renders the concept incoherent: because everything is good in some respect, everything is both generically good and generically bad – and thus everything is ‘just plain good’ and ‘just plain bad’. But this is absurd.
Absolute goodness is what remains of the concept of generic goodness if we remove this incoherence. It answers only to Thomson's second principle: to be good absolutely is to be (simply) good. But the other claims do not hold: goodness simpliciter is not the property that all things that are in any way good have in common – to be a good prison is not to be good without qualification. And thus a fortiori a good prison cannot be good because it is good absolutely. So the third principle fails as well.
Once we separate these two notions, we gain access to a third version of Thomson's challenge. We join Foot and Kraut; we claim that Moore's system cannot be generated without the notion of absolute goodness. But we insist that the notion be rejected; we say that nothing is (simply) good – a thing can only be good relationally.
This challenge should be taken seriously. I believe it grounds many philosophers’ suspicion of the Moorean project. And it is more plausible than the objections we have considered so far. While we can eliminate the connection between generic and intrinsic value, we cannot eliminate the connection between absolute and intrinsic value. This is because Moorean intrinsic goodness is a kind of absolute value – to say that something is intrinsically good in Moore's sense is not to say that it is good in relation to a particular kind, or that it is good for someone or something.Footnote 36 Moore seems to recognize this: in his arguments against the egoist, he notes that many believe that things can be intrinsically good for a person. But this is impossible, he claims: if a thing is intrinsically good in his sense, then it cannot be good relative to a person; it must be good ‘universally’ or ‘absolutely’.
However, even here, we might object. We say that to be good absolutely is (i) to be good but (ii) not to be good in any particular way. However, we insist that intrinsic goodness is a particular way of being good.Footnote 37 We appeal to the claims of Zimmerman and others; we say that being intrinsically good is a way of being ethically good.Footnote 38 We conclude that even if there is something objectionable about the concept of goodness simpliciter, this need not undermine Moore's moral system.Footnote 39
But, though I am eager to support the Moorean position, I worry that this defence cannot succeed. Remember that to be good absolutely is simply to be good non-relationally. But to say that a thing is good relationally is not to say that it is good in some way. Rather, to be good relationally is to be good relative to some person, purpose or kind. Thus the fact that intrinsic goodness is a particular way of being good does not show that it is a kind of relational goodness – and thus does not show that intrinsic goodness is not a sort of non-relational, or absolute, value.
Of course, we might insist instead that intrinsic goodness is a relational kind of value: to be intrinsically good is to be good relative to the kind states of affairs.Footnote 40 While Moore never made such claims we may think them consistent with his views – in claiming that intrinsic value is absolute, he seems to mean only that it is not relative to persons. Further the restriction that comes with this relativization appears acceptable: Moore did assume that only finely grained entities such as states of affairs could bear intrinsic value.
However, here (perhaps surprisingly) I agree with Thomson: if something is a good member of its kind, this must be because the relevant kind somehow determines, or grounds, a set of standards. It is clear how this might happen with (e.g.) umbrellas. But, as Thomson argues, it is not at all clear how this might happen with states of affairs, or other ontological categories such as worlds or outcomes.Footnote 41 Further, there is an independent concern: if there are other kinds of value that only states of affairs may possess (such as instrumental value) then it is unclear how we can maintain that the intrinsic value of a thing is the value it has relative to the kind states of affairs.Footnote 42
I therefore cannot convince myself that intrinsic value is a kind of relational value. Rather, I am inclined to agree with the critic: intrinsic goodness is a kind of absolute goodness.Footnote 43 But what might be wrong with the concept of absolute value?
Many refer to Thomson's own argument – and to Geach's ‘Good and Evil’, which inspires it.Footnote 44 However, as I have stressed, Thomson's concern is generic goodness. But, as we shall see, Thomson's argument applies easily to absolute goodness as well. (And indeed, in her most recent work, Thomson turns her previous arguments against the concept of goodness simpliciter.Footnote 45) Further, Geach attacks absolute goodness directly in his ‘Good and Evil’ (1956). So both may, I think, be understood as challenging the concept of non-relational value. And, given the influence of their arguments, their claims are worth examining carefully.
Both philosophers proceed linguistically. We first note that there is a distinction between logically predicative and logically attributive adjective types. Geach writes:
I shall say that in a phrase ‘an A B’ (‘A’ being an adjective and ‘B’ being a noun) ‘A’ is a (logically) predicative adjective if the predication ‘is an A B’ splits up logically into a pair of predications ‘is a B’ and ‘is A’; otherwise I shall say that ‘A’ is a (logically) attributive adjective.Footnote 46
Thus an adjective is logically predicative if its attributions can be split; it is logically attributive if they cannot. So ‘red’, Geach says, is logically predicative: ‘this is a red book’ splits into ‘this is a book’ and ‘this is red’. But ‘big’ is logically attributive: ‘this is a big flea’ does not mean ‘this is a flea’ and ‘this is big’.Footnote 47 This shows, Geach says, that there is no property of being just plain big. Similarly with ‘heavy’, ‘fast’ and ‘strong’, as well as many other adjectives.
We next argue that ‘good’ is a logically attributive adjective. Geach asks us to consider sentences like ‘this is a good car’: this cannot be split, he says, into ‘this is a car’ and ‘this is good’.Footnote 48 Thomson gives different examples; she asks us to consider sentences like ‘he is a good tennis player’, ‘she is a good chess player’ and ‘it is a good toaster’.Footnote 49 In each case, she claims, these sentences cannot be divided. And we can provide more forceful examples: consider ‘he is a good criminal’ or ‘it is a good prison’.
We conclude that nothing is (simply) good; that, as Geach says, ‘even when “good” . . . stands by itself as a predicate, and is thus grammatically predicative, some substantive has to be understood; there is no such thing as being just good or bad, there is only being a good or bad so-and-so’.Footnote 50
But, though the major premise and conclusion are clear, the inference is not: how does the proposition that ‘good’ is logically attributive entail the proposition that there is no such thing as goodness simpliciter? Perhaps the idea is this: if there is such a property as absolute goodness, then it must be expressible in English. And if absolute goodness is expressible in English, then it must be expressed by sentences like ‘S is good’. In such sentences ‘good’ stands alone and is thus grammatically predicative. But, as Geach notes above, when a logically attributive adjective is used predicatively, it must be understood as a disguised attributive. Thus sentences like ‘S is good’ are incomplete; to fill them in, ‘some substantive has to be understood’. We conclude that ‘good’ cannot be used to express the property of being (simply) good; it can only express the property of being good in relation to something else.
Though I accept much of this argument, I believe it fails at a critical juncture. Let us say that a grammatically predicative use of an adjective is genuinely predicative when it is not simply a disguised attributive construction. Geach assumes that if an adjective type is logically attributive, then it cannot be employed in a way that is genuinely predicative; its predicative uses must be understood attributively.Footnote 51 But nothing in the argument given guarantees this. To say that an adjective is logically attributive is to claim only that some of its attributions cannot be split.Footnote 52 But this does not entail that no attributions of that adjective can be split, nor does it require that every grammatically predicative use of the adjective be understood as a disguised attributive.
Further, Geach's assumption is independently implausible – as Thomson admits in her most recent work.Footnote 53 Consider ‘famous’, she asks. To say that someone is a famous philosopher is not to say that they are famous, and a philosopher. Thus ‘famous’ is logically attributive; some of its attributions cannot be split. But not every grammatically predicative use of ‘famous’ must be understood as a disguised attributive. After all, some people, like President Obama, are famous simpliciter: to say that Obama is famous is not to say that he is famous relative to some kind; he is (simply) famous.Footnote 54 Thus, though it is logically attributive, ‘famous’ can be used in a way that is genuinely predicative; when so employed, it expresses the property of being (simply) famous.
If this is correct, then we may claim the battle won. We claim that ‘good’ is like ‘famous’: it has both genuinely predicative and genuinely attributive uses.Footnote 55 Geach's argument fails.
But though Thomson accepts that some logically attributive adjectives may have genuinely predicative uses, she urges us to resist the analogy between ‘good’ and ‘famous’: ‘What assures us that “famous” does have this second [i.e. genuinely predicative] use is that we know what the property of being (simply) famous is – it is the property of being (simply) well known.’Footnote 56 But, she claims, we do not know what the property of being (simply) good is. She examines three options: goodness simpliciter might be (i) the property of being ‘prima facie ought making’; (ii) the property of being ‘good in some respect or other’; or (iii) ‘our old friend, the property [generic] goodness’.Footnote 57 She rejects all three – correctly, I believe – and concludes that there is no such thing as being (simply) good.
I think, however, that we should not be persuaded by Thomson's reply. Her defence abandons the argument given: Geach and Thomson (up to this point) have told us that there is no such thing as absolute goodness because ‘good’ cannot be used in a way that is genuinely predicative. Thomson now tells us that ‘good’ cannot be used in a way that is genuinely predicative, because there is no such property as absolute goodness. We cannot accept both possibilities.
Further, I believe we have already answered Thomson's charge – to be absolutely good is simply to possess non-relational value. If there are many kinds of non-relational value, as I believe, then we may think of absolute goodness as a general concept that particular notions like intrinsic goodness and instrumental goodness fall under.
Thomson may object; she may demand that we define the species of value that fall under the concept we have described – or, at least, that we define the fundamental concept that falls under it, intrinsic goodness (as she does in both ‘The Legacy of Principia’ and Normativity). But this demand is unacceptable: Moorean intrinsic goodness is a primitive.Footnote 58
Of course the sceptic may claim that he cannot grasp Moore's concept. But for those of us who do not already agree with Thomson, this objection is likely to ring hollow. We use the concept frequently: we ask about the intrinsic values of our lives; about the intrinsic values of our actions; about the intrinsic value of the world.Footnote 59 We think that certain events – like the suffering brought on by natural disasters – are bad in themselves and that others – like innocent pleasures – are good. Such claims are hardly unintelligible.
Further, not only is Moore's primitive familiar, but he has taken great pains to describe it. Schaffer writes:
Everyone needs their fundamental posits [i.e. primitives]. Anytime one introduces such a posit one has to say what work it does, which means not just introducing a term (e.g. ‘Law’, ‘N’) for it, but also outfitting it with axioms which specify its connections. Some axioms characterize internal connections between the posit and itself . . . And some axioms characterize external connections to surrounding matters . . . A posit without axioms would be an idle wheel. This much should be uncontroversial.Footnote 60
Moore does as he is asked: he states a number of principles that govern the nature of intrinsic value – he explains that it supervenes upon intrinsic non-moral features, that it persists in isolation, and that it attaches necessarily to its bearers. He also shows how intrinsic goodness is related to other moral concepts, and (in giving his supervenience claim) how it is related to non-moral concepts as well. He thus satisfies the basic constraints on introducing a primitive.
As Schaffer suggests, we should accept – or reject – Moore's primitive based on the work it can do. This, in turn, involves an evaluation of the overall Moorean programme. Thomson's strategy is therefore backwards: we should not reject Moore's system because we are sceptical of the notion of intrinsic value. Rather, we should be sceptical of the notion of intrinsic value only if we have reason to reject Moore's system.Footnote 61And Thomson has given us no such reason.
I conclude that the Moorean project survives all three versions of Thomson's challenge.Footnote 62 His moral system may yet fail – but it does not fail in the way Thomson claims.Footnote 63
