Refuting idealism: G. E. Moore's metaethics in historical context

G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica has exerted almost unparalleled influence upon the moral philosophy of the twentieth century. Yet, ironically, the central doctrines of this work have remained something of a mystery. This circumstance is due, in my judgment, to a failure to regard Moore's early philosophy--the philosophy he developed in the years just before and after the turn of the century--as a more or less unified whole, within which the moral philosophy of the Principia forms one part systematically connected with others.;Focusing upon the metaethical themes of Principia Ethica's first four chapters, I reconstruct Moore's position in the light of a study of some of his largely-forgotten early papers and their context in the philosophy of nineteenth-century Britain. I argue that Moore's 1899 essay "The Nature of Judgment," written as a response to the logical views of the Oxford idealist F. H. Bradley, sets in place certain key metaphysical, epistemological, and logical theses upon which Moore subsequently relies in the Principia. I then trace the central developments in Moore's emerging realist philosophy from this essay through the 1903 classic, "The Refutation of Idealism." The hallmark of the latter work, I argue, is a general theory of consciousness that becomes crucial to Moore's defense of his views about the nature of value, as well as to Moore's philosophic methodology.;Based on the results of examining Moore's early non-ethical writings, the second half of the dissertation develops interpretations of Moore's main conceptions of value, of the so-called "naturalistic fallacy," and of the much-discussed "open-question" argument of the Principia's first chapter. Particular attention is given to Moore's diagnosis, in chapter four, of the causes of the "naturalistic fallacy" among his predecessors and contemporaries.;The dissertation concludes with a brief comparison of Moore's position in metaethics with that of his contemporary and fellow realist Ralph Barton Perry. The well-known differences between Moore's nonnaturalism and Perry's naturalism in metaethics stem, I argue, from intriguing and much deeper differences between the two philosophers over how a realist response to idealism should proceed.