On The Inner Contradictions Of Moore's Ethical Thoughts

This thesis mainly focuses on Moore's ethical thoughts in Principia Ethica.In the book,Moore criticizes the traditional utilitarianism and accuses it of committing the “naturalistic fallacy”,which has brought great controversy,and the voices of support or opposition rise and fall one after another.I agree with latter.Moore's criticism of traditional utilitarianism does have problems.When people criticize traditional utilitarianism in an inappropriate way,we need to defend for traditional utilitarianism.On the basis of the existing defense opinions,I will make further explanation and propose new viewpoints,starting with the internal contradictions of Moore's thoughts and pointing out its theoretical difficulties and proving that its criticism of traditional utilitarianism is not valid.There are three internal contradictions in Moore's theory.Firstly,When Moore explained that traditional utilitarianism had committed the “naturalistic fallacy”,he confused the two different concepts of “putting value out of facts” and “defining good”,and made the “naturalistic fallacy” deviate from its original meaning,resulting in the explanation of the concept into contradiction.Secondly,in the back of Moore's idea of “good is undefined”,there are confusions in the use of terms such as “definition” and “analysis”.It is difficult to convince people to criticize traditional utilitarianism with concepts those are difficult to define.Thirdly,Moore failed to insist on his principle of knowledgeable ethics in the process of developing his idealistic utilitarianism.This compromise directly leads to the selfcontradiction in Moore's theory.The revelation of these internal contradictions can prove that Moore's criticism is a misjudgment.In fact,traditional utilitarianism does not make the mistakes Moore said,and has its own theoretical value.Revealing the inherent contradictions in Moore's critical thoughts is conducive to clarifying Moore's own theoretical problems and reconstructing the traditional normative ethics theory.