3.1.7: Objections to Naturalism

G. E. Moore was a supporter of Cognitivism and Realism. However, Moore was not a naturalist — he was a non-naturalist — and objected to the idea that moral properties were natural properties. Moore’s objection to identifying moral properties as natural properties was two-fold. Firstly, he thought that moral properties were fundamentally simple and secondly he thought the identification of the moral with the natural failed what he termed the Open Question Argument.

Moore’s first objection to Naturalism, from simplicity, is based on an analogy between moral properties and colour properties. According to Moore, the concept of the colour yellow is a fundamentally simple concept in so far as it cannot be explained in terms of any other concept or property. Consider, as an example of a complex property, the idea of a horse. A horse can be explained to someone who has never come into contact with the animal because the concept of a horse can be reduced to simpler part. As a mammal of a typically brown colour, with certain organs and certain dimensions. In an obvious way, the concept of a horse can be broken down to simpler components.

Moore denies that the same is true for the concept of yellow. Yellow cannot be explained to someone who has not come into visual contact with it, because yellow is a simple concept that cannot be broken down into simpler component parts. Yellow is just yellow, and we can say nothing else about it that will explain it in simpler terms. The same, says Moore, is true for moral properties. According to Moore:

If I am asked, ‘What is good?’ my answer is that good is good, and that is the end of the matter. Or if I am asked ‘How is good to be defined?’ my answer is that it cannot be defined, and that is all I have to say about it.

On this basis, Moore cannot accept that moral properties can be reduced to natural properties as this would imply that moral properties are not fundamentally simple. The utilitarian, for example, defines goodness in terms of pleasure and so reduces goodness to pleasure. Moore suggests that moral naturalists make a mistake in trying to ground simple moral properties in terms of other natural properties.

As it stands, Moore’s analogy between goodness and yellow has some argumentative pull but lacks sufficient robustness. However, Moore’s Open Question Argument more formally drives home his point.

Moore suggests that we take some putative moral claim such as “giving to charity is good”. For goodness, Moore suggests we follow the naturalist’s lead and insert some natural property such as “pleasure”. Now, we have the claim that “giving to charity is pleasurable”. This identification between goodness and pleasure is the type of identification a naturalist about goodness might have in mind.

However, according to Moore it remains an open question as to whether or not something creating pleasure is actually good. The question remains meaningful in a way that it should not remain meaningful if goodness is actually reducible to pleasure. After all, it is not possible to meaningfully ask whether or not a bachelor is an unmarried man as the concept of a bachelor can be reduced to the concept of an unmarried man. Thus, if this utilitarian-style naturalist is correct about the identification of goodness and pleasure, it should not be a meaningful question — an open question — to ask whether a pleasurable act is a morally good act. Yet, it seems to remain open as to whether Action A is good, even if I am told that Action A is pleasurable.

Moore suggests that any attempted reduction of a moral property to a natural property will leave a meaningful open question of the form “this act possesses the natural property suggested” but “is it a good act”? Julia Tanner provides a modern example of the Open Question Argument in action:

Some people talk as if they think that that which has evolved is the same thing as being good. Thus, for instance, capitalism may be justified on the basis that it is merely an expression of ‘the survival of the fittest’ and ‘the survival of the [fittest]’ is good. To make such an argument is, according to Moore, to commit the naturalistic fallacy because good has been defined as something other than itself, as ‘the survival of the fittest’.

Tanner refers to the Naturalistic Fallacy, which is Moore’s own terminology for the mistake of attempting to reduce the moral property to the natural property. All such attempted reductions will fail because it will always be possible to meaningful ask whether the suggested natural property is actually good; if this question is open then goodness does not equal the suggested natural property. Think of the Open Question Argument as the searchlight seeking out those who commit the naturalistic fallacy.

It is worth noting that Moore’s arguments, although directed against naturalistic reductions of goodness, are just as powerful against non-natural reductions of goodness. Any attempt to reduce the concept of goodness to, for example, “what God wills’” will also fail because the question of “this is what God wills, but is it good?” appears to remain open. Self-evidently, this non-natural reduction is not an example of a naturalistic fallacy, but it can be no more acceptable if, like Moore, you believe that good is a fundamentally simple concept.