Moore, Brentano, and Scanlon: a defense of indefinability

Philosophical Studies 177 (8):2261-2276 (2020)
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Abstract

Mooreans claim that intrinsic goodness is a conceptual primitive. Fitting-attitude theorists object: they say that goodness should be defined in terms of what it is fitting for us to value. The Moorean view is often considered a relic; the fitting-attitude view is increasingly popular. I think this unfortunate. Though the fitting-attitude analysis is powerful, the Moorean view is still attractive. I dedicate myself to the influential arguments marshaled against Moore’s program, including those advanced by Scanlon, Stratton-Lake and Hooker, and Jacobson; I argue that they do not succeed.

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Miles Tucker
Virginia Commonwealth University

Citations of this work

One Goodness, Many Goodnesses.Thomas M. Ward & Anne Jeffrey - forthcoming - Religious Studies.
Consequentialism and our best selves.Miles Tucker - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 180 (1):101-120.
Value Invariabilism and Two Distinctions in Value.Zak A. Kopeikin - 2021 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (1):45-63.

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References found in this work

What We Owe to Each Other.Thomas Scanlon (ed.) - 1998 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Principia ethica.George Edward Moore - 1903 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Edited by Thomas Baldwin.
On What Matters: Two-Volume Set.Derek Parfit - 2001 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Being Realistic About Reasons.Thomas Scanlon - 2014 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
What We Owe to Each Other.Thomas Scanlon - 2002 - Mind 111 (442):323-354.

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