George Edward Moore (4 November 1873 – 24 October 1958) was an English philosopher who, alongside Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and earlier Gottlob Frege, was an initiator of analytic philosophy. He and Russell began de-emphasising the idealism which was then prevalent among British philosophers and became known for advocating common-sense concepts and contributing to ethics, epistemology and metaphysics. He was said to have had an "exceptional personality and moral character". Ray Monk dubbed him "the most revered philosopher of his era". As Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, he influenced but abstained from the Bloomsbury Group, an informal set of intellectuals. He edited the journal Mind. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles from 1894 to 1901, a fellow of the British Academy from 1918, and was chairman of the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club in 1912–1944. A humanist, he presided over the British Ethical Union (now Humanists UK) in 1935–1936.
Biography
Early life and education George Edward Moore was born in Upper Norwood, in south-east London, on 4 November 1873, the middle child of seven of Daniel Moore, a medical doctor, and Henrietta Sturge. His grandfather was the physician, writer and British Israelite George Moore. His eldest brother was Thomas Sturge Moore, a poet, writer and engraver. He was educated at Dulwich College and, in 1892, began attending Trinity College, Cambridge, to learn classics and moral sciences. His tripos results were a double first.
Career He became a Fellow of Trinity in 1898 and was later University of Cambridge Professor of Mental Philosophy and Logic from 1925 to 1939. Moore is known best now for defending ethical non-naturalism, his emphasis on common sense for philosophical method, and the paradox that bears his name. He was admired by and influenced by other philosophers and some of the Bloomsbury Group. But unlike his colleague and admirer Bertrand Russell, who for some years thought Moore fulfilled his "ideal of genius", he is mostly unknown presently except among academic philosophers. Moore's essays are known for their clarity and circumspection of writing style and methodical and patient treatment of philosophical problems. He was critical of modern philosophy for lack of progress, which he saw as a stark contrast to the dramatic advances in the natural sciences since the Renaissance. Among Moore's most famous works are his Principia Ethica, and his essays, "The Refutation of Idealism", "A Defence of Common Sense", and "A Proof of the External World". Moore was an important and admired member of the secretive Cambridge Apostles, a discussion group drawn from the British intellectual elite. At the time another member, 22-year-old Bertrand Russell, wrote "I almost worship him as if he were a god. I have never felt such an extravagant admiration for anybody", and would later write that "for some years he fulfilled my ideal of genius. He was in those days beautiful and slim, with a look almost of inspiration as deeply passionate as Spinoza's." In 1914 Moore traveled to Norway to visit Wittgenstein, here he took a series of notes later published as Notes dictated to G.E. Moore in Norway. From 1918 to 1919, Moore was chairman of the Aristotelian Society, a group committed to the systematic study of philosophy, its historical development and its methods and problems. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1951. This was awarded to him at Buckingham Palace by King George VI. After a conversation with the King, he returned to his wife who was awaiting Moore back in the car and told her "Do you know that the King had never heard of Wittgenstein!". The title of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was adopted at the suggestion of Moore, taking the title from Baruch Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670).
Death Moore died in England in the Evelyn Nursing Home on 24 October 1958. He was cremated at Cambridge Crematorium on 28 October 1958 and his ashes interred at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in the city. His wife, Dorothy Ely (1892–1977), was buried there. Together, they had two sons, the poet Nicholas Moore and the composer Timothy Moore.
Philosophy
Ethics
His influential work Principia Ethica is one of the main inspirations of the reaction against ethical naturalism (see ethical non-naturalism) and is partly responsible for the twentieth-century concern with metaethics.
Naturalistic fallacy
Moore asserted that philosophical arguments can suffer from a confusion between the use of a term in a particular argument and the definition of that term (in all arguments). He named this confusion the naturalistic fallacy. For example, an ethical argument may claim that if an item has certain properties, then that item is 'good.' A hedonist may argue that 'pleasant' items are 'good' items. Other theorists may argue that 'complex' things are 'good' things. Moore contends that, even if such arguments are correct, they do not provide definitions for the term 'good'. The property of 'goodness' cannot be defined. It can only be shown and grasped. Any attempt to define it (X is good if it has property Y) will simply shift the problem (Why is Y-ness good in the first place?).
Open-question argument
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