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G.E. Moore’s Open Question Argument Against The Naturalistic Fallacy Revised, Updated, and Redefended
I’ll begin by defining the naturalistic fallacy, dictionary-style, as follows:
1. The failed attempt to reduce what is morally obligatory to what is merely contingent, empirical, or factual. 2. The failed attempt to reduce the “ought” to the “is” (Hume, 1978: pp. 469-470, book I, part I, section I). 3. The failed analytic reduction of The Good to any fact or property that’s purely natural (Moore, 1903).
Now, the doctrine of ethical or moral naturalism says that ethical or moral facts either logically or nomologically strongly supervene on natural facts; and ethical or moral naturalism, whether reductive or non-reductive, is the standard view in mainstream contemporary moral philosophy (Lutz and Lenman, 2021).
But ethical or moral naturalism can be decisively demonstrated to be false, by revising, updating, and redefending G.E. Moore’s classical open question argument against the naturalistic fallacy.
The locus classicus of Moore’s open question argument against the naturalistic fallacy is Principia Ethica,and his general target is what he explicitly calls “naturalism” in ethics:
[Ethical or moral naturalism] consists in substituting for “good” some one property of a natural object or of a collection of natural objects; and in thus replacing Ethics by some one of the natural sciences. In general, the science thus substituted is one of the sciences specially concerned with man…. In general, Psychology has been the science substituted, as by J. S. Mill. (Moore, 1903: p. 40)
And Moore’s argument centers on the naturalistic fallacy, which he defined as follows:
[T]he naturalistic fallacy … [is] the fallacy which consists in identifying the simple notion which we mean by “good” with some other notion. (Moore, 1903: p. 58)
[The naturalistic] fallacy, I explained, consists in the contention that good means nothing but some simple or complex notion, that can defined in terms of natural qualities. (Moore, 1903: p. 73)
In other words, according to Moore, ethical or moral naturalism is the claim that the fact or property of being good is identical with some simple or complex natural fact or property, and the naturalistic fallacy consists precisely in wrongly accepting such an identification of facts or properties.
Now, many post-Moorean analytic philosophers have accepted Moore’s characterization of ethical or moral naturalism, and many have also accepted his anti-naturalistic conclusions.
Yet the open question argument has just as often been held to be a notorious failure.
Here is the argument in Moore’s own words:
The hypothesis that disagreement about the meaning of good is disagreement with regard to the correct analysis of a given whole, may be most plainly seen to be incorrect by consideration of the fact that, whatever definition be offered, it may always be asked, with significance, of the complex so defined, whether it is itself good. (Moore, 1903: p. 15)
We must not, therefore, be frightened by the assertion that a thing is natural into the admission that it is good: good does not, by definition, mean anything that is natural; and it is always an open question whether what is natural is good. (Moore, 1903: p. 44)
For convenience, I will call the fundamental ethical or moral fact or property of being good, “The Good.”
The open question argument then says that any attempt to give an analytic reduction of The Good to some corresponding natural property N (say, the property of being a pleasurable state of mind), automatically falls prey to the decisive objection that even if X is an instance of N it can still be significantly asked whether X is good: that is, it can be significantly postulated that X is an instance of N but X is not good.
Therefore, The Good is not identical to N.
Moore’s rationale for this is that the only case in which it would be altogether nonsensical to postulate that X is an instance of N but X is not good, is the case in which it is strictly impossible or contradictory to hold that X is not good, that is, when X is, precisely, good.
So if it is significant to ask whether X is N but not good, then N is not identical to The Good.
And Moore finds it to be invariably the case that it is significant to ask whether X is N but not good, hence invariably the case that N is not identical to The Good.
He concludes that The Good is an irreducible, primitive, and unanalyzable (or in his terminology, “simple”) non-natural fact or property, and that it is circular and self-undermining to try to identify The Good with any natural fact or property.
In my opinion, Moore’s classical open question argument is doomed because of a mistake he has made about the individuation of facts or properties.
The problem, as I see it, is that the argument implies a criterion of fact-identity or property-identity that is absurdly strict: indeed, Moore adopts Bishop Butler’s Monty-Pythonesque dictum, “everything is what it is and not another thing,” as the motto of Principia Ethica, and also uses it repeatedly as an axiom in his arguments.
Now, familiar criteria for the identity of two facts or properties include
(i) necessary equivalence of their analytic definitions,
(ii) synonymy of their corresponding predicates, and
(iii) identity of their cross-possible-worlds extensions.
But Moore’s criterion is importantly different:
[W]hoever will attentively consider with himself what is actually before his mind when he asks the question “Is pleasure (or whatever it may be) after all good?” can easily satisfy himself that he is not merely wondering whether pleasure is pleasant. And if he will try this experiment with each suggested definition in succession, he may become expert enough to recognise that in every case he has before his mind a unique object, with regard to the connection of which with any other object, a distinct question can be asked. Everyone does in fact understand the question “Is this good?” When he thinks of it, his state of mind is different from what it would be, were he asked “Is this pleasant, or desired, or approved?” It has a distinct meaning for him, even though he may not recognize in what respect it is distinct. Whenever he thinks of “intrinsic value,” or “intrinsic worth,” or says that a thing “ought to exist,” he has before his mind the unique object–the unique [fact or] property of things–which I mean by “good”…. “Good,” then is indefinable. (Moore, 1903: pp. 16-17)
In other words, Moore’s criterion is that two facts or properties are identical if and only if the intentional contents of the states of mind in which the facts or properties are recognized, are phenomenologically indistinguishable.
Consequently, even two facts or properties that are by hypothesis definitionally equivalent—for example, the property of being a bachelor, and the property of being an adult unmarried male—will come out non-identical according to this test.
The intentional content of the state of mind of someone who says or thinks that X is a bachelor is clearly phenomenologically distinguishable from that of the same person when she says or thinks that X is an adult unmarried male.
I might not wonder even for a split second whether a bachelor is a bachelor, yet find myself mentally double-clutching as to whether a bachelor is an unmarried adult male.
But then according to that test it is not nonsensical to ask whether X is an unmarried adult male but not a bachelor: from which we must conclude, by Moorean reasoning, that the fact or property of being a bachelor is irreducible, primitive, and analyzable, and that it is a fallacy to try to identify any fact or property with any other fact or property, including the fact or property that, by hypothesis, expresses its analytic definition.
Obviously this cannot be correct: it is patently absurd to constrain fact or property identity so very, very tightly.
Moreover the phenomenological criterion of fact or property identity leads directly to the notorious paradox of analysis (Langford, 1952; Moore, 1952), which says that on the one hand, (i) if a philosophical analysis is correct, then it’s epistemically trivial or uninformative, but on the other hand, (ii) if a philosophical analysis is epistemically non-trivial or informative, then it’s false: therefore, every philosophical analysis is either trivial or false.
For, if (i) only phenomenological identity will suffice for fact or property identity, and if (ii) fact or property identity is a necessary and sufficient condition of a correct analysis, then (iii) every correct analysis must be epistemically trivial or uninformative, and every non-trivial or informative analysis must be false, therefore (iv) the paradox of analysis obtains.
Moore’s ethical or moral anti-naturalism also contains another less noticed but equally serious difficulty.
This difficulty stems from his explicit commitment to a certain strict modal connection between intrinsic-value facts or properties and natural facts or properties:
I have tried to shew, and I think it is too evident to be disputed, that such appreciation [of intrinsically valuable, or good, qualities] is an organic unity, a complex whole; and that, in its most undoubted instances, part of what is included in this whole is a cognition of material qualities, and particularly of a vast variety of what are called secondary qualities. If, then, it is this whole, which we know to be good, and not another thing, then we know that material qualities, even though they be perfectly worthless in themselves, are yet essential constituents of what is far from worthless…. [A] world, from which material qualities were wholly banished, would be a world which lacked many, if not all, of those things, which we know most certainly to be great goods. (Moore, 1903: pp. 206-207)
[I]f a given thing possesses any kind of intrinsic value in a certain degree, then not only must that same thing possess it, under all circumstances, in the same degree, but also anything exactly like it, must, under all circumstances, possess it in exactly the same degree. Or, to put it in the corresponding negative form: it is not possible that of two exactly similar things one should possess it and the other not, or that one should possess it in one degree, and the other in a different one. (Moore, 1922: p. 261)
According to Moore, then, (i) every intrinsic-value fact or property has some complex set of natural qualities as its “essential constituents,” and (ii) for any natural thing that “possesses any kind of intrinsic value in a certain degree, then not only must that same thing possess it, under all [logically possible] circumstances, in the same degree, but also anything exactly like it, must, under all [logically possible] circumstances, possess it in exactly the same degree.”
So, in effect, according to Moore, intrinsic-value facts or properties are both constituted by and also logically strongly supervenient on natural properties.
It follows that The Good is, incoherently, both natural and also non-natural.
I say “incoherently” rather than “inconsistently” because, strictly speaking, it is possible to hold that two sets of facts or properties are non-identical even though one of those sets of facts or properties is logically strongly supervenient on the other set of properties.
But since logical strong supervenience implies both explanatory reduction and also ontological reduction, even if not strict identity, and since the philosophical upshot of Moore’s ethical or moral anti-naturalism is surely intended to be not the mere non-identity of The Good with any other fact or property, but rather the explanatory and ontological irreducibility of The Good to any other fact or property, then his overall view is in conflict with itself.
We have just seen that Moore’s ethical or moral anti-naturalism is a double failure.
But all is not lost, for this double failure teaches us two important philosophical lessons.
First lesson: Do not make your argument against ethical or moral naturalism rest on questionable assumptions about fact- or property-individuation or fact- or property-identity.
Second lesson: You must directly attack ethical or moral naturalism’s strong supervenience thesis.
Taking these two post-Moorean dicta to heart, here is a new general argument against ethical or moral naturalism, in two parts.
Part 1. The First Naturalistic Fallacy as Failed Logical Supervenience
For the purposes of my argument I’ll need only four basic assumptions.
First, I’ll need the familiar metaphysics of strong supervenience, briefly characterized and defined below (see also Chalmers, 1996: ch. 2).
Second, I’ll need the equally familiar “conceivability entails possibility” non-supervenience argument strategy deployed by David Chalmers (Chalmers, 1996: chs. 3-4) and many others in the context of recent and contemporary philosophy of mind , but assuming only the truth of my own modal semantic framework, based on a positive theory of the analytic-synthetic distinction (Hanna, 2015: ch. 5), and not the truth of Chalmers’s own “Two Dimensional” modal semantics, which, following George Bealer (Bealer, 2002), I regard as highly questionable.
Third, I’ll need the intrinsically compelling Kantian moral rational intuition that arbitrarily torturing completely innocent people to death, like the Nazis did, for no good reason whatsoever, is a direct violation of the second formulation of the Categorical Imperative, namely, The Formula of Humanity as End-in-Itself,
so act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means. (Kant, 1996: p. 80, Ak4: 429),
and, as such, it is self-evidently morally wrong.
Fourth and finally, I’ll need the following thesis about the nature of basic intentional action:
A is a basic intentional act of an essentially embodied human person P if and only if A is an intentional body movement of P that is structurally caused and actively guided and controlled by P’s simultaneously trying to perform A, which in turn is a physically irreducible conscious effective first-order desire to perform A, which in turn is P’s will.
Michelle Maiese and I have argued for this thesis in Embodied Minds in Action (Hanna and Maiese, 2009: esp. chs. 3-5).
To situate it within a larger philosophical context, however, it’s a constructive extension of Harry Frankfurt’s hierarchical desire conception of the will and also Frankfurt’s guidance-control conception of intentional action, together with Brian O’Shaughnessy’s action-theoretic notion of trying, framed against the backdrop of the essential embodiment theory of the mind-body relation (Frankfurt, 1988b, 1988c, 1988d, 1988e, 1988f; O’Shaughnessy, 1973; Hanna and Maiese, 2009; Hanna, 2020).
Granting those assumptions, then the first ethical- or moral-naturalist claim I am putting forward for refutation is this one:
The Good (or the “ought”) logically supervenes (globally or regionally or locally) on natural facts or properties (or the “is”).
This claim, I will argue, is false.
But to believe that the logical supervenience of The Good and the “ought” on natural facts is true, given that it is actually false, is what Iwill call the first naturalistic fallacy, by way of clarifying and precisifying one important version of Moore’s basic idea.
The thesis of logical supervenience says that the existence and specific character of B-facts logically supervene on A-facts.
Now, B-facts logically supervene on A-facts if and only if
(i) A-facts logically necessitate B-facts,
(ii) B-facts are either downwards identical to A-facts, or not downwards identical to A-facts, yet
(iii) logically necessarily, there can be no change in any of X’s B-properties without a corresponding change in X’s A-properties, and
(iv) logically necessarily, any two beings that are A-property indiscriminable are also B-property indiscriminable (but not necessarily conversely—in case B-facts are not downwards identical to A-facts).
The domain of A-facts is the supervenience base and the domain of B-facts is the supervening domain.
And here are the main implications of a logical supervenience thesis: Fix all the A-facts and then you have thereby fixed, with a priori logical necessity (that is, non-empirically holding in every logically possible world), all the B-facts.
Or otherwise put: Know everything there is to know about the A-facts, and you thereby know, conceptually a priori, everything there is to know about the B-facts.
I’ll now revise, update, and redefend Moore’s classical open question argument as an “analytic conceivability entails logical possibility” anti-strong-supervenience argument against reductive ethical or moral naturalism.
But first I’ll define reductive ethical or moral naturalism.
Reductive ethical or moral naturalism is the disjunction of reductive consequentialism (whether act or rule consequentialism), reductive hedonism, reductive ethical or moral egoism, and something I’ll rather inelegantly call reductive ethical or moral hybridism—
Reductive consequentialism: All the ethical or moral facts are nothing but good-consequence facts.
Reductive hedonism: All the ethical or moral facts are nothing but positive-pleasure facts.
Reductive ethical or moral egoism: All the ethical or moral facts are nothing but in-my-best-self-interest facts.
Reductive ethical or moral hybridism: All the ethical or moral facts are nothing but some hybrid mixture of good-consequence facts, positive-pleasure facts, or in-my-best-self-interest facts, or some other set of purely natural facts.
Assuming that disjunctive definition, then here is the basic form of my revised-&-updated Moorean open question argument against reductive ethical or moral naturalism:
(1) Purportedly, the domain of B-facts (= The Good) logically supervenes on the domain of A-facts (= some or another set of natural facts).
(2) But analytically conceivably, hence logically possibly, all the same A-facts (= the same set of natural facts) can obtain in another minimally physically duplicated possible world, but not all the same B-facts obtain in that world (= not good in that world)?
(3) If yes, then B-facts (= The Good) do not logically supervene on A-facts (= some or another set of natural facts), hence the thesis that ethical or moral facts (= The Good) logically supervene on some or another set of natural facts commits the first naturalistic fallacy and is false.
Correspondingly, here’s my revised-&-updated Moorean open question argument, itself, as an “analytic conceivability entails logical possibility” anti-supervenience argument against reductive ethical naturalism:
(1) Purportedly, the domain of B-facts (= The Good) logically supervenes on the domain of A-facts (= either good-consequence facts, positive-pleasure facts, in-my-best-self-interest facts, some hybrid mixture of these, or some other set of purely natural facts.
(2) But analytically conceivably, hence logically possibly, all the same good-consequence facts, positive-pleasure facts, in-my-best-self-interest facts, some hybrid mixture of these, or some other set of purely natural facts (= the same set of natural facts), can obtain in another minimally physically duplicated logically possible world, but not all the same B-facts obtain in that world (= not good in that world)?
(3) If yes, then B-facts (= The Good) do not logically supervene on A-facts (= good-consequence facts, positive-pleasure facts, in-my-best-self-interest facts, some hybrid mixture of these, or some other set of purely natural facts, hence the thesis that moral facts (= The Good) logically supervene on good-consequence facts, positive-pleasure facts, in-my-best-self-interest facts, some hybrid mixture of these, or some other set of purely natural facts, commits the first naturalistic fallacy and is false.
For example: Pick any basic act A in the actual world and fix any set of good-consequence facts, positive-pleasure facts, in-my-best-self-interest facts, any hybrid mixture of these, or some other set of purely natural facts , relative to A, and also assume that A is prima facie morally good in the actual world just by virtue of fixing those facts, and also assume that the specific character of A is whatever it adventitiously happens to be.
Nevertheless, it is still analytically conceivable and therefore logically possible that A is morally bad in some logically possible minimal good-consequence facts, positive-pleasure facts, in-my-best-self-interest facts, some-hybrid-mixture-of-them, or some-other-set-of-purely-natural facts physical duplicate of the actual world in which the specific character of A spontaneously varies.
To show this, let us say that A is now specifically an attempt arbitrarily to torture some completely innocent person P to death, like the Nazis did, for no good reason at all.
Even despite being prima facie right in the actual world on consequentialist, hedonistic, egoistic, hybrid, or some other purely natural grounds, A is always wrong, no matter what.
So neither good-consequence facts, nor positive-pleasure facts, nor in-my-best-self-interest facts, nor any hybrid mixture of these, nor any other set of pure natural facts, constitutes the determining ground of goodness or the “ought,” and reductive ethical naturalism is false.
On the contrary, the determining ground of moral goodness or the “ought” is nothing more and nothing less than the essentially embodied basic intentional act of a rational animal, for better or worse, insofar as it is immanently structured by the Categorical Imperative.
2. The Second Naturalistic Fallacy as Failed Nomological Supervenience
The second ethical- or moral-naturalist claim I am putting forward for refutation is this one:
The Good (or the “ought”) nomologically supervenes (globally or regionally or locally) on natural facts or properties (or the “is”).
This claim too, I will argue, is false.
But to believe that the nomological supervenience of The Good and the “ought” on natural facts is true, given that it is actually false, is what I will call the second naturalistic fallacy, by way of clarifying and precisifying a second important version of Moore’s basic idea.
Having previously extended the notion of strong supervenience to logical supervenience, I want now to extend that notion to nomological strong supervenience, or nomological supervenience for short.
Nomological supervenience is the thesis that the existence and specific character of B-facts nomologically supervene on A-facts.
Now B-facts nomologically supervene on A-facts if and only if
(i) A-facts nomologically necessitate B-facts,
(ii) B-facts are either downwards identical to A-facts, or not downwards identical to A-facts, yet
(iii) nomologically necessarily, there can be no change in any of X’s B-properties without a corresponding change in X’s A-properties, and
(iv) nomologically necessarily, any two beings that are A-property indiscriminable are also B-property indiscriminable (but not necessarily conversely—in case B-facts are not downwards identical to A-facts).
As before, the domain of A-facts is the supervenience base and the domain of B-facts is the supervening domain.
And here are the main implications of a nomological supervenience thesis: Fix all the A-facts and then you have thereby fixed, with natural or physical necessity (that is, holding in every logical possible world with same kind of physical matter and the same set of natural laws as the actual world), all the B-facts.
Or otherwise put: Know empirically everything there is to know about the A-facts, and you thereby know, empirically, everything there is to know about the B-facts.
I want now again to revise, update, and redefend Moore’s classical open question argument, although this time as a “synthetic conceivability entails real possibility” anti-strong-supervenience argument against non-reductive ethical or moral naturalism.
But first I will define non-reductive ethical or moral naturalism.
Non-reductive ethical or moral naturalism is the disjunction of non-reductive consequentialism (whether act or rule consequentialism), non-reductive hedonism, non-reductive ethical egoism, and something I will (again) rather inelegantly call “non-reductive ethical or moral hybridism”—
Non-Reductive Consequentialism: All the ethical or moral facts are naturally determined by good-consequence facts, but are not nothing but good consequence facts—instead, they are, in some sense that is perhaps a merely conceptual or epistemic sense and not a metaphysical sense, something over and above good consequence facts.
Non-Reductive Hedonism: All the ethical or moral facts are naturally determined by positive-pleasure facts, but are not nothing but positive-pleasure facts—instead, they are, in some sense that is perhaps a merely conceptual or epistemic sense and not a metaphysical sense, something over and above positive-pleasure facts.
Non-Reductive Ethical Egoism: All the ethical or moral facts are naturally determined by in-my-best-self-interest facts, but are not nothing but in-my-best-self-interest fact—instead, they are, in some sense that is perhaps a merely conceptual or epistemic sense and not a metaphysical sense, something over and above in-my-best-self-interest facts.
Non-Reductive Ethical or Moral Hybridism: All the moral facts are naturally determined by some or another hybrid mixture of good-consequence facts, positive-pleasure facts, in-my-best-self-interest facts, or some other set of purely natural facts, but are not nothing but some or another hybrid mixture of good-consequence facts, positive-pleasure facts, in-my-best-self-interest facts, or some other set of purely natural facts—instead, they are, in some sense that is perhaps a merely conceptual or epistemic sense and not a metaphysical sense, something over and above some or another hybrid mixture of good-consequence-facts, positive-pleasure-facts, in-my-best-self-interest, or some other set of purely natural facts.
Assuming this disjunctive definition, here is the basic form of my second revised-&-updated classical Moorean open question argument, this time against non-reductive ethical or moral naturalism:
(1) Purportedly, the domain of B-facts (= The Good) nomologically supervenes on the domain of A-facts (= some or another set of natural facts).
(2) But synthetically conceivably, hence both logically possibly and also really possibly, all the same A-facts (= the same set of natural facts) can obtain in another minimally physically duplicated nomologically possible world, but not all the same B-facts obtain in that world (= not good in that world)?
(3) If yes, then B-facts (= The Good) do not nomologically supervene on A-facts (= some or another set of natural facts), hence the thesis that moral facts (= The Good) nomologically supervene on some or another set of natural facts commits the second naturalistic fallacy and is false.
Correspondingly, here’s my second revised-&-updated Moorean open question argument itself, this time as a “synthetic conceivability entails real possibility” anti-supervenience argument against non-reductive ethical or moral naturalism:
(1) Purportedly, the domain of B-facts (= The Good) nomologically supervenes on the domain of A-facts (= either good-consequence facts, positive-pleasure facts, in-my-best-self-interest facts, some hybrid mixture of these, or some other set of purely natural facts.
(2) But synthetically conceivably, hence both logically possibly and also really possibly, all the same good-consequence facts, positive-pleasure facts, in-my-best-self-interest facts, some hybrid mixture of these, or some other set of purely natural facts (= the same set of natural facts) can obtain in another minimally physically duplicated nomologically possible world, but not all the same B-facts obtain in that world (= not good in that world)?
(3) If yes, then B-facts (= The Good) do not nomologically supervene on A-facts (good-consequence facts, positive-pleasure facts, in-my-best-self-interest facts, some hybrid mixture of these, or some or other set of purely natural facts), hence the thesis that moral facts (= The Good) nomologically supervene on some or another set of natural facts (good-consequence facts, positive-pleasure facts, in-my-best-self-interest facts, some hybrid mixture of these, or some other set of purely natural facts) commits the second naturalistic fallacy and is false.
For example: Pick any basic act A in the actual world and fix any set of good-consequence facts, positive-pleasure facts, in-my-best-self-interest facts, any hybrid mixture of these, or any other set of purely natural facts, relative to A, and also assume that A is prima facie good in the actual world just by virtue of fixing those facts, and also assume that the specific character of A is whatever it adventitiously happens to be.
It is still synthetically conceivable and therefore both logically possible and also really possible that A is morally bad in some nomologically possible minimal good-consequence facts, positive-pleasure facts, in-my-best-self-interest facts, hybrid-mixture-of-these facts, or some-other-set-of-purely-natural facts physical duplicate of the actual world in which the specific character of A spontaneously varies.
To show this, as before, let us say that A is now specifically an attempt arbitrarily to torture some completely innocent person P to death, like the Nazis did, for no good reason at all.
Even despite being prima facie good in the actual world on consequentialist, hedonistic, egoistic, hybrid, or some other purely natural grounds, A is always wrong, no matter what.
So neither good-consequence facts, nor positive-pleasure facts, nor in-my-best-self-interest facts, nor any hybrid mixture of them, nor any other set of purely natural facts, constitutes the determining ground of rightness, and non-reductive ethical naturalism is false.
Again, the determining ground of moral goodness is just the essentially embodied basic intentional act of a rational animal, for better or worse, insofar as it is immanently structured by the Categorical Imperative.
Therefore, there’s a sound revised-&-updated version of Moore’s classical open question argument against the naturalistic fallacy, namely my modal metaphysical version of Moore’s argument, reformulated as the failure of any and all attempts to show the logical or nomological strong supervenience of The Good (or the “ought”) on some or another natural supervenience base (or the “is”).
Moreover, when we combine this result with what I call the axiocentric predicament and with my proposed way out of that predicament (Hanna, 2022), then the case against the naturalistic fallacy and ethical or moral naturalism is rationally overwhelming and indeed philosophically decisive.
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