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    Good cannot be analysed in naturalistic terms — Carmelics
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    Home/Virtue Ethics
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    Good cannot be analysed in naturalistic terms

    Truth & KnowledgeVirtue Ethics
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Analysing good in naturalistic terms turns substantive moral claims into empty tautologies
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    • 2.For example, analysing good as pleasure turns 'pleasure is good' into the tautology 'pleasure is pleasure'
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The open question argument conflates epistemic separability with metaphysical non-identity, as Kripke's work on a posteriori necessity demonstrates.
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    • 2.Natural properties like H2O and water are genuinely identical despite 'Is water H2O?' remaining an open question prior to scientific discovery.
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    • 3.Moral terms like 'good' may similarly pick out natural properties through a posteriori identification rather than analytic definition.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The tautology objection assumes that definitional reduction exhausts the only form naturalistic analysis can take.
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    • 2.Cornell Realists like Sturgeon and Boyd argue 'good' refers to natural properties via causal-functional role, not synonymous definition, avoiding tautology entirely.
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    Virtue EthicsTruth & Knowledge

    Related

    Analysing good in naturalistic terms turns substantive moral claims into empty t...Cornell Realists like Sturgeon and Boyd argue 'good' refers to natural propertie...For example, analysing good as pleasure turns 'pleasure is good' into the tautol...Moral terms like 'good' may similarly pick out natural properties through a post...
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    Natural properties like H2O and water are genuinely identical despite 'Is water ...The open question argument conflates epistemic separability with metaphysical no...The tautology objection assumes that definitional reduction exhausts the only fo...

    Similar

    There cannot be a correct naturalistic constitutive explanation of the...77%The failure of all naturalistic analyses leaves open the possibility o...77%'Good' does not mean the same as any naturalistic predicate X76%If a non-natural definition were correct, 'good' would be analyzable d...76%

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    SEP: intuitionism-ethics
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    Another objection is that the open question argument does not tell us anything distinctive about the concept of goodness, but is simply an instance of the paradox of analysis. According to this paradox any true analysis will be uninformative, because it will be reducible to a tautology, and any informative analysis will be false, because it can’t be reduced to a tautology. According to earlier versions of what Moore called ‘the open question argument’, and on one interpretation of Moore’s argume
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    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit