Moore holds that fundamental moral principles are self-evident and require no reasons or prior reasoning to justify them

Contrasting Moore’s view with Kant’s might be helpful. Kant viewed moral knowledge as fundamentally a priori in the sense that moral knowledge must be the result of careful reasoning (first transcendental, then deductive); one could discover through reason the fundamental moral principle, and then deduce from that principle more specific moral duties. Moore, on the other hand, explicitly rules out reasoning to fundamental moral principles; since these principles are self-evident, Moore denies th