Moore, G(eorge) E(dward)

Moore, G(eorge) E(dward) (1873-1958), British philosopher, known for his role in the development of contemporary philosophy, his contribution to ethical theory, and his defence of philosophical realism. Born in Upper Norwood, London, on November 4, 1873, Moore attended Trinity College, University of Cambridge. Bertrand Russell, a fellow student, encouraged him to study philosophy. Moore then lived for several years as a private scholar, supported by an inheritance, and in 1911 began teaching at Cambridge, retiring in 1939. He died in Cambridge on October 24, 1958.

Philosophy, for Moore, was basically a two-fold activity. The first part involves analysis, that is, the attempt to clarify puzzling propositions or concepts by indicating less puzzling propositions or concepts to which the originals are held to be logically equivalent. Moore was perplexed, for example, by the claim of some philosophers that time is unreal. In analysing this assertion, he maintained that the proposition “time is unreal” was logically equivalent to “there are no temporal facts”. (“I read the article yesterday” is an example of a temporal fact.) Once the meaning of an assertion containing the problematic concept is clarified, the second task is to determine whether or not justifying reasons exist for believing the assertion. Moore's diligent attention to conceptual analysis as a means of achieving clarity established him as one of the founders of the contemporary analytic and linguistic emphasis in philosophy.

Moore's most famous work, Principia Ethica (1903), is concerned with his claim that the concept of good refers to a simple, unanalysable, indefinable quality of things and situations. It is a non-natural quality, for it is apprehended not by sense experience but by a kind of moral intuition. The quality of goodness is clearly evident, argued Moore, in such experiences as friendship and aesthetic enjoyment. The moral concepts of right and duty are then analysed in terms of producing whatever possesses goodness.

Several of Moore's essays, including “The Refutation of Idealism” (1903), contributed to developments in modern philosophical realism. An empiricist in his approach to knowledge, he did not identify experience with sense experience, and he avoided the scepticism that often accompanies empiricism. He came to the defence of the common sense point of view which suggests that experience results in knowledge of an external world independent of the mind.

Moore also wrote Ethics (1912), Philosophical Studies (1922), and Philosophical Papers (1959), and edited Mind, a leading British philosophical journal, from 1921 to 1947.