Principia Ethica

CHAPTER I.. The Subject-Matter of Ethics.

THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS.

SECTION. PAGE

=1.= In order to define Ethics, we must discover what is both common and peculiar to all undoubted ethical judgments; 1

=2.= but this is not that they are concerned with human conduct, but that they are concerned with a certain predicate ‘good,’ and its converse ‘bad,’ which may be applied both to conduct and to other things. 1

=3.= The subjects of the judgments of a scientific Ethics are not, like those of some studies, ‘particular things’; 3

=4.= but it includes all universal judgments which assert the relation of ‘goodness’ to any subject, and hence includes Casuistry. 3

=5.= It must, however, enquire not only what things are universally related to goodness, but also, what this predicate, to which they are related, is: 5

=6.= and the answer to this question is that it is indefinable 6

=7.= or simple: for if by definition be meant the analysis of an object of thought, only complex objects can be defined; 7

=8.= and of the three senses in which ‘definition’ can be used, this is the most important. 8

=9.= What is thus indefinable is not ‘the good,’ or the whole of that which always possesses the predicate ‘good,’ but this predicate itself. 8

=10.= ‘Good,’ then, denotes one unique simple object of thought among innumerable others; but this object has very commonly been identified with some other--a fallacy which may be called ‘the naturalistic fallacy’ 9

=11.= and which reduces what is used as a fundamental principle of Ethics either to a tautology or to a statement about the meaning of a word. 10

=12.= The nature of this fallacy is easily recognised; 12

=13.= and if it were avoided, it would be plain that the only alternatives to the admission that ‘good’ is indefinable, are either that it is complex or that there is no notion at all peculiar to Ethics--alternatives which can only be refuted by an appeal to inspection, but which can be so refuted. 15

=14.= The ‘naturalistic fallacy’ illustrated by Bentham; and the importance of avoiding it pointed out. 17

=15.= The relations which ethical judgments assert to hold universally between ‘goodness’ and other things are of two kinds: a thing may be asserted either to be good itself or to be causally related to something else which is itself good--to be ‘good as a means.’ 21

=16.= Our investigations of the latter kind of relation cannot hope to establish more than that a certain kind of action will generally be followed by the best possible results; 22

=17.= but a relation of the former kind, if true at all, will be true of all cases. All ordinary ethical judgments assert causal relations, but they are commonly treated as if they did not, because the two kinds of relation are not distinguished. 23

=18.= The investigation of intrinsic values is complicated by the fact that the value of a whole may be different from the sum of the values of its parts, 27

=19.= in which case the part has to the whole a relation, which exhibits an equally important difference from and resemblance to that of means to end. 29

=20.= The term ‘organic whole’ might well be used to denote that a whole has this property, since, of the two other properties which it is commonly used to imply, 30

=21.= one that of reciprocal causal dependence between parts, has no necessary relation to this one, 31

=22.= and the other, upon which most stress has been laid, can be true of no whole whatsoever, being a self-contradictory conception due to confusion. 33

=23.= Summary of chapter. 36

CHAPTER II.. Naturalistic Ethics.

NATURALISTIC ETHICS.

=24.= This and the two following chapters will consider certain proposed answers to the second of ethical questions: What is good in itself? These proposed answers are characterised by the facts (1) that they declare some one kind of thing to be alone good in itself; and (2) that they do so, because they suppose this one thing to define the meaning of ‘good.’ 37

=25.= Such theories may be divided into two groups (1) Metaphysical, (2) Naturalistic: and the second group may be subdivided into two others, (a) theories which declare some natural object, other than pleasure, to be sole good, (b) Hedonism. The present chapter will deal with (a). 38

=26.= Definition of what is meant by ‘Naturalism.’ 39

=27.= The common argument that things are good, because they are ‘natural,’ may involve either (1) the false proposition that the ‘normal,’ as such, is good; 41

=28.= or (2) the false proposition that the ‘necessary,’ as such, is good. 44

=29.= But a systematised appeal to Nature is now most prevalent in connection with the term ‘Evolution.’ An examination of Mr Herbert Spencer’s Ethics will illustrate this form of Naturalism. 45

=30.= Darwin’s scientific theory of ‘natural selection,’ which has mainly caused the modern vogue of the term ‘Evolution,’ must be carefully distinguished from certain ideas which are commonly associated with the latter term. 47

=31.= Mr Spencer’s connection of Evolution with Ethics seems to shew the influence of the naturalistic fallacy; 48

=32.= but Mr Spencer is vague as to the ethical relations of ‘pleasure’ and ‘evolution,’ and his Naturalism may be mainly Naturalistic Hedonism. 49

=33.= A discussion of the third chapter of the Data of Ethics serves to illustrate these two points and to shew that Mr Spencer is in utter confusion with regard to the fundamental principles of Ethics. 51

=34.= Three possible views as to the relation of Evolution to Ethics are distinguished from the naturalistic view to which it is proposed to confine the name ‘Evolutionistic Ethics.’ On any of these three views the relation would be unimportant, and the ‘Evolutionistic’ view, which makes it important, involves a double fallacy. 54

=35.= Summary of chapter. 58

CHAPTER III.. Hedonism.

HEDONISM.

=36.= The prevalence of Hedonism is mainly due to the naturalistic fallacy. 59

=37.= Hedonism may be defined as the doctrine that ‘Pleasure is the sole good’: this doctrine has always been held by Hedonists and used by them as a fundamental ethical principle, although it has commonly been confused with others. 61

=38.= The method pursued in this chapter will consist in exposing the reasons commonly offered for the truth of Hedonism and in bringing out the reasons, which suffice to shew it untrue, by a criticism of J. S. Mill & H. Sidgwick. 63

=39.= Mill declares that ‘Happiness is the only thing desirable as an end,’ and insists that ‘Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof’; 64

=40.= yet he gives a proof of the first proposition, which consists in (1) the fallacious confusion of ‘desirable’ with ‘desired,’ 66

=41.= (2) an attempt to shew that nothing but pleasure is desired. 67

=42.= The theory that nothing but pleasure is desired seems largely due to a confusion between the cause and the object of desire: pleasure is certainly not the sole object of desire, and, even if it is always among the causes of desire, that fact would not tempt anyone to think it a good. 68

=43.= Mill attempts to reconcile his doctrine that pleasure is the sole object of desire with his admission that other things are desired, by the absurd declaration that what is a means to happiness is ‘part’ of happiness. 71

=44.= Summary of Mill’s argument and of my criticism. 72

=45.= We must now proceed to consider the principle of Hedonism as an ‘Intuition,’ as which it has been clearly recognised by Prof. Sidgwick alone. That it should be thus incapable of proof is not, in itself, any reason for dissatisfaction. 74

=46.= In thus beginning to consider what things are good in themselves, we leave the refutation of Naturalism behind, and enter on the second division of ethical questions. 76

=47.= Mill’s doctrine that some pleasures are superior ‘in quality’ to others implies both (1) that judgments of ends must be ‘intuitions’; 77

=48.= and (2) that pleasure is not the sole good. 79

=49.= Prof. Sidgwick has avoided these confusions made by Mill: in considering his arguments we shall, therefore, merely consider the question ‘Is pleasure the sole good?’ 81

=50.= Prof. Sidgwick first tries to shew that nothing outside of Human Existence can be good. Reasons are given for doubting this. 81

=51.= He then goes on to the far more important proposition that no part of Human Existence, except pleasure, is desirable. 85

=52.= But pleasure must be distinguished from consciousness of pleasure, and (1) it is plain that, when so distinguished, pleasure is not the sole good; 87

=53.= and (2) it may be made equally plain that consciousness of pleasure is not the sole good, if we are equally careful to distinguish it from its usual accompaniments. 90

=54.= Of Prof. Sidgwick’s two arguments for the contrary view, the second is equally compatible with the supposition that pleasure is a mere criterion of what is right; 91

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