Mohamed R. answered • 09/13/21
Bachelor degree in English with experience in philosophy tutoring.
Moral sense philosophy is so broad to include two different ethical views: Naturalism and Intuitionism. The first is represented by David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid and others. Naturalism conceives morality as grounded in the psychology of belief in the sense that we naturally approve or disapprove of any action as being moral or immoral. In that sense utility and pleasure are much considered by Naturalism as essential tools in moral judgments.
The second moral view is represented by Butler and the eighteenth-century Cambridge Platonists, as well as G.E. Moore and David Ross, the twentieth-century philosophers who believe that rather than feelings, people possess some intuitive rational faculty that is naturally given, enabling them to distinguish the right from the wrong. This is different from the innate (a-priori) mental faculty in Kantian epistemology that underlies Kant’s ethical Categorical Imperatives.
In his book Principia Ethica, G.E. Moore responds to ethical Naturalism as committing a “naturalistic fallacy” reducing ethics to natural properties such as pleasing or displeasing. Although pleasure is good, it is not sufficient to explain the general principles of morals that we obtain through some intuitive rational faculty known as “common sense”, which is distinct from the five senses. Insisting on pleasure alone would lead to self-interest, ending in moral egoism and hedonism. To prove his view, Moore introduces a “thought experiment” in which one can imagine a World of a total natural landscape with beautiful mountains, rivers, forests ... Such World would be better than one devoted solely to pleasure. Morally good actions in this context are those we perform out of the wish or the will for the total good in the long term, rather than some intended pleasure.
Although Moore faces some criticism, his ethical views impact some contemporary views in Arts history and literature. Virginia Wolf is one of those influenced by Moore. Likewise, Moore paves the way to the contemporary debate between ethical cognitivism and non-cognitivism.
