ABSTRACT
Valuation—and for that matter all knowledge—came to be understood along the lines of visual perception, as in Plato’s famous parable of the cave. Unfortunately, Aristotle’s philosophy of valuation is not as clear as many of his statements about virtue and the good would lead one to expect. The reaction to Hare’s understanding of valuation as fundamentally “prescriptive” has taken many forms, often grouped under the single contrasting label “descriptivism.” The reaction to Aquinas’ intellectualistic version of divine valuation set in almost immediately, and is best seen in the voluntarism of William of Ockham. In 1903 the English philosopher G.E. Moore attempted to argue systematically for a metaethical posture the significance of which for normative ethics was on a par with Kant’s sublime neglect of the logic of valuation. In his famous Principia Ethica, Moore launched his critique of what he called “the naturalistic fallacy.”.
