ABSTRACT
Intrinsic properties are necessary properties of a thing that have them in the sense that if a thing A has a certain intrinsic property P, then any other thing B that’s exactly identical to A would also have P. Its normativity is evident in a number of paraphrases he used to refer to goodness such as ‘what ought to exist,’ ‘what ought to be real,’ and ‘what ought to before its own sake.’ In Principia Ethica, Moore contended that whenever a property or state of affairs is good or bad as an end, its goodness or badness cannot metaphysically depend on any relation that thing might bear with something else, including feelings of approbation, desires, beliefs or circumstances. A more radical challenge facing his account of this key ethical property comes from Peter Geach, which would entail that what Moore takes to be the primary ethical use of ‘good’ in fact amounts to nonsense and denotes nothing at all.
