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‘Ought’ and Duty
DOI link for ‘Ought’ and Duty
‘Ought’ and Duty book
‘Ought’ and Duty
DOI link for ‘Ought’ and Duty
‘Ought’ and Duty book
ABSTRACT
Good and bad are value-terms since they ascribe a positive and a negative value to persons or things. It is clear enough that neither of these terms functions as a moral concept, as not only the man in the street but all moral philosophers have also recognized. But some moral philosophers have thought that good and bad, when used as non-moral concepts have a different meaning when they used as moral concepts. As a result of Moore's having pointed to what he christened the naturalistic fallacy, that any so-called definition of good in terms of an indicative statement commits a logical fallacy. People have knowledge of evaluative meaning of good from their earliest years; but they are learning to use it in new descriptive meanings, as classes of objects whose virtues they learn to distinguish grow numerous. It comes about, that the descriptive meaning so to speak takes precedence over evaluative meaning, and that the logical order is reversed.