1.

The general meaning of ‘good’

“They concluded that ‘good’ in ethics has a primary non-descriptive, non-cognitive,

meaning, though its meaning is perhaps also partly and secondarily descriptive, but
variably descriptive, pointing to different features in different contexts.” (p.50)

“ First, he thought that those who tried to define ‘good’ and give it a descriptive meaning
confused the question of what sorts of things are good with the question of what
goodness itself is: the former can no doubt be answered in descriptive, natural, terms;
but only an answer to the latter would constitute a definition of analysis of ‘good’” (p.51)

“Secondly, he relied on what has been called the ‘open question’ argument. (p.51)

“It is still an open question whether what is so described is good, or at least we can
understand the view of someone who holds that it is still open” (p.50)

“An action may be good because it is generous, but its goodness is not identical with its
generousness; this is different from a figure’s being square because It has four straight
sides equal in length and each of its angles a right angle, where we can hardly
distinguish the squareness from the features that together make the figure square”
(p.51)

“Peter Geach has argued that the key to the difficulties about the meaning of ‘good’ is
that it is what he calls a (logically) attributive adjective.” (p.52)

“Attributive objectives, we may say, are operators on predicates; they construct new
descriptions in systematic ways out of the meanings of the nouns to which they are
attached.” (p.52)

“An attributive adjective is not on that account ambiguous or vague or indeterminate or

variable in meaning, though the criteria for its correct application will vary as it leans on
different nouns.” (p.52)

“There is no doubt that’ good’ is often attributive in this sense, and it remains so even
when it is not in a grammatically attributive position, and even when the noun on which
it leans is not explicitly mentioned” (p.53)

“ There is an important class of nouns which R.M. Hafre has called “functional words’,
such as ‘knife’ and hygrometer’; to explain fully the meaning of any such word, we have
to say what the thing it refers to is for, what it is used to do or is supposed to do” (p.53)

“When ‘A’ is a functional noun, as soon as we know what an A is supposed to do we

can infer what the criteria are for a good A. There is indeed a risk of circularity if we say
that since a knife is for cutting, a good knife is one which cuts, or rather can cut, well.”
(p.53)
“Once we have said fully enough what an A is supposed to do, a good A will simply be
an A which is such as to be able to do that” (p.53)

“Wherever ‘good’ is used in association with a functional noun, it says that the things
have such characteristics as enable it to perform that function” (p.54)

“Hare suggests that both where it precedes a functional noun and where it precedes a
non-functional one, say ‘sunset’, ‘good’ means (roughly) ‘having the characteristic
qualities (whatever they are)which are commendable in the kind of object in question”
(p.54)

“Hare infers that to commend is to mention as being good. But if so, to define ‘good’ in
terms of what is commendable, though not wrong, will be circular and unilluminating. (p.
54)

“To break out of this circle, we might suggest that to commend something is to show (or
purport to show) favor or support it. (p.54)

2. ‘Good’ in moral contexts

“ ‘Good’ can be predicated in moral contexts of a wide range of kinds of the subject -
results, states of affairs, people, characters or character-traits, actions, choices, ways of
life” (p.59)

“To be morally good will then be to be such as to satisfy these intrinsic requirements”
(p.59)

“Hare has suggested that Moore’s argument rests on a secure foundation which Moore
himself did not see clearly; if goodness were equated with any set of defining
characteristics, we could not commend something for having those characteristics”.
(p.60)

“The requirements in question are also intrinsic to what has dignity, the goodwill itself.
“(p.60)

“This trades, we may say, on the indeterminacy of the notion, built into the meaning of
the word ‘good’, which I have tried to indicate by means of the phrase ‘requirements of
the kind in question’. (p.60)

“If goodness were equated with any set of defining characteristics, we could not
commend something for having those characteristics.” (p.60)
“A definition of ‘good’ in terms of commending that can resist the argument will have to
contain the same sort of flexibility that is indicated, in our definition, by ‘requirements
(etc.) of the kind in question” (p.61)

“Moore was wrong, then, in thinking that ‘good’ even in moral contexts, is indefinable, or
stands for any unanalysable quality” (p.61)

“Egocentric commendation should, perhaps, be called not purely descriptive, since an

essential element in it is the speaker’s implicit endorsing of the requirements - whether
these are made explicit or not - which the thing commended is being said to be such as
to satisfy. “ (p.61)

“But it is partly descriptive in that it claims both that the things have the intrinsic
characteristics, whatever they are, and (hence) that it bears this relation to those
requirements” (p.61)

“Other things that we can call commendation in a broad sense are purely descriptive”
(p.61)

“Thus although ‘good’ can be defined, the definition involves an indeterminacy which
has the consequence that calling something good either may, or may not, be purely
descriptive” (p.62)

“But our definition does entail that there is a certain descriptive constraint on uses of
‘good’; to be called good a thing must be as to have some satisfying relation to
something like interests” (p.62)

“What in Chapter 1 was called ‘moral skepticism’ or ‘subjectivism’, the denial of

objective moral values has often been associated with non-cognitive, non-descriptive,
views of the meanings of ethical terms (though as I have argued it does not entail any
such view) (p.62)

“It is true that general meaning of ‘good’ leaves it open that the word may be used in
moral contexts with reference to supposed intrinsic requirements, but it equally leaves it
open that ‘good’ in moral contexts may be used for egocentric commendation” (p.63)

“I have noted a descriptive constraint on the use of ‘good’, that to be good something
must be related to something like interests; but even if there were much tighter
constraints than this nothing would follow about objective values” (p.63)

“I conclude that we can give an account of the meaning of ‘good’ which relates its
ethical uses to those in other contexts, and which brings together aspects that have
been emphasized in opposing philosophical theories. But the outcome of this
investigation of meaning is largely negative.” (p.63)
“The general meaning of ‘good’ does not in itself determine how the word is to be used
in ethics, and neither this general meaning nor any special ethical meaning will yielf
answers to substantive moral questions” (p.63)