Principia Ethica

The work analyzes ethical inquiry by distinguishing two questions: what things have intrinsic value and what actions ought to be performed. It contends that good names a simple, indefinable quality and cautions against defining it in natural terms, a point associated with the naturalistic fallacy and the open-question argument. Claims about right action are shown to require both factual, causal information about consequences and self-evident ethical propositions. The author argues that many kinds of things are intrinsically good and that wholes can possess value not reducible to their parts, a principle termed organic unities, and develops an ideal-consequentialist framework for moral judgment.