What we mean by good › Reading the argument without borrowing its conclusion

A careful reading can keep three questions separate: what goodness is, which things possess it, and what actions best promote it. Moore thinks confusion between them has distorted ethical argument. His own answers also need to be assessed separately.

Return to the suggestion that a good life is a pleasant life. Ask first whether it is a definition or a substantive evaluation. If it is an evaluation, consider what exactly is being valued: pleasure by itself, the whole experience containing it, or the consequences that follow. That exercise makes Moore's distinctions useful without requiring agreement with every judgment he makes.

The remaining challenge is to defend the connection between those distinctions and his positive position. The openness of a question does not relieve us of assessing the answer. Principia Ethica asks us to take value seriously enough to investigate it, including when an attractive definition seems to have settled the matter already.