Daily Inspiration Quote by George Edward Moore

Moore captures his consequentialist stance with disarming clarity: moral laws do not descend as timeless edicts but function as general statements about which kinds of actions tend to produce good outcomes. Their authority rests not in their form but in their connection to value. If a rule reliably channels us toward better results, it earns its place; if experience shows otherwise, the rule should be revised. Moral guidance, on this view, is predictive and fallible, closer to a well-tested hypothesis than to a commandment carved in stone.

That pragmatic tone sits alongside Moore’s distinctive metaethics. In Principia Ethica he argues that good is a simple, non-natural property known by intuition, not reducible to pleasure, desire, or any natural fact. Yet even as he resists defining good, he is a consequentialist about rightness: the right act is the one that produces the most good. The goods he stresses are plural and refined — aesthetic appreciation, friendship, knowledge — a position often called ideal utilitarianism. So when he says moral laws state that certain actions have good effects, he means that rules are summaries of experience about which patterns of conduct typically realize those intrinsic goods.

This view cuts against strict deontology. Rules may be excellent guides in ordinary life but are not ultimate. If telling a lie in a particular case would prevent grave harm and preserve valuable relationships, Moore’s approach licenses the exception, because the point of a rule against lying is the good it usually protects. It also imposes epistemic humility: because consequences are complex, we lean on common-sense rules as heuristics while staying alert to counterevidence and particularities.

The result is a compelling synthesis. Values are objective and irreducible; action-guidance is empirical and revisable. Moral laws matter because they track the production of good, and their true test is the quality of the lives they help bring about.