Moore, G(eorge) E(dward) (1873–1958)

English philosopher who generally defended common-sense views of the world and what is said about it in ordinary language. In ethics, he held that any attempt to identify goodness with another concept, such as happiness, was a fallacy – the ‘naturalistic fallacy’.

Educated at Cambridge, he was professor of philosophy at the university 1925–39, and edited the journal Mind, to which he contributed between 1921 and 1947. His books include Principia Ethica (1903), in which he attempted to analyse the moral question ‘What is good?’, and Some Main Problems of Philosophy (1953).