Comments Elsewhere

You write: “In fact, many have tried, my favorite being G. E. Moore, who in 1903, wrote Principia Ethica… an entire (lengthy) book solely to attempt to define the word.”

I’m pretty sure that’s not what Moore was trying to do in Principia Ethica.

The major conclusion of the first chapter (“The Subject-Matter of Ethics”) is that good is indefinable (in the sense that the concept of good cannot be analyzed into any set of more basic concepts).

The rest of the chapters in the book are intended, not to define good (which Moore argued was impossible) but rather to criticize other ethical theories which he takes to be based on what he calls the “Naturalistic Fallacy” (the fallacy of passing off a substantive theory about what things are good, as if it were simply a definition of what good is); and then developing a method to develop a positive theory of his own (which is based not on attempted definitions of ‘good,’ but rather on the rigorous testing of intuitions about what is good in itself (as an end).

You write: “‘Cheating’ is not unethical here, and trying to force these things on other people without a thought to why, that is clearly arrogant ignorance. “

Well, so what’s wrong with “arrogant ignorance”? Certainly, if we accept your claims here, it seems that Westerners engage in “arrogant ignorance” all the time, accept it as O.K., or even virtuous, and have deep cultural reasons for doing so — just as you say is the case for the practice of “cheating” by Indonesians. But are you proposing that, even though Westerners apparently do this all the time and are O.K. with it, it’s nevertheless wrong — unethical — for them to practice “arrogant ignorance”?

If not, then why criticize them for it, when you won’t criticize Indonesians for “cheating”?

If so, then it seems that there are at least some things which you recognize as good (humility and knowledge) across the board, and other things which you recognize as bad (arrogant ignorance) across the board, regardless of culture, and regardless of how much the people practicing of it happen to approve of their own behavior. N’est-ce pas?