Claim. Analytic philosophy’s claim that goodness is indefinable (Moore’s intuitionism) or merely an expression of subjective feeling (Schlick/Ayer’s emotivism) is wrong, because factual and value judgments are two sides of one coin, and goodness can be precisely defined as behavior in agreement with the purpose of realizing God’s love through the family four-position foundation.
Elaboration. Lee challenges analytic philosophy on two fronts (Unification Thought Appraisal of Analytic Philosophy’s Perspective of Ethics).
First, the fact/value separation. Moore famously held ‘good is good, and that is the end of the matter’ — a simple, indefinable notion graspable only by intuition, with value judgments wholly independent of factual judgments. Schlick and Ayer treated ethical propositions like ‘it is bad to steal money’ as expressions of subjective feeling, neither true nor false. Lee responds that both factual and value judgments are objective and constitute ‘two sides of a single coin.’ Value judgments seem subjective only because they are advocated by a limited number of religious people or philosophers rather than universally; if the spiritual level of humanity were raised and the ‘law of value operating throughout the universe’ were clearly understood, value judgments would be recognized as universally valid. Lee notes science is already moving this direction: cause-effect analysis alone no longer suffices to understand natural phenomena, and scientists now pursue meaning and reason behind phenomena — i.e., value judgments alongside factual ones.
Second, the indefinability claim. Lee defines goodness with precision: ‘human beings have the clear purpose of realizing God’s love through the four-position-foundation; thus, behavior in agreement with this purpose is good.’ This collapses the open-question objection: there is a non-circular substantive definition of good once one accepts the purpose of creation.
The debate is genuine. Moore’s open-question argument was specifically designed to defeat definitions of ‘good’ that identify it with any natural property; Lee’s definition identifies good with realizing love through a specific family structure, which Moore would say still admits the meaningful question ‘but is that good?’ Lee would respond that Moore’s question only makes sense if you reject the purpose-of-creation as the metaphysical ground of value. The disagreement bottoms out in whether teleology is real. Worth a thread once a counter atomic from a metaethical anti-realist exists.
See also. analytical-philosophy-missed-emotional-aspect-of-language, kant-categorical-imperative-fails-without-purpose-of-creation, natural-law-corresponds-to-ethical-law