The importance of G. Moore’s argument for moral philosophy

The paper is devoted to the investigation of the sources of cognitive activity in the sphere of morality. This research is based on the analysis of arguments against the very possibility of giving the definition of the Good. Such impossibility would mean that the Good could not become an object of any cognition. Contemporary analytical philosophers call this argumentation the critic of descriptivism on the sphere of morality. The author addresses the foundations of the critic of descriptivism and attempts to find out the reasons for D. Hume to consider it impossible to derive conclusions whose parts are connected by «ought» from premises whose parts are connected only by «is». Then the author marks the difference between logical and semantic levels of this Humean problem and claims for the importance of the semantic issue. In this case Moore’s open question argument shows us the deepest difficulty of the cognition of the Good. The author argues for this problem to be solved with the help of a concept of «paradoxical subject».