Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Philebus is one of Plato's Socratic dialogues. The title character barely participates. Socrates duels, rather, with Protarchus. And the central theme of the (wide ranging) discussion is hedonism. To what extent is the good life a life defined by successful pleasure seeking? The key passage runs thus: Socrates: Then would you think you needed anything else besides, if you possessed this one blessing [pleasure] in completeness? Protarchus: Certainly not. Socrates: Consider what you are saying. You would not need to be wise and intelligent and reasonable, nor anything like this? Would you not even care to keep your sight? Protarchus: Why should I? I suppose I should have all I want, if I was pleased. Socrates: Well ... inasmuch as you would not possess intelligence and memory and knowledge and true opinion, you would, in the first place, necessarily be without the knowledge whether you were pleased or not. For you would be devoid of any kind of wisdom. You admit this...

G.E. Moore died in October 1958, just days after my own birth. That's a neat little irrelevant connection with which to return to my discussion of Moore 's approach to ethics and how its embrace feels like a philosophical breakthrough for me.   Moore's approach, in a few words, is to understand good as a direct observable though non-natural property of events and experiences, a property not reducible to anything else.   A quick qualification of that. Goods come in two classes, as we intuitively experience them, intrinsic and instrumental. We pursue instrumental goods so that we may secure and increase the intrinsic goods. A crude example: we eat nutritional foods so that we may survive so that sometimes we may savor dessert. So it is strictly intrinsic good that is the simple irreducible property.  This suggests, to revert to the Jamesian terminology I quoted yesterday, that with regard to intrinsic goods we have a "special intuitive faculty" o...