[2] In a 1952 autobiographical essay, Moore wrote that he preferred Ethics to Principia "because it seems to me to be much clearer and far less full of confusions and invalid arguments".

[7] The third chapter of Ethics argues against expressivism, rejecting the view that "right" and "wrong" mean merely that the speaker approves or disapproves the action described with those words.

[8] According to William Frankena, Moore, in Ethics and Philosophical Studies, moves away from the version of consequentialism that he endorses in Principia Ethica.

[9] Instead, Frankena suggests, the Moore of these later works may favour a form of consequentialism according to which there is a necessary connection between the promotion of goodness and rightness.

[9] Robert Peter Sylvester reads the entire work as a defence of the view that "the test of right or wrong is determined by the actual consequences of voluntary actions chosen by the agent";[10] William Shaw, who edited a reprint of Ethics, agrees with Sylvester's interpretation.