[4.2.] Moore’s “Defense of Common Sense.”

 

G. E. (George Edward) Moore (1873 - 1958)

·         Born in London to a middle-class family.

·         At 19 he enrolled as a student at Cambridge, where he met and became friends with Bertrand Russell; Moore was first a student of classics, but Russell convinced him to switch to philosophy.

·         After leaving Cambridge for a brief time for Edinburgh, Scotland, Moore returned to Cambridge as a lecturer in 1911.

·         Moore’s most important work was Principia Ethica (1903), included in the Modern Library Board’s list of the 100 most important non-fiction books of the 20^th century. We will be reading the first chapter of that book in a few weeks.

·         Moore always hated his first and middle names, and he always went by “G. E.”; his wife called him “Bill.”

·         A revealing quotation: “I do not think that the world or the sciences would ever have suggested to me any philosophical problems. What has suggested philosophical problems to me is things which other philosophers have said about the world or the sciences.”[1]

 

 

[4.2.1.] Against British Idealism.

 

When they were young, both Moore and Russell were heavily influenced by idealism...

 

idealism (df.): everything there is, is (in some sense) mental: mind, or thoughts, or ideas.

 

One form of idealism had been defended by the German philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), according to whom history is simply the evolution of Geist (mind, or spirit).

 

Idealism was extremely popular in Britain during the 19^th century. Proponents of British idealism included:

·         T. H. Green (1836-1882)

·         F. H. Bradley (1846-1881)

·         Bernard Bosanquet (1848-1923)

·         J. M. E. McTaggart (1866-1925)

 

As students Moore and Russell were (like many of their professors) very attracted to British idealism.

 

But as young men, they both rejected it. According to Russell, it was Moore who led the way in this rebellion:

 

G. E. Moore took the lead in the rebellion, and I followed, with a sense of emancipation. Bradley argued that everything common sense believes in is mere appearance. We reverted to the opposite extreme, and thought that everything is real that common sense, uninfluenced by philosophy or theology, supposes real. With a sense of escaping from prison, we allowed ourselves to think that grass is green, and that the sun and stars would exist if no one was aware of them ...[2]

 

Moore wrote several essays defending common sense against its enemies. Our reading, “A Defense of Common Sense” (1925), is one of them.

 

 

[4.2.2.] A List of Metaphysical Propositions.

 

The essay begins with Moore describing some claims that he says he “know[s], with certainty, to be true.” (175):

 

... a whole long list of propositions, which may seem, at first sight, such obvious truisms as not to be worth stating: they are, in fact, a set of propositions, every one of which (in my own opinion) I know, with certainty, to be true. (175)

 

He calls this long list of propositions “(1)”.

 

[So Moore seems to deny fallibilism—whether he actually denies it depends on what he means by “certainty.”]

 

Moore says that he knows for certain that the following claims are true:

 

(1): a set of metaphysical propositions that Moore knows with certainty

(I)                 “There exists at present a living human body, which is my [Moore’s] body.”

(II)              “This body [i.e., Moore’s body] was born at a certain time in the past, and has existed continuously ever since, though not without undergoing changes; ...”

(III)            “...at every moment since it was born, there have also existed many other things, having shape and size in three dimensions, ... from which it has been at various distances ...; also there have ... existed some other things of this kind with which it was in contact ...”

(IV)           “...there have, at every moment since its birth, been large numbers of other living human bodies...”

(V)              “…the earth ... existed also for many years before my body was born...”

(VI)           “...I am a human being, and I have, at different times ... had many different experiences, of each of many different kinds,” for example, perception of my own body and other objects; observation of facts about those things; awareness of other facts; expectations about the future; beliefs (true and false); imagination; dreams; and feelings.

(VII)         “...in the case of very many of the other human bodies which have lived upon the earth, each has been the body of a different human being, who has, during the lifetime of that body, had many different experiences of each of these (and other) different kinds.” (176)

 

 

[4.2.3.] An Epistemological Claim.

 

Having explained what he means by (1), Moore can know make the “first point” which he wishes to make in this article. It is an epistemological claim that he calls “(2)”:

 

... what (2) asserts is only (what seems an obvious enough truism) that each of us (meaning by ‘us’, very many human beings of the class defined) has frequently known, with regard to himself or his body and the time at which he knew it, everything which, in writing down my list of propositions in (1), I was claiming to know about myself or my body and the time at which I wrote that proposition down .... (176-77)

 

In other words, many human beings besides Moore are in the same relation to a set of propositions about themselves, propositions that correspond to the propositions in (1), as Moore himself is to the propositions in (1).

 

For example:

·         Each one of us in this room knows that (i.e., knows that it is true that) right now there exists a body, which is his or her body. In other words, each one of us knows a proposition that corresponds to proposition 1-(I).

·         Each of us knows that his or her body was born at a certain time in the past and has existed continuously since then, although now without undergone changes since that time. In other words, each one of us knows a proposition that corresponds to proposition 1-(II).

·         Each of us knows that “at every moment since [his or her body] was born, there have also existed many other things, having shape and size in three dimensions, ... from which [his or her body] has been at various distances ...; also there have ... existed some other things of this kind with which [his or her body] was in contact ...” each one of us knows a proposition that corresponds to proposition 1-(III).

And so on, for all of the propositions 1-(IV) through 1-(VII).

 

In sum,

 

what (2) asserts is merely that each of us has frequently known to be true a proposition corresponding (in that sense) to each of the propositions in (1)—a different corresponding proposition, of course, at each of the times at which he knew such a proposition to be true. (177)

 

 

[4.2.4.] Points of Clarification.

 

A.     In saying that he knows all of the propositions in (1) to be true, and that other humans know a set of corresponding propositions o be true, Moore does not mean that they are partially true (and therefore partially false as well). Rather, he means that they are “wholly true”, i.e., true.

 

B.     What’s more, with regard to each proposition in (1), he means it in its ordinary sense, not in any philosophically tricky way: “...I was not using the expressions I used in (1) in any such subtle sense. I meant by each of them precisely what every reader, in reading them, will have understood me to mean.” (177) With regard to the expressions used in (1), Moore assumes that there is such a thing as “the ordinary or popular meaning,” e.g., the ordinary meaning of “The earth has existed for many years past.”

• Suppose someone asks you whether you believe that the earth has existed for many years past.
• Suppose further that you say: “Well, that depends on what you mean by ‘the earth’ and ‘exists’ and ‘years’...”
• If you respond this way, you are (according to Moore) adopting the “profoundly mistaken” view that the question posed to you is not a plain question. On Moore’s view, it is a plain question, one that is subject to a straightforward “yes” or “no” answer.

• Someone who takes that position may be confusing two related, but very different, things:

·         understanding the meaning of an expression;

·         being able to give a correct analysis of the meaning of an expression.

There must be a distinction between these two things, since “[i]t is obvious that we cannot even raise the question how what we do understand by [an expression] is to be analysed, unless we do understand it.” (178)

 

 

Stopping point for Wednesday April 8. For next time, continue reading the article by Moore (pp.180-84, to the end of the first paragraph on 184).

 

The draft of your term paper (minimum 1500 words, emailed, in .doc or .rtf format only, not .docx) by 9am on Sunday April 12. (Class will not meet on Friday April 10, since I will be at a conference.) In order to help me test the efficacy of the student email system, please do the following:

 

 

1. To the degree that is practically possible, clean out the inbox of your UWG email account. Having as few messages in your inbox as possible will make it more likely that your UWG account will work properly.
2. Send a single email from YOUR UWG ACCOUNT, with your draft attached, to both my UWG account and my personal email account (the address I gave you in class).
3. Send a single email from YOUR PERSONAL EMAIL ACCOUNT, with your draft attached, to both my UWG account and my personal email account (the address I gave you in class).

 

I will then report the results of this experiment to ITS, in the hopes of convincing them that there is something wrong with the student email system.