[4.2.5.] Two Types of Objection to (2).

 

Recall the epistemological claim that Moore 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)

 

Moore considers two ways in which philosophers might disagree with his epistemological claim (2):

 

·         metaphysical disagreements: philosophers who disagree in this way deny that propositions corresponding to those in (1) are true. If such metaphysical propositions are not true, then they cannot be known to be true (since no one can know that p if it is not true that p), so (2) is false.

 

·         epistemological disagreements: philosophers who disagree in this way do not deny that metaphysical propositions like those in (1) are true; rather, they maintain that human beings have never known with certainty that such propositions are true.

 

 

[4.2.6.] Metaphysical Objections.

 

Philosophers who make the first, metaphysical sort of objection might deny that there are any such things as three-dimensional objects.  Some propositions like those in (1) imply the reality of material objects and space. Philosophers who deny the reality of material objects and space would reject such claims.

 

But not all of the claims in (1) and (2) imply this, e.g., claims that I have had many different sorts of experience, including feelings and dreams

 

Still, the claims that do not imply the reality of material objects and space do imply that time is real (this is implied by all propositions of (1) and propositions like them) and that there is at least one “Self” (this is implied by only some of those propositions).

 

And still other philosophers might deny that there is such a thing as real time, and thus deny these claims.

 

Says Moore: “All such views, whether incompatible with all of the propositions in (1), or only with some of them, seem to me to be quite certainly false” (179), and he makes the following responses:

 

Moore’s response (a):

 

[And notice that in giving this response, he begins using “(2)” to refer, not to an epistemological claim about human beings knowing propositions like those in (1), but to the set of all propositions like the propositions in (1)...]

 

If any of the classes of proposition in (2) is such that no proposition of that class is true, then no philosopher has ever existed, and therefore none can ever have held with regard to any such class, that no proposition belonging to it is true. (179)

 

In other words, once you admit that there are philosophers who deny that there are any propositions in (2) that are true, you have implied that at least some propositions in (2) are true!

 

A philosopher who denies that there are any true propositions in (2) is denying, among other things, that there are any human bodies.

 

But if there are no human bodies, then there are no philosophers! As Moore says:

 

...when I speak of ‘philosophers’ I mean, of course (as we all do), exclusively philosophers who have been human beings, with human bodies that have lived upon the earth, and who have at different times had many different experiences. (179)

 

So if there are any philosophers who deny that there are any true propositions in (2), they must be wrong--since, if they were right, they themselves would not exist!

 

 

Moore’s response (b):

 

“...all philosophers who have held such views have repeatedly, even in their philosophical works, expressed other views inconsistent with them: i.e., no philosopher has ever been able to hold such views consistently.” (180)

 

For example, those philosophers have:

·         alluded to other philosophers;

·         used “we” in its ordinary sense (thus implying that people exist).

These philosophers know that other people, including other philosophers, exist; yet they have maintained claims that are incompatible with these things that they know to be true.

 

Moore says that he and these philosophers have something in common: they all believe in other human beings, including other philosophers. The difference between them is that they hold something that he doesn’t, something that is incompatible with something else that they all believe.

 

He makes a related point (in setting forth “d”, p.180): It is not that the denial of any of the propositions in (2) are themselves contradictory: “...it might have been the case that Time was not real, material things not real, space not real, selves not real.”

 

In other words, the denial of a claim in (2) is not, on its own, contradictory: i.e., it does not imply “both of two mutually incompatible propositions,” e.g., propositions of the forms p and not-p.

 

But the point he is making here is that philosophers contradict themselves when they deny that there are true propositions in (2) and then assume that, e.g., there are other philosophers.

 

 

[4.2.7.] Epistemological Objections.

 

Now Moore turns to objections that are based on epistemological considerations.

 

Again, philosophers who make such objections do not necessarily deny that propositions in (2) are true; rather, they maintain that human beings have never known with certainty that they are true. These philosophers might say something like: there may be three-dimensional objects, but we cannot know for certain that there are.

 

According to Moore, these sorts of objection are contradictory.

 

Most philosophers in this group grant that we can know some of the propositions corresponding to those in (1). In particular, they grant that each individual can know that he himself or she herself has had different sorts of experiences at different times.

 

But they nonetheless deny that we can know propositions corresponding to some of the other propositions in (1), namely, those that assert that there are real material things and that there are other human beings who have had experiences.

 

Again, they do not assert that such propositions are false; they grant that they may be true, and even that we can know that they are probably true.

 

What they deny is that we can know for certain that such propositions are true.

 

How is this contradictory?

 

A philosopher who says this is saying something about “us”; i.e., she is not just asserting something about herself—she is also asserting something about others (other human beings) besides herself. When she asserts that “no human being has ever known of the existence of other human beings,” what she is saying is that “There have been many other human beings beside myself, and none of them (including myself) has ever known the existence of other human beings.” (181)

 

In other words, the philosopher who makes this objection is saying something of the following form:

 

“p, and no one (including myself) knows whether p.”

 

 

Stopping point for Monday April 13. For next time, finish reading the article by Moore (pp.184-86).