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Points of View
A. W. Moore argues in this bold, unusual, and ambitious book that it is possible to think about the world from no point of view. His argument involves discussion of a very wide range of fundamental philosophical issues, including the nature of persons, the subject-matter of mathematics,
realism and anti-realism, value, the inexpressible, and God. The result is a powerful critique of our own finitude.
realism and anti-realism, value, the inexpressible, and God. The result is a powerful critique of our own finitude.
- GenresPhilosophy
313 pages, Paperback
First published June 12, 1997
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77 people want to read
About the author
A.W. Moore
26 books14 followersAdrian William Moore (born 1956) is a Professor of Philosophy and Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 27, 2019
From My Point Of View
This review is inevitably from my point of view. This was a very good book (Moore, 1997), one that was something that I find to be missing with most modern day philosophy books, namely daring. A. W. Moore in this book tries to see if there are any absolute representations, or to put it differently, if we can view the world from no point of view (or from nowhere?).
He argues that yes, we can think of the world from beyond a representation. An example he gives is physics; physics is a discipline that tries to view the world as objectively as possible. But this is the boring (only relatively) part of the book.
Having argued for the possibility of absolute representations (as he calls the no point of view point of view), he then goes on to talk about ineffable knowledge, knowledge that cannot be put into words. “But hang on a minute”, I hear you say. “Isn’t it self stultifying to be talking about that which is ineffable?”: no it is not, for you are talking about it, not saying it! Moore is influenced by Wittgenstein’s saying/showing distinction “what can be shown cannot be said” (Wittgenstein, 2009, §4.1212), so this explains how he claims to show what cannot be said.
Hence, in the best way I can put it (and inevitably omitting a lot), Moore shows that we have ineffable knowledge of things that allows us to make sense of the world. When we try to articulate this knowledge, only nonsense comes out. If nonsense did not come out, then our knowledge would not be ineffable. An example of ineffable knowledge is our understanding of propositions; you understand that you understand them.
I am personally very sympathetic to this entire endeavour, and I do share the disposition with Moore that there are ineffable states of knowledge. There are some points that I disagree with, but I will not go into any detail here. However, I would like to point out briefly why I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5. The truth of the matter is that I found this book, though fantastically interesting, not very well put together. I am not being pedantic (I hope), but it seemed (and up to a point it was), an amalgam of various papers of Moore, and at some points, it did read so. Also, the cover of the book is not centred, something which I find irritating to say the least (especially for a very expensive book from OUP, though the illustration itself is great).
In conclusion, a very good read for anyone interested in ‘grand’ questions, and a book that deserves more readership, both within and outside academic philosophy. I have said in other reviews that Moore is a philosopher who is open minded and this shows in his work; he wants to get to the bottom of things, not simply prove his own (point of) view. Hopefully next time, we will get something with a slightly better presentation.
References:
Moore, A. W. (1997) Points Of View. 1st edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wittgenstein, L. J. J. (2009) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1922]. Edited by F. P. Ramsey and C. K. Ogden. New York: Cosimo Classics.
This review is inevitably from my point of view. This was a very good book (Moore, 1997), one that was something that I find to be missing with most modern day philosophy books, namely daring. A. W. Moore in this book tries to see if there are any absolute representations, or to put it differently, if we can view the world from no point of view (or from nowhere?).
He argues that yes, we can think of the world from beyond a representation. An example he gives is physics; physics is a discipline that tries to view the world as objectively as possible. But this is the boring (only relatively) part of the book.
Having argued for the possibility of absolute representations (as he calls the no point of view point of view), he then goes on to talk about ineffable knowledge, knowledge that cannot be put into words. “But hang on a minute”, I hear you say. “Isn’t it self stultifying to be talking about that which is ineffable?”: no it is not, for you are talking about it, not saying it! Moore is influenced by Wittgenstein’s saying/showing distinction “what can be shown cannot be said” (Wittgenstein, 2009, §4.1212), so this explains how he claims to show what cannot be said.
Hence, in the best way I can put it (and inevitably omitting a lot), Moore shows that we have ineffable knowledge of things that allows us to make sense of the world. When we try to articulate this knowledge, only nonsense comes out. If nonsense did not come out, then our knowledge would not be ineffable. An example of ineffable knowledge is our understanding of propositions; you understand that you understand them.
I am personally very sympathetic to this entire endeavour, and I do share the disposition with Moore that there are ineffable states of knowledge. There are some points that I disagree with, but I will not go into any detail here. However, I would like to point out briefly why I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5. The truth of the matter is that I found this book, though fantastically interesting, not very well put together. I am not being pedantic (I hope), but it seemed (and up to a point it was), an amalgam of various papers of Moore, and at some points, it did read so. Also, the cover of the book is not centred, something which I find irritating to say the least (especially for a very expensive book from OUP, though the illustration itself is great).
In conclusion, a very good read for anyone interested in ‘grand’ questions, and a book that deserves more readership, both within and outside academic philosophy. I have said in other reviews that Moore is a philosopher who is open minded and this shows in his work; he wants to get to the bottom of things, not simply prove his own (point of) view. Hopefully next time, we will get something with a slightly better presentation.
References:
Moore, A. W. (1997) Points Of View. 1st edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wittgenstein, L. J. J. (2009) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1922]. Edited by F. P. Ramsey and C. K. Ogden. New York: Cosimo Classics.
January 31, 2021
When I first started reading this book I got lost so early in the that I knew I had to give up. I knew the book would build upon the ideas I was failing to grasp so there was no need continuing.
I made it back to reading this book again and I can't figure out where I stumbled the first time . . .
This book is steeped in the theoretical rather than the practical. The author makes proposals and suggests arguments that the author doesn't necessarily endorse himself. And the author is quite honest about the issues he addresses and admits that he might change his mind at some point if he finds it prudent. Beware, this book isn’t written so much for teaching students as it is for continuing the technical debates with specialists and peers.
Although some of the words he uses, such as the distinction between subjective and perspectival are very helpful, I would not choose the term “absolute representation” even when he is extremely clear about what absolute representation is not meant to entail. The author’s specialty is his considerations of infinite/finite. Yet when speaking toward the idea of INfinite, the word "absolute" simply seems too DEfinite for my tastes. But most of these terms are inherited from predecessors like Kant and Wittgenstein, so there they are.
The crux of the book is that given any range of perspectives, any two incompatible perspectives may be incompatible and yet allow us to conclude a result (another perspective) that supersedes the range. Therefore we can eliminate some elements of perspective. And if we consider a certain perspective’s negation, we now have another possible element of perspective, ad infinitum. Luckily the author admits that while this is interesting, this infinity is still not an adequate argument for absolute representations because although the links get weaker, there is some element of perspective rather than not.
The last few pages speak to the possible God/infinite link in such a way as to make the entire read worthwhile; although you may have to read the entire book to make sense of it.
A difficult book but essential if you are interested in challenging ideas that are not often covered within analytic philosophy. Great work!
I made it back to reading this book again and I can't figure out where I stumbled the first time . . .
This book is steeped in the theoretical rather than the practical. The author makes proposals and suggests arguments that the author doesn't necessarily endorse himself. And the author is quite honest about the issues he addresses and admits that he might change his mind at some point if he finds it prudent. Beware, this book isn’t written so much for teaching students as it is for continuing the technical debates with specialists and peers.
Although some of the words he uses, such as the distinction between subjective and perspectival are very helpful, I would not choose the term “absolute representation” even when he is extremely clear about what absolute representation is not meant to entail. The author’s specialty is his considerations of infinite/finite. Yet when speaking toward the idea of INfinite, the word "absolute" simply seems too DEfinite for my tastes. But most of these terms are inherited from predecessors like Kant and Wittgenstein, so there they are.
The crux of the book is that given any range of perspectives, any two incompatible perspectives may be incompatible and yet allow us to conclude a result (another perspective) that supersedes the range. Therefore we can eliminate some elements of perspective. And if we consider a certain perspective’s negation, we now have another possible element of perspective, ad infinitum. Luckily the author admits that while this is interesting, this infinity is still not an adequate argument for absolute representations because although the links get weaker, there is some element of perspective rather than not.
The last few pages speak to the possible God/infinite link in such a way as to make the entire read worthwhile; although you may have to read the entire book to make sense of it.
A difficult book but essential if you are interested in challenging ideas that are not often covered within analytic philosophy. Great work!
April 5, 2020
Although I didn't agree with everything Moore had to say here, this book is clearly a masterpiece of analytic philosophy, and for this reason it is all the more disappointing that so little work has been done on it.
After reaching about the last quarter of the book, Moore's conceptual system of points of view and transcendental idealism came together for me; I was truly impressed by how elegant a solution his system provides to many of the cardinal problems of analytic philosophy.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
After reaching about the last quarter of the book, Moore's conceptual system of points of view and transcendental idealism came together for me; I was truly impressed by how elegant a solution his system provides to many of the cardinal problems of analytic philosophy.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
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April 3, 2022Under the tutelage of the infinitely wise and precise Anglo-gang, "philosophy" has lost much of its cultural edge. Naturally their ambition to make ours a strenge Wissenschaft, has both its analogues and roots in Germany, but especially in its Oxford form, one is struck by the intellectual desert that claims itself the name "philosophy" today, not least due to its aggressively monolingual character. Moore is a strange exception in this group.
During my undergraduate studies I often felt the weight (smell?) of the cultural rot in our practice quite heavily. On one fateful March evening, I was awakened from my deep philosophical pessimism after Markus Gabriel gave a lecture to our philosophy society in a cramped little room. The utter energy of his approach, his historical erudition, and the genuine feeling that in the thing he called philosophy something was really at stake: that the outcome of the "thought-experiment", argument etc., really mattered, led me to think the unkempt science might be worth pursuing after all. Even with all its flaws.
This encounter also gave birth to a new concept in my head: the motivation book. Whenever I feel a lack of motivation or pessimism about the practice of philosophy, I will have a book in stock with remedial powers. These ought be something to instantly and forcefully bring to mind the myriad reasons why - sociological contingencies ignored - philosophy remains the "X:st of all Ys" to me.
Next in line was the item at hand. It did the trick. Unlike one might garner from the above, I'm no enemy of analytic philosophy. In fact, Moore wields the conceptual tools of analytic philosophy masterfully, showing their true potential very rigorously, while also drawing from much more. Kant and Wittgenstein dominate the second part of the book, Bernard Williams, whose literary executor Moore was, is a funnel through which most intellectual currents in the book flow. But a silent protagonist is Deleuze, whose work gets referred to only in passing, perhaps to retain the books general stubenrein aesthetic for the grand halls of Oxford.
Points of View is also a cogent defence of its own format: the book. Not through an explicit argument, but simply by existing. It is nicely laid out, with an analytic table of contents, a glossary and a vibrant cast of basic concepts and problem-settings, who move with us through the whole thing. With the research article assuming the position of hegemon in the field of style, and many books being structured like a series of them (perhaps that is what most books now really are), it is genuinely nice to experience the undisturbed flow of an argument working itself out through an author and a book.
I will only say something brief about the book's actual argumentative content. I sympathize with it greatly. It identifies theoretical, political and practical disagreements and dissolves them into abstract questions. Slowly, we descend back from the heights of the abstract, through various specifications of the argument and its merging with a multiplicity of other questions, back down to the concrete situations, wishes and desires that motivated us in the first place, their true nature now shown to be that of the theoretical question which first seemed to lead us away from them.
For Moore this is a transition from the question of perspective, disagreement and universality to the question of representation, through which we return to our previous topic and gain a powerful critique of human finitude. This finitude is articulated in a Kantian tone, though Kant is ultimately shown to have produced something self-stultifying in trying to articulate its character. Moore's endpoint is reached by going through Kant, even if Kant is proven to be fundamentally mistaken. In this critique Moore clearly draws from Hegel, though again scarcely refers to him (Oxford people call such things "spooky").
Specifically the Kantian monopolization of a kind of epistemic humility is shown to be unjustified. If Moore is successful, the book has shown all limitations to human cognition to be quantitative in nature. IF Moore is successful, no accusation of immodesty against his position is well-placed. For "[t]rue modesty means focusing not on the distinction between what we can know and what we cannot, but on the distinction between what we do know and what we do not. There is more than enough in the latter distinction to check our hubris." (251)
During my undergraduate studies I often felt the weight (smell?) of the cultural rot in our practice quite heavily. On one fateful March evening, I was awakened from my deep philosophical pessimism after Markus Gabriel gave a lecture to our philosophy society in a cramped little room. The utter energy of his approach, his historical erudition, and the genuine feeling that in the thing he called philosophy something was really at stake: that the outcome of the "thought-experiment", argument etc., really mattered, led me to think the unkempt science might be worth pursuing after all. Even with all its flaws.
This encounter also gave birth to a new concept in my head: the motivation book. Whenever I feel a lack of motivation or pessimism about the practice of philosophy, I will have a book in stock with remedial powers. These ought be something to instantly and forcefully bring to mind the myriad reasons why - sociological contingencies ignored - philosophy remains the "X:st of all Ys" to me.
Next in line was the item at hand. It did the trick. Unlike one might garner from the above, I'm no enemy of analytic philosophy. In fact, Moore wields the conceptual tools of analytic philosophy masterfully, showing their true potential very rigorously, while also drawing from much more. Kant and Wittgenstein dominate the second part of the book, Bernard Williams, whose literary executor Moore was, is a funnel through which most intellectual currents in the book flow. But a silent protagonist is Deleuze, whose work gets referred to only in passing, perhaps to retain the books general stubenrein aesthetic for the grand halls of Oxford.
Points of View is also a cogent defence of its own format: the book. Not through an explicit argument, but simply by existing. It is nicely laid out, with an analytic table of contents, a glossary and a vibrant cast of basic concepts and problem-settings, who move with us through the whole thing. With the research article assuming the position of hegemon in the field of style, and many books being structured like a series of them (perhaps that is what most books now really are), it is genuinely nice to experience the undisturbed flow of an argument working itself out through an author and a book.
I will only say something brief about the book's actual argumentative content. I sympathize with it greatly. It identifies theoretical, political and practical disagreements and dissolves them into abstract questions. Slowly, we descend back from the heights of the abstract, through various specifications of the argument and its merging with a multiplicity of other questions, back down to the concrete situations, wishes and desires that motivated us in the first place, their true nature now shown to be that of the theoretical question which first seemed to lead us away from them.
For Moore this is a transition from the question of perspective, disagreement and universality to the question of representation, through which we return to our previous topic and gain a powerful critique of human finitude. This finitude is articulated in a Kantian tone, though Kant is ultimately shown to have produced something self-stultifying in trying to articulate its character. Moore's endpoint is reached by going through Kant, even if Kant is proven to be fundamentally mistaken. In this critique Moore clearly draws from Hegel, though again scarcely refers to him (Oxford people call such things "spooky").
Specifically the Kantian monopolization of a kind of epistemic humility is shown to be unjustified. If Moore is successful, the book has shown all limitations to human cognition to be quantitative in nature. IF Moore is successful, no accusation of immodesty against his position is well-placed. For "[t]rue modesty means focusing not on the distinction between what we can know and what we cannot, but on the distinction between what we do know and what we do not. There is more than enough in the latter distinction to check our hubris." (251)
October 2, 2025
brilliant, brilliant, brilliant book. can't believe it. it chases so determinately on the trail of its central problem, which eludes one as much as its putative solution, moore's own brand of transcendental idealism, which is only modestly beholden to kant's. again written very like murdoch, with a sort of winding narrative the contours of which one couldn't possibly predict, and which makes it earnestly quite gripping. i especially like the use of creeping dialogy, very fun. it really does feel like i have been shown something, and that my words describing what i have been shown can't do it justice
June 22, 2007
Good theory of opinion with the most interesting cover I've ever seen on a book.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews