G.E. Moore: Selected Writings

by G.E. Moore

G.E. Moore, more than either Bertrand Russell or Ludwig Wittgenstein, was chiefly responsible for the rise of the analytic method in twentieth-century philosophy. This selection of his writings shows Moore at his very best.
The classic essays are crucial to major philosophical debates that still resonate today. Amongst those included are:
* A Defense of Common Sense
* Certainty
* Sense-Data
* External and Internal Relations
* Hume's Theory Explained
* Is Existence a Predicate?
* Proof of an External World
In addition, this collection also contains the key early papers in which Moore signals his break with idealism, and three important previously unpublished papers from his later work which illustrate his relationship with Wittgenstein.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

234 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 19, 1992

About the author

George Edward "G. E." Moore OM, FBA was an English philosopher, one of the founders of the analytic tradition along with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and (before them) Gottlob Frege. With Russell, he led the turn away from idealism in British philosophy, and became well known for his advocacy of common sense concepts, his contributions to ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics, and "his exceptional personality and moral character." He was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, highly influential among (though not a member of) the Bloomsbury Group, and the editor of the influential journal Mind. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1918. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, the intellectual secret society, from 1894, and the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club.

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

ESSAYS WRITTEN DURING THE WHOLE OF MOORE’S CAREER

George Edward Moore (1873-1958) was an English philosopher of the analytic tradition in philosophy, who later became known for his defense of “common sense” concepts. This book contains such famous Moore essays as “A Defence of Common Sense,” and “Proof of an External World.” [Both of which were commented upon in detail by Wittgenstein in his 'On Certainty.'] [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 218-page Routledge paperback edition.]

He states, “a judgment is universally a necessary combination of concepts, equally necessary whether it be true of false. That it must be either true or false, but that its truth or falsehood cannot depend on its relation to anything else whatever, reality, for instance, or the world in space and time. For both of these must be supposed to exist, in some sense, if the truth of our judgment is to depend on them; and then it turns out that the truth of our judgment cannot, in its turn, depend on anything else, for its truth and falsehood must be immediate properties of its own, not dependent upon any relation it may have to something else.” (Pg. 18)

He points out, “The question requiring to be asked about material things is thus not: What reason have we for supposing that material things do NOT exist, since THEIR existence has precisely the same evidence as that of our sensations? That either exist MAY be false; but if it is a reason for doubting the existence of matter, that it is an inseparable aspect of our experience, the same reasoning will prove conclusively that our experience does not exist either, since that must also be an inseparable aspect of our experience of IT.

"The only REASONABLE alternative to the admission that matter exists as well as spirit, is absolute Scepticism---that is, as likely as not NOTHING exists at all. All other suppositions---the Agnostic’s, that something, at all events, does exist, as much as the Idealist’s, that spirit does---are, if we have no reason for believing in matter, as baseless as the grossest superstitions.” (Pg. 44)

In his essay on Hume, he observes, “Let us take … this pencil. It is just an ordinary wood pencil.” (Pg. 65) He continues, “It seems to me that, in fact, there really is no stronger and better argument than the following. I DO know that this pencil exists; but I could not know this, if Hume’s principles were true; therefore, Hume’s principles, one or both of them, are false. I think this argument really is as strong and good a one as any that could be used: and I think it really is conclusive… MY argument is this: I do know that this pencil exists; therefore Hume’s principles are false.” (Pg. 71-72)

In his “Defence of Common Sense” essay, he asserts, “I begin, then, with my list of truisms, every one of which (in my own opinion) I KNOW, with certainty, to be true. The propositions to be included in this list are the following: There exists at present a living human body, which is MY body. This body was born at a certain time in the past, and has existed continuously ever since… But the earth had existed also for many years before my body was born; and for many of these years, also, large numbers of human bodies had, at every moment, been alive upon it…

"I am a human being, and I have, at different times since my body was born, had many different experiences, of each of many different kinds… each of us has frequently known with regard to himself and some other time the different but corresponding proposition… ‘Many human beings other than myself have before now perceived, and dreamed, and felt,’ and so on…” (Pg. 107-109)

He said in an 1899 essay, “I wish it to be clearly understood that I do not suppose that anything I shall say has the smallest tendency to prove that reality is not spiritual: I do not believe it possible to refute a single one of the many important propositions contained in the assertion that it is so. Reality may be spiritual, for all I know; and I devoutly hope that it is.” (Pg. 24)

But in his later 1925 “Common Sense” essay, he says, “I differ from those philosophers who have held that there is good reason to suppose that all material things were created by God… I differ also from all philosophers who have held that there is good reason to suppose that there is a God at all, whether or not they have held it likely that he created all material things. And similarly, whereas some philosophers have held that there is good reason to suppose that we, human beings, shall continue to exist and to be conscious after the death of our bodies, I hold that there is no good reason to suppose this.” (Pg. 127)

In his “Proof of an External World” essay, he argues, “It seems to me that, so far from it being true, as Kant declares… that there is only one possible proof of the existence of things outside of us… I can now give a large number of different proofs, each of which is a perfectly rigorous proof… I can prove now, for instance, that two human hands exist. How? By holding up my two hands, and saying, as I make a certain gesture with the right hand, ‘Here is one hand,’ and adding, as I make a certain gesture with the led, ‘and here is another.’ And if, by doing this, I have proved ipso facto the existence of external things, you will all see that I can also do it now in numbers of other ways…

"But did I prove just now that two human hands were then in existence? I do want to insist that I did; that the proof which I gave was a perfectly rigorous one; and that it is perhaps impossible to give a better or more rigorous proof of anything whatever.” (Pg. 165-166)

He continues, “How then can I prove that there have been external objects in the past? Here is one proof. I can say: ‘I held up two hands above this desk not very long ago; therefore two hands existed not very long ago; therefore at least two external objects have existed at some time in the past… But it is also quite obvious that this sort of proof differs in important respects from the sort of proof I gave just now that there were two hands existing THEN.” (Pg. 168)

In his essay on certainty, he states, “the conjunction of my memories of the immediate past with these sensory experiences MAY be sufficient to enable me to know that I am not dreaming. I say it MAY be. But what if our sceptical philosopher says: It is NOT sufficient… my argument, ‘I know that I am standing up, and therefore I know that I am not dreaming,’ remains at least as good as his, ‘You don’t know that you are not dreaming, and therefore don’t know that you are standing up.’ … what I am in doubt of is whether it is logically possible that I should BOTH be having all the sensory experiences and the memories that I have and YET be dreaming. The conjunction of the proposition that I have these sense experiences and memories with the proposition that I am dreaming does seem to me to be very likely self-contradictory.” (Pg. 194)

Moore (unlike his contemporary Bertrand Russell) wrote very little; but the essays collected in this volume are vastly illuminating in getting a “fuller” picture of him as a philosopher apart from his ethical theory.

[Max Svalgard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love him <3