Moore's Paradox New Essays on Belief, Rationality, and the First Person

by Green, Mitchell S.; Williams, John N.

• ISBN13: 9780199282791
• ISBN10: 019928279X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-03-01
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

G. E. Moore famously observed that to assert, 'I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I don't believe that I did' would be 'absurd'. Moore calls it a 'paradox' that this absurdity persists despite the fact that what I say about myself might be true. Over half a century later, such sayingscontinue to perplex philosophers and other students of language, logic, and cognition. Ludwig Wittgenstein was fascinated by Moore's example, and the absurdity of Moore's saying was intensively discussed in the mid-20th century. Yet the source of the absurdity has remained elusive, and itsrecalcitrance has led researchers in recent decades to address it with greater care. In this definitive treatment of the problem of Moorean absurdity Green and Williams survey the history and relevance of the paradox and leading approaches to resolving it, and present new essays by leading thinkers in the area. ContributorsJonathan Adler, Bradley Armour-Garb, Jay D. Atlas, Thomas Baldwin, Claudio de Almeida, Andre Gallois, Robert Gordon, Mitchell Green, Alan Hajek, Roy Sorensen, John Williams

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. xi
Introduction and Historical Context
Introduction	p. 3
The All-Seeing Eye: A Blind Spot in the History of Ideas	p. 37
Moore's Paradox and Knowledge
Moorean Absurdity: An Epistemological Analysis	p. 53
The Normative Character of Belief	p. 76
Moore's Paradox, Evans's Principle, and Iterated Beliefs	p. 90
Moore's Paradox, Belief, and Assertion
What Reflexive Pronouns Tell Us about Belief: A New Moore's Paradox De Se, Rationality, and Privileged Access	p. 117
Moore's Paradox and the Transparency of Belief	p. 146
Moore's Paradox and Consciousness
Consciousness, Reasons, and Moore's Paradox	p. 165
Moorean Absurdity and Showing What's Within	p. 189
Arguments from Moore's Paradox
My Philosophical Position Says p and I Don't Believe p	p. 217
Moorean Pretense	p. 232
Index of Names	p. 243
Subject Index	p. 245
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