Moore Against The New Skeptics (original) (raw)

Scepticism and knowledge: Moore´s proof of an external world

A profitable way of approaching the issue of analytic philosophy's reflections on scepticism and knowledge is by looking at the history of Moore's "Proof of an external world". The paper, first appeared in 1939, has been the object of different and contrasting interpretations since then and is nowadays at the core of a large debate in epistemology. In §1 I will present the paper to place it in its proper context, in §2 I will consider some classical interpretations of it and in §3 the ones which have fostered the on-going debate. In so doing I will assess all of them from a historical point of view, pointing out how they are all somewhat wanting as renditions of Moore's strategy. In §4 I will put forward my own interpretation of the historical Moore, as it were. Finally in §5, I will return to the present-day debate and sketch a further interpretation-Wittgensteinian in spiritwhich may be of interest to contemporary discussions on the topic.

Revisiting Moore’s Anti-Skeptical Argument in “Proof of an External World”

International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 2021

This paper argues that we should reject G. E. Moore’s anti-skeptical argument as it is presented in “Proof of an External World.” However, the reason I offer is different from traditional objections. A proper understanding of Moore’s “proof” requires paying attention to an important distinction between two forms of skepticism. I call these Ontological Skepticism and Epistemic Skepticism. The former is skepticism about the ontological status of fundamental reality, while the latter is skepticism about our empirical knowledge. Philosophers often assume that Moore’s response to “external world skepticism” deals exclusively with the former, not the latter. But this is a mistake. I shall argue that Moore’s anti-skeptical argument targets an ontological form of skepticism. Thus, the conclusion is an ontological claim about fundamental reality, while the premises are epistemic claims. If this is correct, then the conclusion outstrips the scope of its premises and proves too much.

Moore against the sceptics

Veritas (Porto Alegre), 2021

Moore’s “Proof of an external world” and his “Four forms of scepticism” have long puzzled commentators. How are these adequate responses to sceptics? How, for that matter, is the so-called proof of an external world even pertinent to the challenge of scepticism? The notion of relativized burdens of proof is introduced: this is a burden of proof vis-à-vis one’s opponent that one takes on when trying to convince that someone of something. The relativized burden of proof is a making explicit (in the topic of rational discourse) the truism that if you argue with someone with the intent of trying to convince that someone of something, and if you fail to, you have not met your own conversational goal. Assuming Moore is implicitly relying on the notion of relativized burdens of proof illuminates his approach in these papers.

Moore, the Skeptic, and the Philosophical Context

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (2006), pp.271-287

I argue that Moore’s anti-skeptical arguments should be understood as targeting the skeptic as a person rather than skepticism as a philosophical thesis. My interpretation of Moore’s arguments offers a good explanation of why they have anti-skeptical force even though they beg the question against skepticism. I also show that Moore has offered two different anti-skeptical arguments that are often conflated by his interpreters. The first is his famous proof of an external world, and the other is a reductio argument. According to my interpretation, the anti-skeptical force of the reductio argument has to be derived from Moore’s proof. I then consider a kind of objection to Moore’s arguments that is based on a distinction between the everyday context and the philosophical context. The distinction can be understood temporally or semantically; I argue that the objection fails no matter how the distinction is understood.

Was Moore A Moorean? On Moore and Scepticism

One of the most important views in the recent discussion of epistemological scepticism is Neo-Mooreanism. It turns a well-known kind of sceptical argument (the dreaming argument and its different versions) on its head by starting with ordinary knowledge claims and concluding that we know that we are not in a sceptical scenario. This paper argues that George Edward Moore was not a Moorean in this sense. Moore replied to other forms of scepticism than those mostly discussed nowadays. His own anti-sceptical position turns out to be very subtle and complex; furthermore it changed over time. This paper follows Moore's views of what the sceptical problem is and how one should respond to it through a series of crucial papers with the main focus being on Moore's 'Proof of an External World'. An appendix deals with the much neglected relation between epistemological scepticism and moral scepticism in Moore.

On G. E. Moore's "Proof of an External World"

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly

A new reading of G. E. Moore’s “Proof of an External World” is offered, on which the Proof is understood as a unique and essential part of an anti-sceptical strategy that Moore worked out early in his career and developed in various forms, from 1909 until his death in 1958. I begin by ignoring the Proof and by developing a reading of Moore’s broader response to scepticism. The bulk of the paper is then devoted to understanding what role the Proof plays in Moore’s strategy, and how it plays it.

Resurrecting the Moorean Response to the Sceptic

G. E. Moore famously offered a strikingly straightforward response to the radical sceptic which simply consisted of the claim that one could know, on the basis of one’s knowledge that one has hands, that there exists an external world. In general, the Moorean response to scepticism maintains that we can know the denials of sceptical hypotheses on the basis of our knowledge of everyday propositions. In the recent literature two proposals have been put forward to try to accommodate, to varying extents, this Moorean thesis. On the one hand, there are those who endorse an externalist version of contextualism, such as Keith DeRose, who have claimed that there must be some contexts in which Moore is right. More radically still, Ernest Sosa has expanded on this externalist thesis by arguing that, contra DeRose’s contextualism, Moore may be right in all contexts. In this paper I evaluate these claims and argue that, suitably modified, one can resurrect the main elements of the Moorean anti-sceptical thesis.

Moore’s Proof, Theory-Ladenness of Perception, and Many Proofs

I argue that if we allow that Moore’s Method, which involves taking an ordinary knowledge claim to support a substantive metaphysical conclusion, can be used to support Moore’s proof an external world, then we should accept that Moore’s Method can be used to support a variety of incompatible metaphysical conclusions. I shall refer to this as “the problem of many proofs”. The problem of many proofs, I claim, stems from the theory-ladenness of perception. I shall argue further that this plethora of proofs for incompatible positions leads to a darker form of skepticism, one which maintains that each of the dogmatic views is probably false. We will conclude by considering various ways a Moorean might respond to these difficulties.

The Paradox of Moore's Proof of an External World

The Philosophical Quarterly, 2008

Moore's proof of an external world is a piece of reasoning whose premises, in context, are true and warranted and whose conclusion is perfectly acceptable, and yet immediately seems flawed. I argue that neither Wright's nor Pryor's readings of the proof can explain this paradox. Rather, one must take the proof as responding to a sceptical challenge to our right to claim to have warrant for our ordinary empirical beliefs, either for any particular empirical belief we might have, or for belief in the existence of an external world itself. I show how Wright's and Pryor's positions are of interest when taken in connection with Humean scepticism, but that it is only linking it with Cartesian scepticism which can explain why the proof strikes us as an obvious failure.