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

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Mitchell S. Green, John N. Williams
Clarendon Press, 2007 M01 11 - 247 pages
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 sayings continue 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 intensivelydiscussed in the mid-20th century. Yet the source of the absurdity has remained elusive, and its recalcitrance 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, André Gallois, Robert Gordon, Mitchell Green, Alan Hájek, Roy Sorensen, John Williams
 

Contents

II MOORES PARADOX AND KNOWLEDGE
51
III MOORES PARADOX BELIEF AND ASSERTION
115
IV MOORES PARADOX AND CONSCIOUSNESS
163
V ARGUMENTS FROM MOORES PARADOX
215

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About the author (2007)

Mitchell S. Green is at the University of Virginia.

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