Recent Work on Moore’s Proof
In: International Journal for the Study of SkepticismSearch for other papers by J.Adam Carter in
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Recently, much work has been done on G.E. Moore’s proof of an external world with the aim of diagnosing just where the Proof ‘goes wrong’. In the mainstream literature, the most widely discussed debate on this score stands between those who defend competing accounts of perceptual warrant known as dogmatism (i.e. Pryor and Davies) and conservativism (i.e. Wright). Each account implies a different verdict on Moore’s Proof, though both share a commitment to supposing that an examination of premise-conclusion dependence relations will sufficiently reveal what’s wrong with the Proof. Parallel to this debate on Moore stands perhaps an equally interesting (though less discussed) debate within which the Proof is critiqued as it stands in the context of the skeptical debate. On this score, Michael Fara and Ernest Sosa have weighed in with a markedly different take on Moore’s anti-skeptical ambitions and on the nature of skeptical challenges more generally. The aim of this paper will be to critically evaluate these two very distinct strands of recent work on Moore’s Proof. Part I of the paper will focus on the mainstream debate, and in Part II of the paper, I’ll focus on the parallel debate about skepticism. My critical discussion will be aimed throughout at showing how the various proposals I’ve taken as representative of these two parallel debates surrounding Moore’s Proof ultimately fall short—each for different reasons—of what a satisfactory diagnosis of the Proof would require.
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Austin J. L. (1962). Sense and Sensibilia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Beebee H. (2001). “Transfer of Warrant, Begging the Question, and Semantic Externalism,” Philosophical Quarterly 51: 356–74.
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Bergmann M. (2004). “Epistemic Circularity: Malignant and Benign,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69: 709–27.
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Cohen S. (2002). “Basic Knowledge and the Problem of Easy Knowledge,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65: 309–29.
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Davies M, . (2000). “Externalism and Armchair Knowledge,”384–414 in Boghossian P., & Peacocke C. (eds.) New Essays on the A Priori. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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––––. (2003). “Armchair Knowledge, Begging the Question, and Epistemic Warrant,” Carl G. Hempel Lectures, Princeton University.
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––––. (2003b). “The Problem of Armchair Knowledge,” 23–55 in Nuccetelli S. (ed.), New Essays on Semantic Externalism and Self-Knowledge. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
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––––. (2004). “Epistemic Entitlement, Warrant Transmission, and Easy Knowledge,” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 78: 213–45.
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Fara M. (2008). “How Moore Beat the Skeptic,” (draft).
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Greco J. (2002). “How to Reid Moore,” Philosophical Quarterly 52: 544–63.
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Moore G.E. (1959). “Proof of an External World,” 127–50 in his Philosophical Papers. London: Allen and Unwin.
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Neta R, . (2007). “Fixing the Transmission: The New Mooreans,” 62–83 in Nuccetelli S., & Seay G. (eds.), Themes from: G.E. Moore: New Essays in Epistemology and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Pritchard D., (forthcoming). “Wittgenstein and Scepticism,” in McGinn M. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook to Wittgenstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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––––. (2002b). “Resurrecting the Moorean Response to the Sceptic,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 10: 283–307.
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Pryor J. (2000). “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist,” Noûs 34: 517–49.
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––––. (2004). “What’s Wrong With Moore’s Argument?” Philosophical Issues 14: 349–78.
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Sosa E. (2009). Reflective Knowledge: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, vol. II. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Strawson P. F. (1985). Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties. New York: Columbia University Press.
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Wittgenstein L. (1969). On Certainty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Wright C. (2000). “Cogency and Question-Begging: Some Reflections on McKinsey’s Paradox and Putnam’s Proof,” Philosophical Issues 10: 140–63.
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––––. (2004). “Warrant for Nothing (And Foundations for Free),” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 78: 167–212.
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––––. (2009). “The Perils of Dogmatism,” 25–49 in Nuccetelli S., & Seay G. (eds.), Themes from: G.E. Moore: New Essays in Epistemology and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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7
Beebee (2000) has raised a similar criticism.
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12
See Pryor (2004), 368–70.
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13
I paraphrase from Pryor (2004) and Neta (2008).
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14
See Wright (2007) for a detailed discussion of conservatism.
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16
Neta (2008) notes this point.
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17
See Neta (2008).
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24
See Neta (2008), 29–33. Just as a point of curiosity, the infallibilist account of justification that Neta reads Moore as offering borrows from passages of Moore in which Moore speaks of justification in a radically strong way, stronger than some contemporary accounts of knowledge. I think it would be helpful to understand clearly how it is that Moore takes knowledge to differ from justification, if at all.
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29
See Moore (1959).
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35
See Sosa (2007) and (2009) for a comprehensive defense of this distinction in the theory of knowledge.
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Recent Work on Moore’s Proof
In: International Journal for the Study of SkepticismSearch for other papers by J.Adam Carter in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Recently, much work has been done on G.E. Moore’s proof of an external world with the aim of diagnosing just where the Proof ‘goes wrong’. In the mainstream literature, the most widely discussed debate on this score stands between those who defend competing accounts of perceptual warrant known as dogmatism (i.e. Pryor and Davies) and conservativism (i.e. Wright). Each account implies a different verdict on Moore’s Proof, though both share a commitment to supposing that an examination of premise-conclusion dependence relations will sufficiently reveal what’s wrong with the Proof. Parallel to this debate on Moore stands perhaps an equally interesting (though less discussed) debate within which the Proof is critiqued as it stands in the context of the skeptical debate. On this score, Michael Fara and Ernest Sosa have weighed in with a markedly different take on Moore’s anti-skeptical ambitions and on the nature of skeptical challenges more generally. The aim of this paper will be to critically evaluate these two very distinct strands of recent work on Moore’s Proof. Part I of the paper will focus on the mainstream debate, and in Part II of the paper, I’ll focus on the parallel debate about skepticism. My critical discussion will be aimed throughout at showing how the various proposals I’ve taken as representative of these two parallel debates surrounding Moore’s Proof ultimately fall short—each for different reasons—of what a satisfactory diagnosis of the Proof would require.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 885 | 158 | 19 |
| Full Text Views | 176 | 13 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 118 | 24 | 5 |
