ch.
1, § 6, (i) MOORE 29
(III) REALIST THEORY OF TRUTH. Especially interesting for our study is the alacrity
with which both Moore and Russell responded to William James's Pragmatism,
Joachim's Nature of Truth, Santayana's The Life of Reason, and the philosophy of
Bergson. In view of the rising influence of vitalism by the turn of the century, both
philosophers had seen their task as that of defending realism. They stand behind the
ultimate, atomic truths; behind the belief that such truths are 'unchangeable' and so
are not the result of a process; they are not valid only in context.
In 'William James' "Pragmatism"' (1908) Moore agreed with James's statement
that reality, which, according to him, included all concepts, is subject to change.
Despite the constant changing of reality, however, Moore is sure that many ideas are
eternally true. Of course, ideas 'are constantly changing in some respects. They
come and go; and at one time they stand in a given relation to other things or ideas,
to which at another time they do not stand in that relation' (p. 132). None the less,
the truth of ideas remains the same. Indeed, in all cases in which we claim an idea
to be true at one time and false at another, [what is meant] is merely the idea of a sentence-
that is, of certain words ... [, not of facts. But] if we mean by an idea, not merely the idea of
certain words, but the kind of idea which words express, it is very doubtful whether such an
idea ever changes from true to false. (pp. 134-5)
6. FIRST THESES OF 'ANALYTICAL SCHOLASTICS'
(I) WHY THE SCHEME? We have already pointed out that Moore's first large-scale
attempt to draw philosophical conclusions from Russell's Theory of Descriptions
were the lectures on Some Main Problems of Philosophy. It was the first attempt to
articulate the new philosophical logic in systematic form, together with its meta-
physical consequences, and was later followed by Russell's The Problems of Phi-
losophy, Theory of Knowledge, Our Knowledge of the External World, 'The Phi-
losophy of Logical Atomism', as well as Wittgenstein's Tractatus. This fact ex-
plains their historical importance.
The lectures Some Main Problems of Philosophy were extraordinarily well pre-
pared. They build up a coherent, systematic whole, to be compared only with an-
other logico-philosophical 'crystal'-the Tractatus.
The negative side of Moore's project was the radical scholasticising of the New
Look philosophy, a turn later criticised by Ramsey. As a result, while some intellec-
tuals of the time, for example Virginia Woolf, did read Principia Ethica, albeit with
difficulty, we can scarcely imagine many of them absorbing anything positive from
Moore's 1910-11 lectures.
(II) CLASSIFICATION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISCIPLINES. Moore's lectures' leitmo-
tif was a question which was constantly at the centre of attention of analytic phi-
losophers: What is philosophy? 25
Following Bradley, Moore accepts that philosophy is intrinsically ontological. 26 It
should yield the taxonomy of the things that exist. Through their description, Moore
hoped
25 This point disproves Michael Dummett's thesis that 'for none of the various groups and individuals'
criticised in E. Gellner's work Words and Things (Gellner 1959) 'does any of their work depend upon
their theory of the nature of philosophy' (Dummett 1960a, p. 434).
30 CAMBRIDGE ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
to give a general description of the whole of the Universe, mentioning all the most important
kinds of things which we know to be in it, ... and also considering the most important ways
in which these various kinds of things are related to one another. (1953, p. 1)
Unfortunately, after every such an attempt to describe 'the most important kinds
of things', we feel that we have not exhausted the whole of metaphysics. The point
is that, besides being descriptive, metaphysics can also be critical. In this stance,
metaphysics compares different entities:
Many philosophers have spent a great deal of their time in trying to define more clearly what
is the difference between these various sorts of things: for instance, what is the difference
between a material object and an act of consciousness, between matter and mind, between
God and man, etc. (p. 24)
Moore insists that comparative analysis is not merely a question of words; 'and it
is not only a question of clearness either' (ibid.).Z7 In trying to find out what we
mean by a concept-for example, by material object-we find several different
properties of it 'of which you had never thought before' (ibid.). This activity of
analysing the data (concepts) to hand, in order to find new things in them which had
remained hidden thus far, is typically a priori.
Besides metaphysics, there are two other philosophical disciplines-logic and
ethics. In fact, Moore's ethics is a shadow part of his ontology. It tries
to classify all the different sorts of things which would be good or bad, right or wrong. . . .
And these ethical questions have a most important bearing upon our general description of the
Universe. (p. 26)
In contrast, Moore's understanding of the task of logic was Kantian in spirit: it
has a completely non-existential character. Logicians are 'trying to classify com-
pletely all the different ways in which we can know things'. Here the central ques-
tion is: 'How do we know anything at all?'
(III) SENSE-DATA. In 1910 Moore published a critical review of August Messer's
book Empfindung und Denken, 28 highly praising the phenomenological attempt
made in it 'to classify all the kinds of elements which may occur as constituents of
mental phenomena'. Curiously enough, in Some Main Problems of Philosophy he
made a similar stab. 29 In Moore's mental taxonomy, sense-perception (seeing, hear-
ing, feeling, smelling) is only one among many other cognitive relations, the others
being those of remembering, dreaming, imagining, thinking and observing.
In his ambitious project to advance a minimal, speculation-free conceptual
scheme of the mind, Moore accepted the existence of sense-data. The term was used
for the first time in 'The Subject-Matter of Psychology' (1909b), where it was de-
fined as covering 'a class of entities of which we are very often directly conscious,
and with many of which we are extremely familiar' (p. 57). Sense-data are deter-
mined by colour, shape and form. These three are on the surface of the object per-
ceived. Besides sense-data, there is also space, which is different from them. Sense-
data relate in space.
26 This point of Moore's, accepted also by Russell and partly also by Wittgenstein, was later criticised
by the Oxford School of the mid-1950s, but accepted by Strawson in his Individuals.
27 Despite some later claims (see Price 1945), for Moore 'clarity is not enough'.
28 August Messer was a German phenomenologist of the first half of the century. In the review, Moore
pronounced his book 'extraordinarily good' (1910, p. 395).
29 On the similarities between Moore's lectures and phenomenology see Kiinne 1991, and Milkov 200lc.
ch. 1, § 6, (iv) MOORE 31
Sense-data are not identical with the objects that they disclose. They are also not
parts of them. Indeed, material objects are something and thus have volume in space.
In contrast, in spite of their relating in space, sense-data are not part of it.
The relation between sense-data and objects is immediate, not successive; from
the epistemological perspective, it can be called a 'relation ipso facto': we perceive
the sense-data and ipso facto perceive the object. Sense-data are objective in the
sense that they don't depend on the subject who perceives them. It is the perceptions
of sense-data that are subjective.
Moore's sense-data can be also considered as what is perceived from different
points of view. 30 Indeed, exactly as with different points of view, we have one ob-
ject-for example, this envelope-and also different perspectives/sense-data. An ar-
gument for considering sense-data as what is perceived from different points of view
(or as perspectives) is that they are not spatially (and causally) related. Besides, they
are numerically different even when they are qualitatively identical (indiscernible).
In contrast to sense-data, the acts of perceiving are in themselves the same. The
difference between these acts is due only to the difference between the data to which
they are directed. The same can also be said about mental acts in toto. When they are
of different kinds, the difference is determined by the objects to which they are di-
rected.
(IV) PROPOSITIONS. Further, Moore assumes that
absolutely all the contents of the Universe, absolutely everything that is at all, may be divided
into two classes-namely into propositions, on the one hand, and into things which are not
propositions on the other hand. (1953, p. 56)
Moore further specifies that whenever he speaks of a proposition, he is 'always
speaking, not of a mere sentence-a mere collection of words, but of what these
words mean' (p. 57). In other words, Moore accepts that propositions are 'the mean-
ing ofthese words'. When apprehending a sentence, two things happen at once: we
apprehend the words, and ipso facto apprehend their meaning.
Similarly, when we believe a proposition, we ipso facto understand it. That is,
understanding a proposition is the sine qua non of believing it. Moreover, appre-
hending a proposition, we ipso facto aEprehend something that is not a proposi-
tion-the fact that the proposition states. 1
All these (four) ipso facta are different 'ways of knowing'.
In 1910 Moore accepted32 that the most important characteristic of propositions is
that they are intrinsically truth-functional. We can't speak of truth or falsity of ideas
and sense-data since 'error always consists in believing some proposition which is
false' (p. 66). 33
Another important characteristic of propositions is their aboutness. Moore ex-
pressed this characteristic as follows: 'Every proposition is, as we constantly say, a
proposition about something or other. Some propositions may be about several
different things; but all of them are about at least one thing' (p. 68). Here the close
resemblance between Moore's epistemology and that ofBrentano is striking. 34
30 This conception was developed in full in Russell1914b, pp. 116 ff.
31 This theory is repeated in Wittgenstein's Tractatus thus: when we know a proposition, we ipso facto
know some state of affairs (4.021).
32 Under Russell's influence. See on this ch. 2, § 2, (ii), (a).
33 Moore abandoned this position in 'Is Existence a Predicate?' (1936).
34 Preparing Principia Ethica, Moore declared: '[I] found, in Brentano's 'The Origin of the Knowledge
of Right and Wrong", opinions far more closely resembling my own, than those of any other ethical
32 CAMBRIDGE ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
Further, Moore is adamant that
[i]n order to have an idea of something else, I must not only apprehend an image, which is in
fact like something else: I must also either know or think that the image is like the something
else?5 In other words, I must apprehend some proposition about the relation of the image to
the object: only so can I be properly said to have an idea of the object at all. (p. 66)
Thus propositions are involved in every act of knowing.
Moore's proof of the primacy of propositions reads as follows. When, for exam-
ple, we believe that our hat is hanging up in the hall, we do not have only images in
mind; we are either sure that it is there, or at least hesitate, or doubt, that there is
something other than these images. Consequently, every image presupposes a
proposition.
Moore, however, is clear that the immediate knowledge of propositions is some-
thing quite different from the apprehension of sense-data. Thus, 'even at the moment
when we do directly apprehend the whole proposition, we need not directly appre-
hend that which the proposition is about' (p. 69);36 we can infer it, or reconstruct it,
from the proposition. All this makes propositions irreplaceable in logic. With their
help we can reason about things which we don't directly apprehend. 37
Of course, we can also have an indirect knowledge of propositions-for example,
when we merely consider them and so don't believe or disbelieve them; or when we
infer them.
Besides direct and indirect knowing, there is a third type of 'know': as Moore
puts it, 'I know the multiplication-table, at a time when I am not thinking either
directly or indirectly either of the multiplication-table itself or any part of it' (p. 79).
This kind of knowledge was later explored by Ryle in The Concept of Mind.
(V) EPISTEMOLOGICAL PREMISES. One of the most interesting questions in episte-
mology is: Under what conditions can a man apprehend the existence of an object
which he has never perceived directly? Among the philosophers who contributed
most in discussing this question was Hume. In order to answer this question, Hume
set out two principles:
(a) Nobody can ever apprehend that the existence of A is a sign for the existence of
B, unless he has experienced a general conjunction of objects like A and objects
like B.
(b) Nobody can ever have knowledge about the existence of an object for which he
has no direct perception, unless he is directly perceiving that another object, in a
causal relation with the former, is a sign of its existence (seep. 109).
Against these principles of Hume's, Moore uses a reductio ad absurdum argument.
He asks: What follows if we assume that the rules formulated by Hume are correct? It
follows that some other sense-data exist now, which are in some relation to the sense-
data that we directly perceive; and nothing beyond this. This, however, contradicts
writer with whom I am acquainted' (1903b, pp. x-xi). He was critical only ofBrentano's neglect of truth-
functionalism and his open acceptance of the concepts of right and wrong as ultimate values in both
ethics and aesthetics (see 1903a, p. 117).
35 That it 'goes proxy for something', as Wittgenstein used to say later. See on this ch. 3, § 7, (ii).
36 On the other hand, '[s]o long as I am directly apprehending a proposition about a thing, I am in a
sense conscious of that thing-I am thinking of it or about it' (p. 70).
37 This is Moore's answer to Russell's main epistemological problem in the Theory of Descriptions: the
'information puzzle' (see on this ch. 2, § 5, (ii)).
