Was Moore a Moorean? On Moore and Scepticism

European Journal of Philosophy 17 (2):181-200 (2009)
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Abstract

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.

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Peter Baumann
Swarthmore College

Citations of this work

What We All Know: Community in Moore's "A Defence of Common Sense".Wim Vanrie - 2021 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 59 (4):629-651.
A generality problem for bootstrapping and sensitivity.Guido Melchior - 2014 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 14 (1):31-47.
The Ethics of the Digital Commons.Christian Fuchs - 2020 - Journal of Media Ethics 35 (2):112-126.

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References found in this work

Philosophical explanations.Robert Nozick - 1981 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Principia ethica.George Edward Moore - 1903 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Edited by Thomas Baldwin.
On Certainty (ed. Anscombe and von Wright).Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1969 - San Francisco: Harper Torchbooks. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe, G. H. von Wright & Mel Bochner.
Elusive knowledge.David Lewis - 1996 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (4):549 – 567.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Philosophy 76 (297):460-464.

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