Abstract

The paper explores two pivotal concepts of Moore’s philosophy: sense data and immediate knowledge, examining their mutual relations. While the concept of sense data is commonly known and has often been extensively discussed, that of immediate knowledge is usually not explicitly mentioned. Nevertheless, Moore, in his arguments for the philosophy of common sense (e.g. in A Defence of Common Sense or Proof of an External World ), often referred to examples of empirical knowledge that can be defined as immediate knowledge, i.e. knowledge acquired directly, not inferentially, and constituting a foundation for drawing all further conclusions concerning the empirical world, e.g. “Here is one hand”. The opposite of it is mediate knowledge, which is always a result of inferring from statements expressing bits of immediate knowledge. Although the two terms in question rarely appear explicite in Moore, they are widely discussed in his lectures from 1910—1911, published only in 1953 as Some Main Problems of Philosophy . The present analysis refers mostly to this work