G. E. Moore famously noted that saying 'I went to the movies, but I don't believe it' is absurd, while saying 'I went to the movies, but he doesn't believe it' is not in the least absurd. The problem is to explain this fact without supposing that the semantic contribution of 'believes' changes across first-person and third-person uses, and without making the absurdity out to be merely pragmatic. We offer a new solution to the paradox. Our solution is that the (...) truth conditions of any moorean utterance contradict its accuracy conditions. Thus we diagnose a contradiction in how the moorean utterance represents things as being; so we can do justice to the intuition that a Moore-paradoxical utterance is in some way senseless, even if we know what proposition it expresses. (shrink)

Se trata de revisar el expresivismo respecto a emisiones de la forma "Creo que p". El expresivista sostiene que una emisión de "Creo que llueve" es una expresión, y no una descripción, de la creencia de que llueve. Se propone una variación del expresivismo según la cual una emisión así expresa la creencia consciente de que llueve, en el sentido de la teoría de la conciencia de Brentano: una creencia consciente de que llueve tiene el contenido de que llueve y (...) de que él mismo, el creyente, cree que llueve. (shrink)

Moore's paradox arises from the logicaloddity of sentences of the form`P and I do not believe that P'or `P and I believe that not-P'. Thiskind of sentence is logically peculiarbecause it is absurd to assert it, although it isnot a logical contradiction. In this paperI offer a new proposal. I argue that Moore's paradox arises because there is a defaultprocedure for evaluating a self-ascribed belief sentence and one is presumptivelyjustified in believing that one believes a sentence when one sincerely assents (...) to it. (shrink)

Among recent theories of the nature of self-knowledge, the rationalistic view, according to which self-knowledge is not a cognitive achievement—perceptual or inferential—has been prominent. Upon this kind of view, however, self-knowledge becomes a bit of a mystery. Although the rationalistic conception is defended in this article, it is argued that it has to be supplemented by an account of the transparency of belief: the question whether to believe that P is settled when one asks oneself whether P.

Assertions of statements such as 'it's raining, but I don't believe it' are standard examples of what is known as Moore's paradox. Here I consider moral equivalents of such statements, statements wherein individuals affirm moral judgments while also expressing motivational indifference to those judgments. I argue for four main conclusions concerning such statements: 1. Such statements are genuinely paradoxical, even if not contradictory. 2. This paradoxicality can be traced to a form of epistemic self-defeat that also explains the paradoxicality of (...) ordinary Moore-paradoxical statements. 3. Although a simple form of internalism about moral judgment and motivation can explain the paradoxicality of these moral equivalents, a more plausible explanation can be provided that does not rely on this simple form of internalism. 4. The paradoxicality of such statements suggests a more credible understanding of the thesis that those who are not motivated by their moral judgments are irrational. (shrink)

On the basis of arguments showing that none of the most influential analyses of Moore's paradox yields a successful resolution of the problem, a new analysis of it is offered. It is argued that, in attempting to render verdicts of either inconsistency or self‐contradiction or self‐refutation, those analyses have all failed to satisfactorily explain why a Moore‐paradoxical proposition is such that it cannot be rationally believed. According to the proposed solution put forward here, a Moore‐paradoxical proposition is one for which (...) the believer can have no non‐overridden evidence. the arguments for this claim make use of some of Peter Klein's views on epistemic defeasibility. It is further suggested that this proposal may have important meta‐epistemological implications. (shrink)

G. E. Moore famously observed that to say, “ I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I don’t believe that I did” would be “absurd”. Why should it be absurd of me to say something about myself that might be true of me? Moore suggested an answer to this, but as I will show, one that fails. Wittgenstein was greatly impressed by Moore’s discovery of a class of absurd but possibly true assertions because he saw that it illuminates “the (...) logic of assertion”. Wittgenstein suggests a promising relation of assertion to belief in terms of the idea that one “expresses belief” that is consistent with the spirit of Moore’s failed attempt to explain the absurdity. Wittgenstein also observes that “under unusual circumstances”, the sentence, “It’s raining but I don’t believe it” could be given “a clear sense”. Why does the absurdity disappear from speech in such cases? Wittgenstein further suggests that analogous absurdity may be found in terms of desire, rather than belief. In what follows I develop an account of Moorean absurdity that, with the exception of Wittgenstein’s last suggestion, is broadly consistent with both Moore’s approach and Wittgenstein’s. (shrink)