Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
3-2006
Abstract
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.
Discipline
Philosophy
Research Areas
Humanities
Publication
Synthese
Volume
149
Issue
1
First Page
225
Last Page
254
ISSN
0039-7857
Identifier
10.1007/s11229-004-6252-0
Publisher
Springer Verlag
Citation
WILLIAMS, John N..(2006). Wittgenstein, Moorean Absurdity and its Disappearance from Speech. Synthese, 149(1), 225-254.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/42
Copyright Owner and License
Author
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-004-6252-0