{"id":10698,"date":"2011-05-15T13:11:02","date_gmt":"2011-05-15T13:11:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/05\/15\/on-the-ground-with-g-e-moore\/"},"modified":"2011-05-15T13:11:02","modified_gmt":"2011-05-15T13:11:02","slug":"on-the-ground-with-g-e-moore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/05\/15\/on-the-ground-with-g-e-moore\/","title":{"rendered":"On The Ground With G. E. Moore"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This is an entry from the old Powerblogs site.  It was written a few years ago.  It is just a bit of pedantry in which I wax peevish over pleonasm.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018On the ground\u2019 is getting a bit too much use for my taste. What the devil does it mean? "Coming up, a live report from Geraldo Rivera, on the ground in Fallujah." Where else would he be if not on the ground? Hovering in mid-air? Burrowing underground? Why not just say that he is in Fallujah? Or does it mean that he is literally on the ground<\/em>?<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, very few civilized mortals spend any appreciable time literally on the ground, i.e., in direct contact with the surface of the earth. I don\u2019t reckon that Geraldo, tough guy that he is, has ever walked barefoot over the Iraqi sand. I am now sitting with my pants and underpants on in a chair which rests on a rug and a pad beneath which is a concrete slab. Thus my gluteal contact with the earth is subject to a six-fold mediation. And when I go backpacking and sleep in the wild, my contact with the ground is subject to a similar manifold mediation: clothes, sleeping bag, self-inflating ThermaRest mattress, tent floor, groundcloth. And yet that could be called sleeping on the ground as opposed to sleeping in a warm bed at home.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thoughts such as these may have been at the back of G. E. Moore<\/span><\/a>\u2019s mind when he penned a passage in "A Defence<\/span><\/a> of Common Sense" (1925) that some have found puzzling. Speaking of his body, he writes,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ever since it was born, it has either been in contact with or not far from the surface of the earth . . .<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>What did Moore have in mind with "not far from the surface of the earth"? Did he do much jumping? Go up in planes or balloons? Or was he thinking that while sitting in his study, he was not in contact with the surface of the earth but also not far from it either?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This is an entry from the old Powerblogs site.  It was written a few years ago.  It is just a bit of pedantry in which I wax peevish over pleonasm.) \u2018On the ground\u2019 is getting a bit too much use for my taste. What the devil does it mean? "Coming up, a live report from Geraldo … Continue reading “On The Ground With G. E. Moore”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,556],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters","category-moore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}