{"id":11979,"date":"2009-12-21T12:05:55","date_gmt":"2009-12-21T12:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/12\/21\/greco-on-stroud-on-moore-on-the-external-world-with-a-shot-at-stove\/"},"modified":"2009-12-21T12:05:55","modified_gmt":"2009-12-21T12:05:55","slug":"greco-on-stroud-on-moore-on-the-external-world-with-a-shot-at-stove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/12\/21\/greco-on-stroud-on-moore-on-the-external-world-with-a-shot-at-stove\/","title":{"rendered":"Greco on Stroud on Moore on the External World with a Shot at Stove"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Greco (<\/font>How to Reid Moore<\/font><\/a>) finds Barry Stroud's interpretation of G. E. Moore's proof of an external world implausible:<\/font><\/p>\n

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According to him [Stroud], the question as to whether we know anything about the external world can be taken in an internal or an external sense. In the internal sense, the question can be answered from \u201cwithin\u201d one\u2019s current knowledge \u2014- hence one can answer it by pointing out some things that one knows, such as that here is a hand. In the external sense, however, the question is put in a \u201cdetached\u201d and \u201cphilosophical\u201d way.<\/font><\/p>\n

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If we have the feeling that Moore nevertheless fails to answer the philosophical question about our knowledge of external things, as we do, it is because we understand that question as requiring a certain withdrawal or detachment from the whole body of our knowledge of the world. We recognize that when I ask in that detached philosophical way whether I know that there are external things, I am not supposed to be allowed to appeal to other things I think I know about external things in order to help me settle the question.5<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

According to Stroud, Moore\u2019s proof is a perfectly good one in response to the internal question, but fails miserably in response to the external or \u201cphilosophical\u201d question. In fact, Stroud argues, Moore\u2019s failure to respond to the philosophical question is so obvious that it cries out for an explanation — hence Malcolm\u2019s and Ambroses\u2019s ordinary language interpretations. Stroud offers a different explanation for Moore\u2019s failure to address the philosophical question: \u201cHe [i.e. Moore] resists, or more probably does not even feel, the pressure towards the philosophical project as it is understood by the philosophers he discusses.\u201d6 Or again, \u201cwe are left with the conclusion that Moore really did not understand the philosopher\u2019s assertions in any way other than the everyday \u2018internal\u2019 way he seems to have understood them.\u201d7 The problem with this interpretation, of course, is that it makes Moore out to be an idiot.<\/strong> Is it really possible that Moore, the great Cambridge philosopher, did not understand that other philosophers were raising a philosophical question? (bolding added)
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The bolded sentence is what I want to focus on. I fail to see how Stroud's interpretation makes Moore out to be an idiot. To my mind is it obvious that (i) Moore is the opposite of an idiot, and that, if not obvious, it is at least arguable that (ii) he does not appreciate the problem of the external world. That is essentially what I said earlier in various posts.  <\/font>Regarding the bit about the two hands, I said in one of them that it is ". . . if not a joke, then clear proof, not of the external world, but that Moore did not understand the issue." It is nice to discover that I have Stroud on my side.<\/font><\/p>\n

It is possible to be exceedingly intelligent and yet not have a feel for, or a sense of, or an appreciation of, one or several or all philosophical problems. Otherwise, how would one explain a positivist such as <\/font>David Stove<\/font><\/a>? The power of his intellect is not in dispute, and he is classified as a philosopher; but, being a positivist, he is arguably bereft of understanding of what philosophers traditionally were trying to do. For Stove, Plato, Plotinus, Augustine, Berkeley, and a host of other philosophers deemed great, are "dangerous lunatics." (The Plato Cult<\/strong>, Basil Blackwell, 1991,  p. 184) They espouse views that cannot be taken seriously by any sane person. Let us consider what Stove has to say about Berkeley:<\/font><\/p>\n

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Berkeley held that there are no physical objects: that there was no right hand behind his ideas of his right hand, no wig behind his ideas of his wig, and so on. Indeed, he said, there is nothing at all behind any of our ideas of physical objects, except the will of God that we should have those ideas when we do. Yet Berkeley was a physical object himself, after all \u2013 born of a certain woman, author of certain printed books, and so forth \u2013 and he knew it. p. ix)<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Stove\u2019s misunderstanding is so deep that it takes the breath away. Berkeley did not hold that there are no physical objects; what he gave us was a theory of their ontological constitution. That there are physical objects is self-evident, a datum, a starting point; what they are in their ontological constitution, and how they exist, however, are questions open to dispute. To deny the existence of physical objects would of course be lunacy. But to give an ontological analysis of them in terms of ideas, an analysis that identifies them with clusters of coherent ideas, is not a lunatic project. It is no more a lunatic endeavor than that of analyzing thoughts (and mental states generally) in terms of brain states as one kind of physicalist would.<\/font><\/p>\n

Suppose we explore this comparison a bit. It is prima facie<\/em> reasonable to hold that our thoughts are identical to complex states of our brains. (I don\u2019t think this is true, but the reasonable and the true are two, not one.) Accordingly, my thinking about Boston is a state of my brain. Suppose a philosopher propounds the following theory: Every (token) mental state is numerically identical to some (token) brain state.  Many philosophers not bereft of reason have maintained this.  Someone who holds such a token-token identity theory is obviously not denying the existence of mental states; what he is doing is presupposing their existence and giving us a theory of what they are in ultimate reality. What he is saying is that these mental states of which we are introspectively aware are really just brain states; they are not states of an immaterial thinking substance, or states of an emergent entity, or identifiable with something else such as a bit of behavior, etc.<\/font><\/p>\n

Now if the project of reducing the mental to the physical avoids lunacy, then the same goes for the reduction in the opposite direction. If it is not \u2018loony\u2019 to say that the perceiving of a coffee cup is a state of my brain, why is it \u2018loony\u2019 to say that the accusative of such a state, the coffee cup perceived, is a bundle or cluster of ideas (to be precise: bundle or cluster of accusatives of mental acts)? Either both of these views belong in the lunatic asylum or neither do.<\/font><\/p>\n

Note also that if one cannot analyze the physical in terms of the mental, or the mental in terms of the physical, on pain of going insane, then one also cannot analyze the universal in terms of the particular, or the particular in terms of the universal. And yet philosophers do this all the time without seeming to lose their grip on reality.<\/font><\/p>\n

Take the obvious fact that things have properties. These two tomatoes are both (the same shade of) red. That things have properties is a datum; what properties ultimately are, however, and how they exist, is not a datum but a problem. It appears that our two tomatoes have something in common, namely, their being red. This suggests that redness is a universal, an entity repeated in each of the tomatoes. Some philosophers resist this suggestion by maintaining that, although both tomatoes are red, each has its own redness. Trope theorists, for example, hold that the properties of things are as particular (unrepeatable) as the things that have the properties. They then analyze the seeming commonality of redness in some other way, say, as deriving from a mental act of abstraction, or in terms of classes of resembling tropes.<\/font><\/p>\n

Metaphysical reductions (of the mental to the physical, the physical to the mental, the universal to the particular, the particular to the universal, the modal to the nonmodal, the dispositional to the categorical, etc.) seem to be as meaningful as scientific reductions. The identification of lightning with an atmospheric electrical discharge; of a puddle of water with a collection of H2<\/sub>0 molecules; of a light beam with a stream of photons \u2013- none of these identifications are intended by their proponents as lunatic denials of the phenomena to be reduced. There are of course interesting questions about when identifications collapse into eliminations; but the point here is that no denial of existence is intended. To analyze what exists is not to eliminate what exists.<\/font><\/p>\n

Philosophers, like scientists, are not in the business of denying obvious facts; they are out to understand them. The project of understanding aims at the reality behind the appearance. Stove cannot seem to appreciate this. But this does not bespeak a lack of intelligence so much as a lack of philosophical aptitude.<\/font><\/p>\n

I bring up Stove to show that one can be be highly intelligent and still lack any sense of a philosophical problem. The same may well be the case with Moore. He is is exceedingly intelligent, but arguably has no feel, or sense, or appreciation, of what philosophers who raise skeptical questions are doing. Of course, there is an external world; of course there are hands and feet; of course it is true that this is a hand; of course, I know as opposed to merely believe that this is a hand as 'know' and 'beliee'' are used in ordinary English.   The philosopher of knowledge and reality is not denying these commonsense facts asserted by commonsense people in their commonsense meanings. The philosopher is not out to deny the obvious and mundane — which is why he cannot be countered by insisting on the obvious and mundane. The philosopher is in quest of true being and true knowledge, and this leads him to question whether what counts as knowledge to commonsense really is knowledge.<\/font><\/p>\n

The nature of philosophy is itself a philosophical problem, so what I have said above will be found controversial. But I think what Greco says about Stroud's interpretation of Moore, that it makes him out to be an idiot, is a clear mistake.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Greco (How to Reid Moore) finds Barry Stroud's interpretation of G. E. Moore's proof of an external world implausible: According to him [Stroud], the question as to whether we know anything about the external world can be taken in an internal or an external sense. In the internal sense, the question can be answered … Continue reading “Greco on Stroud on Moore on the External World with a Shot at Stove”<\/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":[353,556,391,598],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-knowledge","category-moore","category-skepticism","category-stove-david"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11979","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=11979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}