Moore And Wittgenstein

Does scepticism threaten our common sense picture of the world? Does it really undermine our deep-rooted certainties? Answers to these questions are offered through a comparative study of the epistemological work of two key figures in the history of analytic philosophy, G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Ludwig Wittgenstein's On Certainty was finished just before his death in 1951 and is a running commentary on three of G.E. Moore's greatest epistemological papers. In the early 1930s, Moore had written a lengthy commentary on Wittgenstein, anticipating some of the issues Wittgenstein would discuss in On Certainty. The philosophical relationship between these two great philosophers and their overlapping, but nevertheless differing, views is the subject of this book. Both defended the existence of certainty and thus opposed any form of skepticism. However, their defenses and conceptions of certainty differed widely, as did their understanding of the nature of skepticism and how best to combat it. Stroll's book contains a careful and critical analysis of their differing approaches to a set of fundamental epistemological problems.

This edition of G. E. Moore's notes taken at Wittgenstein's seminal Cambridge lectures in the early 1930s provides, for the first time, an almost verbatim record of those classes. The presentation of the notes is both accessible and faithful to their original manuscripts, and a comprehensive introduction and synoptic table of contents provide the reader with essential contextual information and summaries of the topics in each lecture. The lectures form an excellent introduction to Wittgenstein's middle-period thought, covering a broad range of philosophical topics, ranging from core questions in the philosophy of language, mind, logic, and mathematics, to illuminating discussions of subjects on which Wittgenstein says very little elsewhere, including ethics, religion, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and anthropology. The volume also includes a 1932 essay by Moore critiquing Wittgenstein's conception of grammar, together with Wittgenstein's response. A companion website offers access to images of the entire set of source manuscripts.

G.E. Moore, more than either Bertrand Russell or Ludwig Wittgenstein, was chiefly responsible for the rise of the analytic method in twentieth-century philosophy. This selection of his writings shows Moore at his very best. The classic essays are crucial to major philosophical debates that still resonate today. Amongst those included are: * A Defense of Common Sense * Certainty * Sense-Data * External and Internal Relations * Hume's Theory Explained * Is Existence a Predicate? * Proof of an External World In addition, this collection also contains the key early papers in which Moore signals his break with idealism, and three important previously unpublished papers from his later work which illustrate his relationship with Wittgenstein.

G.E. Moore, more than either Bertrand Russell or Ludwig Wittgenstein, was chiefly responsible for the rise of the analytic method in twentieth-century philosophy. This selection of his writings shows Moore at his very best. The classic essays are crucial to major philosophical debates that still resonate today. Amongst those included are: * A Defense of Common Sense * Certainty * Sense-Data * External and Internal Relations * Hume's Theory Explained * Is Existence a Predicate? * Proof of an External World In addition, this collection also contains the key early papers in which Moore signals his break with idealism, and three important previously unpublished papers from his later work which illustrate his relationship with Wittgenstein.

Hochberg's masterful essays present studies in ontology and analysis that focus on the "revolt against idealism" strongly identified with the brilliant trio of Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein in the early part of the twentieth century. The chapters focus upon the development of analytic philosophy and revival of realism. The volume is at once a history of a special period, time, and place in the evolution of the analytic tradition, an examination of influences upon and differences among these three major figures, and a close reading of their primary works. The author takes up the problems posed by reference and predication, truth, facts, causality, dispositions, intentionality, propositions, particulars and universals, the analytic-synthetic distinction, logicism. abstract entities, and materialism. The essays present a systematic analysis of such issues in the context of classical works of these three Cambridge philosophers, who were all critical to the development of modern philosophy. For those who wish to understand the essential contours of the work of these exemplars of the analytic tradition, there can be no more impressive work. Hochberg is more than a commentator; he is a participant in major debates within philosophy. Indeed, his critique of materialism and defense of realism rests on a sophisticated examination of the status of mental states or phenomenal objects in the world, and the inability of all varieties of reductionism to explain the universe. The materialist is in the same situation as the extreme idealists: denial either of mental states or physical states. For Hochberg, the old argument that only physical or mental states are real has littleto do with the phenomena about us. The great strength of Cambridge philosophy is in mov