Wittgenstein and Moore’s Paradox

Wittgenstein wrote a letter to G. E. Moore after hearing Moore give the paper which first set forth a version of (what has come to be known as) Moore’s paradox. The version of the paradox that Moore first set forward involved imagining someone uttering the following sentence: “There is a fire in this room and I don’t believe there is.” Wittgenstein’s understanding of the importance of Moore’s paradox may be summarized as follows: Something on the order of a logical contradiction arises when we attempt to combine the affirmation of p and a denial of a consciousness of p within the scope of a single judgment. In his letter to Moore, Wittgenstein writes:

To call this … “an absurdity for psychological reasons” seems to me to be wrong, or highly misleading. It … is in fact something similar to a contradiction, though it isn’t one…. This means roughly: it plays a similar role in logic. You have said something about the logic of assertion. Viz: It makes sense to say “Let’s suppose: p is the case and I don’t believe that p is the case,” whereas it makes no sense to assert “p is the case and I don’t believe that p is the case.” This assertion has to be ruled out and is ruled out by “common sense,” just as a contradiction is. And this just shows that logic isn’t as simple as logicians think it is. In particular: that contradiction isn’t the unique thing people think it is. It isn’t the only logically inadmissible form.

The aim of the seminar is to understand why Wittgenstein thinks Moore’s paradox provides an example of something that is akin to a contradiction and how it brings out why logic isn’t as simple as logicians think it is. In Section x of Part II of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, devoted to an exploration of Moore’s paradox, we find Wittgenstein making these three remarks:

1. My own relation to my words is wholly different to other people’s.
2. If there were a verb meaning ‘to believe falsely,’ it would not have a meaningful first-person present indicative.
3. “I believe….” throws light on my state. Conclusions about my conduct can be drawn from this expression. So there is a similarity here to expressions of emotion, of mood, etc,.

The workshop will seek to understand: how my relation to my own words is wholly different from my relation to those of other people; wherein the asymmetry lies between the use of a range of verbs (such as “believe,” “know,” and “perceive”) in the first-person present indicative form and other uses of the same verbs (e.g., in the second-person or past tense form); and how the logical grammar of these verbs is related to that of expressions of emotion, of mood, and of sensation, including expressions that takes the form of avowals. Finally, we will explore why Wittgenstein thinks a philosophical investigation of these three points ought to lead to an expansion and transformation of our entire conception of logic

In addition to readings by Moore, Wittgenstein, and related secondary literature, we will study thematically related writings by Matthew Boyle, Cora Diamond, Arata Hamawaki, Jonas Held, Michael Kremer, J. M. E. Mactaggart, Margaret MacDonald, Norman Malcolm, Marie McGinn, Eric Marcus, Richard Moran, Bertrand Russell, and Crispin Wright on first-person avowals, self-knowledge, self-alienation, and transparency. (II)