Moore's Paradox: A Wittgensteinian Approach

"I believe that it is raining but it isn't." It would be perfectly absurd, claimed Moore, to say this or its like. But why? After all, it is clearly possible that I should believe that it is raining when it is not, that others should realise and remark on the error I make. Why should my doing so myself be somehow absurd? My aim in this paper is to suggest that Wittgenstein's approach to this issue has much to recommend it and that seeing its attraction might provide an entry point to understanding the nature of Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mind. A proper account of that is clearly beyond the scope of this paper and moreover could not be given without treating those issues of meaning and metaphysics which Wittgenstein discusses in the early part of the Investigations, before he moves on to reflect on psychological concepts. So my object is to consider some features of the paradox in detail but only to gesture in the direction of the larger topics, in a way that may at least make it seem worthwhile to look into them further. 1 The next section outlines the paradox slightly more fully and suggests two conditions which a satisfactory solution should meet. It sketches two possible approaches to the matter, the Wittgensteinian (which at this point will not look at all attractive) and the more familiar one initiated by Moore himself. ?111 examines this second approach in more detail and suggests that it cannot meet the two conditions. ?IV and ?V consider the question of how the paradox could be treated in the framework of a functionalist theory of belief. ?IV argues that on certain particular versions of functionalism the oddness of the Moorean utterances disappears. We do not get an explanation of why they are absurd; rather we get a view on which there is no absurdity to be explained. ?V suggests that this disappearance of the paradox is likely to be a feature of all versions of functionalism and is, moreover, a serious defect in them. The upshot of this discussion is to put us in a better position to appreciate the attractions of the Wittgensteinian strategy, which is briefly outlined in the final ?VI.