Moore's Paradox

Many people who are not philosophers will have heard of Bertrand Russell, for Russell was not only an outstanding philosopher, but also a social activist and peace activist and an author of several novels. However, not many people, non-philosophers, will have heard of George Edward Moore, better known as G.E. Moore (1873-1958). Nevertheless, both have co-operated during their most fruitful philosophical years, and both were friends. Together with Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gottlob Frege Moore belonged to the founders of analytic philosophy, and together with Russell he led the turn from idealism in British philosophy. However, so Richard Monk, G.E. Moore disappeared from history, although he was the most revered philosopher of his era. The facts just mentioned plus Moore’s contribution to ethics, epistemology and metaphysics should have made him already a famous man, but his most important contribution to philosophy is, if we may believe Wittgenstein, the discovery of, what Wittgenstein called, Moore’s paradox. Wittgenstein treated this paradox extensively in his Philosophical Investigations (II, x) and his On Certainty and he gave it its name. Hadn’t he done so, the paradox might have been forgotten, but since then many philosophers have discussed it. Here it is:

“It is raining, but I do not believe that it is raining”
or formulated alternatively, which comes to the same:
“It is raining, but I believe that it is not raining.”

These sentences consist of two parts:
a - It is raining.
b - I believe it is not raining.

As such these two statements need not be contradictory, namely when they are said by two different persons, for instance:
John: “It is raining”
I: “I believe it is not raining. What you hear is the noise of a mouse tripping in the attic.”
However, the two sentences do become contradictory, if they are asserted by one person in connection. Why?
- It can be true at a particular time that it is raining, and that I do not believe that it is raining.
- I can believe that it is raining at a particular time and at another time I can believe that it is not raining.
So, I can believe that “it is raining” is true, and that “it is not raining” is true at another time, or I can doubt one of these assertions, if they are stated by someone else. However, it cannot rain and not rain at the same time, so a and b cannot be true at the same time. Therefore it is contradictory and absurd to assert “It is raining, but I do not believe that it is raining” (or “It is raining, but I believe that it is not raining.”), for then the speaker says that the fact that it rains is true and not true at the same time, which cannot happen.
However, my analysis just given (which is not really original, though, and made by many before me) is only correct if the sentence “It is raining, but I do not believe that it is raining” is asserted by one and the same person and refers to what is said by one and the same person, so if it is a first-person statement, and if both parts of the sentence are considered true. In fact, the sentence should be then “I believe that it is raining, but I do not believe that it is raining”. For instance, the sentence is not a paradox if the speaker actually wants to say “According to him it is raining, but I do not believe that it is raining” or “It seems that is raining, but I do not believe that it is raining [because what I hear is actually the tripping of a mouse].” The sentence can be true if it is changed to “It is raining, but he does not believe that it is raining”.
This is what Moore’s paradox is about. Wittgenstein used it to clarify the concept of belief. Since then, it keeps philosophers busy, and makes that Moore is not yet completely forgotten. However, there is much more that should keep George Edward Moore in our memory.

Random quote
The noise of a cannon is not necessary to hinder its thoughts [=my thinking]; it needs only the creaking of a weathercock or a pulley. Do not wonder if at present it does not reason well; a fly is buzzing in its ears; that is enough to render it incapable of good judgment. If you wish it to be able to reach the truth, chase away that animal which holds its reason in check and disturbs that powerful intellect which rules towns and kingdoms.

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Is philosophy dangerous?

Rousseau

Is philosophy dangerous? Two of the most outstanding Western philosophers, Socrates and Seneca, were forced to commit suicide, so one has good reasons to think so. Indeed, although many philosophers’ lives were not more troublesome than the life of an average person, philosophizing can be quite risky. Many known philosophers were banned from their countries, or otherwise found it better to leave. Even more, some were put in prison or even sentenced to death for their ideas, like Socrates or Seneca.
I think that there are several reasons why philosophy can be risky:
- Philosophers often question and analyse beliefs and ideas that are considered fundamental to people’s personalities and identities. It makes that people see themselves forced to question them, even when they don’t want to and feel themselves happy as they are. People feel themselves criticized, which they may not like. Then they can feel themselves hurt or threatened in their – psychological – existence: Their identities are at stake. Also when the criticism is right, it often feels better and can also be more practical to ignore it and to live on as if nothing happened. But often this is not possible anymore and then you want to get rid of that person whom you see as a gadfly, even if s/he is telling the truth.
- It can also happen that a philosopher doesn’t question, analyse and criticize the individual but the social order. The society the philosopher lives in is analysed as being unjust, repressive, undemocratic or something like that. If too many people will agree with the philosopher’s analysis, it can lead to unrest and maybe to violence and revolution. It’s what rulers and many others fear. They want that the social order remains as it is. The ideas seen as dangerous for the existing social order don’t need to be outright political, so directly criticizing the existing power structure. They can also be indirectly dangerous for the existing social order. So, when at the end of the Middle Ages Aristotle’s views on nature were attacked, this was considered as undermining the social order, while in fact the philosophers concerned criticized Aristotle’s philosophical ideas. In the same way, Galileo’s thesis that the earth revolves around the sun (instead of the other way round) was seen as an attack on the God-given order, although in fact it was an attack on the existing cosmic theories.
- It can also happen that philosophers do not so much criticize the existing social order but those in power. Then those in power maybe don’t fear that the social order is undermined but they fear for themselves (although they often say that the social order is at stake). Those in power are afraid to lose their power, that they will be toppled, and that they must account for their past misbehaviour (or they simply love power for power’s sake).

All this can make that rulers, people or private persons want to get rid of critical philosophers, not only in the sense that they don’t philosophize any longer but that they want to eliminate them physically by banning them, putting them in prison or even killing them, in case they don’t leave “voluntarily” (and even abroad philosophers are sometimes yet persecuted by those they wanted to escape).

I end this blog with a short list of philosophers persecuted if not killed because of their ideas:

- Socrates (c470-499 BC): Death penalty, accused of impiety and corrupting the youth.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC): Fled from Athens, accused of impiety.
- Hypatia (c350-370: Murdered by a Christian mob, accused of witchcraft.
- René Descartes (1596-1650): Left France and lived most of his life in the Netherlands, since he could not freely express his ideas in France.
- Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677): Left Amsterdam because of his religious ideas and then lived most of his life in The Hague.
- Jean Jacques Rousseau: Fled from France to Môtiers in Switzerland (a town then governed by Prussia), since the French government wanted to arrest him because of his religious ideas; he had soon to leave Môtiers, too. Later Rousseau returned to France.
- Karl Marx (1818-1883): Banned from Prussia because of his revolutionary ideas; went to live in London.
- Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919): Murdered by an anti-communist mob.
- Moritz Schlick (1882-1936): Founder of the Vienna Circle, murdered by a student because he criticized Nazism.
- Zoran Đinđić (1952-2003): Serbian philosopher and politician. Murdered because of his political ideas.

These are only a few of the best-known philosophers who felt victim of their ideas. However, many more known and less known philosophers and others who have expressed their ideas freely were killed just because of that. Who wants to say that philosophy cannot be dangerous?

Random quote
Things are not difficult to obtain because they are rare, but they are rare because they are difficult to obtain.

Georg Simmel (1858-1918) 

The conjunction fallacy

For most of us, statistical thinking is one of the most difficult mental tasks. Take this case:
Linda is a young woman, she is single and she majored in philosophy. As a student she participated in the feminist movement and she took part in many demonstrations and other actions. Now she has a job. What is more probable?
(a) Linda is a teacher.
(b) Linda is a teacher and is active in the environmental movement.
Please, first answer the question, before you go on.

What was your answer? I guess you have chosen (b). Probably you have thought something like this: Linda was active in the feminist movement, so she is the type that takes part in social movements. Therefore, it’s not unlikely that later in her live she’ll be an activist as well. Nevertheless, your choice is not correct. We told you that Linda is a teacher and that you had the option to choose between either that Linda is a teacher (a) or that she is a teacher plus something else, namely an environmental activist (b). However, the group of b-people is smaller than the group of a-people, since it consists of people who are (a) plus something else. The group of b-persons is a part of the group of a-persons. Therefore, the chance that Linda is an a-person is bigger than the chance that she is a b-person, who is also an a-person.
Or let me explain it this way, if my explanation is still a little bit obscure to you:
(c) There are many teachers in the world.
(d) Only a part of all teachers in the world are active in the feminist movement.
So (d) is a part of (c), or in other words, the (d) group is smaller than the (c) group. For example (note that the figures are fake, but the idea behind them is not): Suppose that 1% of all people in the world are teachers. Suppose also that 1% of all teachers in the world are active in the environmental movement. So, of every 10,000 people in the world, 100 are teachers, but only one of those 100 teachers is an environmental activist. So, isn’t it by far more likely to meet a teacher, anyway, than one who is in addition active in the environmental movement? So, isn’t it by far more likely that Linda is a teacher, anyway, than that she is a teacher who is moreover active in the environmental movement? Alas, if you didn’t see this you fell prey to the conjunction fallacy. But don’t be ashamed, you were not alone, for statistical thinking is one of the most difficult mental tasks.

Source
Jason Iuliano, “Conjunction”, in: Arp, Robert; Steven Barbone; Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad arguments. 100 of the most important fallacies in Western philosophy. Oxford, etc.: Wiley Blackwell, 2019; pp. 321-3.

See also Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow. London: Penguin Books, 2012. 

Random quote
More often than not, wars are abominations from the moral point of view. Massive endeavours, they consume vast amounts of resources and spew out human carnage and devastation usually for no other reason than conquest and domination.

Darrell Moellendorf

Forbidden fruit

In fact, Montaigne’s Essays is an eclectic book. I mean, he writes about many different themes that, at least for the average reader, have no relationship to each other. Take for example essay 14 in Book II, titled “How our mind hinders ourself”, which I discussed in my blog last week. This essay is about the question whether dilemmas exist, to put it in my words. The next essay, however, treats a very different theme, as the title already shows: “That our desires are augmented by difficulty”. It treats the theme that we desire most what we cannot get or can get only with great effort: The more difficult it is to get a thing, the more we desire it. In Montaigne’s words: “Our will is more obstinate by being opposed.” And the other we round: We have no great desire for what we can get with little effort. When we see that we can get something in an easy way, our desire for it fades away. Actually, it is something everything knows. It’s the story of the forbidden fruit, as Montaigne’s examples show. For instance: The inhabitants of Liège (now in Belgium) praise the baths in Lucca in Italy, while the inhabitants of Lucca praise the baths in Spa near Liège. Young people long most for their lovers, when they are not allowed to meet them. Or the grass is greener in your neighbour’s garden. As for the latter, I always wonder why cows try to eat the grass on the other side of the fence, while their own meadow is full of it. Or that’s what I think. But as Montaigne says: “Difficulty gives all things their estimation … To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to it.”
The most known story of the “forbidden fruit” is, of course, the story that gave the phenomenon its name: The Bible story of Adam and Eve in Paradise that tells us that Eve was tempted by a serpent – usually interpreted to be Satan – to take a fruit (usually depicted as an apple) from a tree in Paradise and to eat it, although it was explicitly forbidden to do so. And then Eve tempted Adam to eat from the same fruit. The consequences were fatal and Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise, because they had violated the most important rule there. However, usually the consequences of a forbidden desire are not that fatal.
Montaigne ends the essay with a remarkable story. First he tells us yet that “there is a certain nation, where the enclosures of gardens and fields they would preserve, are made only of a string of cotton; and, so fenced, is more firm and secure than by our hedges and ditches”. If there is no lock on the door, no thief will enter your house, for if there would be something worth to steal, you would have made a lock. Montaigne lived in a time of civil war in France, which was especially fought in the region where he lived. Bands pillaged the countryside. Therefore, many lords had hired soldiers for protecting their castles, and they had strengthened them. However, often to no avail. Montaigne had not done so. He hadn’t hired soldiers; he hadn’t locked the gate of his castle. The gate was protected only be an old man who friendly and politely received the visitors. So, Montaigne left his castle unprotected in a situation in which violence and civil war reigned. He thinks that just this may have made that during all those years of civil war in France he lived safe and well in his castle and that no band tried to take it or to plunder it.
No band? In his essay “On physiognomy” (Book III-12), Montaigne tells us that a group of 25 soldiers succeeded to come in his castle with a trick. Since he vaguely knew the leader of the band, he invited him for a drink, once the band was within the walls. While the soldiers were waiting in the court, Montaigne and the leader had a friendly chat in the hall. After some time, the man said that he had to go again, and to the surprise of his men, they were ordered to leave without plundering the castle. Of course, it will not always happen this way, but often it is so that who gives trust receives trust. And when trust doesn’t help, maybe friendliness does.

Random quote
Economic considerations always incorporate non-economic value judgments, which is why the models of economics are full of partly hair-raising absurdities such as the “homo oeconomicus".

Markus Gabriel (1980-) 

Buridan’s ass: Another dilemma?

When I was writing about dilemmas, I had to think of Buridan’s ass. Maybe you remember that I wrote about this animal before. If not, you can find it here, but for your convenience I’ll repeat the essence of the case: A rational hungry donkey is placed between two equidistant and identical haystacks. The surrounding environments on both sides are also identical. The donkey cannot choose between the two haystacks and so dies of hunger, which is simply irrational.
The case is usually referred to as Buridan’s ass, after the French philosopher Jean Buridan (1295-1363), but actually, it’s not correct, for philosophers before him – including Aristotle – had already examined it, although often in another version. Also after Buridan, the case has been discussed again and again, for instance by Leibniz. Usually, it is seen as a paradox, which it is, but is it also a dilemma?
Let’s see when we call a case a dilemma (cf. my blog last week). In the first place the agent must face a situation in which he or she has to choose and, indeed, Buridan’s ass (donkey) must choose between two possible actions: eating the left haystack or eating the right haystack. However, the need to make a choice doesn’t as such place the agent in a dilemma. A choice is only a dilemma, if by making a choice you break a moral rule, say rule MR1. It is possible to avoid breaking MR1 by making another choice, but only by breaking another moral rule MR2. In other words, any choice leads to breaking a moral rule, so that, whatever you do, you’ll do something wrong. However, for Buridan’s ass, any choice is good, unless, for instance, by eating from these haystacks, the animal steals hay from the owner of the stacks. In that case, the ass is in the dilemma to steal or to eat. (When by eating only from one haystack, the ass steals hay, which one to eat is obvious, of course)
This brings me to Montaigne. In his very short essay “How our mind hinders ourself” (Essays, Book II-14), Montaigne tells us:
“’T is a pleasant imagination to fancy a mind exactly balanced betwixt two equal desires: for, doubtless, it can never pitch upon either, forasmuch as the choice and application would manifest an inequality of esteem; and were we set betwixt the bottle and the ham, with an equal appetite to drink and eat, there would doubtless be no remedy but we must die of thirst and hunger.” This is the situation Buridan’s ass faces: The ass cannot choose, since the animal has no criterion to choose and so the ass will die. However, according to Montaigne, such a situation is unreal and it cannot happen: “Nothing presents itself to us wherein there is not some difference, how little soever; and that, either by the sight or touch, there is always some choice that, though it be imperceptibly, tempts and attracts us.” Applied to the case of Buridan’s ass: How equal the two haystacks may seem to be, they always are a little bit different, which makes that the ass prefers either the left one or the right one.
What must the ass do in case the animal would steal when eating from the haystacks? Also then the solution of the problem is easy, I think: It's better to steal than to die.
According to Markus Gabriel, there are no dilemmas: When one must choose, there is always a better choice and a less good choice. If not, then we are in a tragedy, he says. However, as I showed last week, even in a tragedy we can face a dilemma. It’s not Gabriel but Montaigne who has explained why, actually, there are no dilemmas: In a dilemma there is always one lemma that is to be preferred. The problem then is to determine which one it is. If Montaigne is right, there may not be dilemmas, but there still are difficult choices.