Plagued by radical seeds of doubt and skepticism since the famous seventeenth-century philosopher, Rene Descartes, published his Meditations, philosophy unlike any other discipline has fallen victim to unjustified and unrealistic standards of knowledge. The general job of philosophy, like the job of any other serious discipline like physics or biology, is to establish a logical foundation of the way things work, or the way things possible could work, in our world.
This is not to say that philosophy as a discipline is only concerned with establishing a general, logical foundation of our knowledge, yet, the general job of philosophy as it would seem to most individuals would be to do just that. However, it continues to be the case in philosophy that the most basic propositions about ourselves hold the same truth-value as claims concerning imaginary objects. George Edward Moore once quoted from Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
“It still remains a scandal in philosophy…that the existence of things outside of us…must be accepted merely on faith, and that, if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof.”
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In other words, everyday objects that are experienced through our senses cannot be used to justify the existences of the most basic common sense convictions most individuals would normally believe to be true, according to philosophers who believe in the speculative philosophical principle. To make matter worse, some philosophers set out to prove that our deepest held convictions about the most basic propositions are entirely false, a task most famously attempted by Descartes in his Meditations. Fortunately for philosophy, Descartes failed in his attempt to establish a foundation of knowledge that rejects all claims based off of our experiences via our senses.
Unfortunately for philosophy, however, Descartes succeeded in propelling the notion of speculative philosophy, or the notion of radical doubt, to be the standard of what it means to ‘know’ in regards to the truth-value of propositions. As such, when one is trying to prove a simple common sense conviction, like showing that others are conscious, skepticism ensues and the argument, because the unnatural standard of what it is to ‘know’ cannot be satisfied, never comes to fruition.
It wouldn’t be until some centuries later in 1925 when Cambridge philosopher, George Edward Moore, famously published his attack, “A Defense of Common Sense”, against the notion of radical doubt and showed the absurdity of denying such basic common sense convictions and the implications those denials had on philosophy. More importantly, it seems to me that through Moore’s work it is entirely possible to show that others are conscious, a feat nearly impossible to do before Moore.
G.E. Moore is known for his many contributions to philosophy, however, he is probably best-known as the champion of common sense. And although his common sense views are expressed in the majority of his work, G.E. Moore’s A Defense Against Common Sense illustrates his most explicit views over the subject. In A Defense Against Common Sense, Moore sets out to create a list of basic, common sense propositions that he believes should be among the things that everybody not only believes in, but also feel certain that they are true. He intentionally categorizes the list the propositions into two groups starting from 1a-1e, and, 2a-2e.
The first list are examples of common sense propositions that Moore claimed to know to be true about himself with certainty. In the first list of proposition, Moore claims to know; (1a) that he had a human body, which was born at a certain time in the past, which had existed continuously on or near the surface of the earth, had undergone changes since birth, and which had coexisted with many other things having shapes and size in three dimensions which it had been either in contact with, or located at various distances from, at different times; (1b) that among things his body has been in contact with, those things have existed over time…;(1c) that the earth had existed many years before his body was born, and for many of those years large numbers of human bodies have lived and died; (1d) that he was a human being who had many experiences of different types…;(1e) that just as his body has had many experiences of different types, so too have many other bodies.
In addition to the truisms that Moore claimed to know in (1), he also claimed to know with certainty the following propositions about other human beings:
That very many human beings have known propositions about themselves and their bodies corresponding to the propositions indicated in (1) that he [Moore] claimed to know about himself and his body.
The propositions listed in (1) and (2) set the foundation for what Moore would later coin as the “Common sense view of the world.” What Moore is very careful not to do regarding his position of the common sense view of the world, was to not include propositions concerning facts about God, the origin of the universe, the shape of celestial objects, and the limits and differences of human beings like sex, knowledge and matters of morality. Moore was also very careful as to not place any semantic limit on his propositions. His position, as it seems to me, was to never set out to prove the truisms he claimed in his common sense view of the world, but rather to illustrate the absurdity in denying those truisms.
Moore, as it appears, never directly attacks the skeptic’s argument head-on, and for good reason. As Moore saw it, philosophers live their lives like other men who take for granted all the common sense truths that he does. “In propounding their skeptical doctrines, they address their lectures to other men, publish books they know will be purchased and read, and criticize the writings of others.” Moore is trying to illustrate how unconventional and hypocritical it is for philosophers to live their lives so far removed from their skeptical doctrines yet hold a entirely different standard of knowledge that doesn’t account for our basic common sense convictions. If Moore is correct about this, as I believe to be the case, then his criticism of their inconsistency would prove to discredit the skeptic.
In other words, Moore would come to believe that philosophers essentially have no special access to knowledge that is more convicting, or more secure than, the strongest examples of our ordinary belief in the common sense view of the world. Furthermore, Moore believed that one’s confidence in the speculative philosophical principle could never, in any ordinary sense, outweigh one’s confidence in these common sense convictions. For Moore, the job of philosophy is not to refute the most basic propositions we all claim to know, but to rather explain how we know them.
As such, the philosopher has no choice but to accept that we know these common sense propositions. Moore would later turn his method for analysis on two major subject- our knowledge of the external world, and ethics. And although he struggled for most of his career trying to explain the work, Moore was successfully able to turn philosophy on its head by forcing philosophers to reexamine the utility of their beliefs and how they fair in comparison to the common sense propositions we know to be true. More importantly, Moore introduced a new, more realistic standard for philosophy that would be based on his common sense view of the world.
It remained a scandal to philosophy that the existences of things outside of ourselves had to be merely accepted on faith, and that, if someone was to doubt their own existences, philosophy would be unable to answer his doubts by any satisfactory level, as Kant once said. Imagine the struggle one would face when trying to prove that their experiences, and commonly held convictions, could only be believed in a manner that was purely based on faith, muchless trying to prove that others exist and have experiences that are similar to your own.
It wasn’t until Moore published his A Defense Against Common Sense that gave philosophers the tools to finally go against the skeptics. More so, Moore’s common sense view of the world finally offered philosophy the chance to amend for the scandal that has plagued philosophy since Descartes Meditations, by claiming our most common sense convictions we know to be true. Now, when troubled by the tasks of trying to prove that others are conscious, at least in the philosophical sense, Moore’s common sense view of the world, list (1a-1e) and (2a-2e), offers the grounds to finally say, YES!, other people besides myself are conscious.
And while Moore never really makes an attempt to prove why his common sense view of the world is correct, to deny that other people are conscious based on the grounds of Moore’s common sense view of the world, one would also be denying their own experiences and existences. Perhaps the genius of Moore’s work lies in the design of his argument. By not attacking the skeptics head-on and showing the complete absurdity of denying our most common sense convictions, Moore successfully laid the foundation for philosophy to finally start having more constructive conversations of what and how we come to claim things that we ‘know’. More importantly, it is because of Moore that we can say with certainty that other people not only have similar experiences from the ones that we have, but also that other people, at some distance and time away from ourselves, are conscious.
