Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:58 — 45.8MB)
Continuing from part one on "A Defense of Common Sense" (1925), now down to Mark, Wes, and Dylan.
We get into the nitty gritty of Moore's argument: Against idealism, Moore argues that physical facts are in now way dependent on mental facts; for instance, the existence and position of the moon don't depend on anyone's beliefs about the moon. Reality is mind independent.
When you hold up your hand and identify it as your hand, what's going on? On Moore's account, you are seeing a sense datum: a certain part of the surface of your hand that represents the hand as a whole. So what does "represents" mean here? If we're only perceiving the sense data and not the hand, what warrants us to believe in the hand?
Moore considers three options for the ontology of sense data: A direct realist says that the sense data literally are part of the hand, even though everyone's perspective (sense data) when they look at the hand are slightly different. A representationalist says that the sense data are not the object but instead stand in a definite relation to the object (Moore thinks this relation is basic and unanalyzable). A dispositionalist defines the object as a something out in the world that causes all of the perceptions that we have of it. Moore finds problems with all of these, but they increasingly diverge from common sense.
As we'll see in episode 308 when we talk about Moore's "Proof of an External World" (planned for this episode, but we were too slow working through this), Moore's position was a version of the second option: Sense data are not the same as the object, but we don't just have the sense data; we also apprehend a proposition that the object exists (and has some properties)
Mark refers to our episode on Schopenhauer's Kantian epistemology. Anther point of contrast is Descartes' Rules for Direction of the Mind. A modern critique of Moore's epistemology is Sellars' argument against sense-data, i.e. "the myth of the given."
I loved this episode, but would bet that many got lost. As a long time listener, I understood probably 92,324%. (Descartes joke) of your cross references (Hume vs Kant, Descartes vs Bacon, implicit Spinoza (God is what’s here now), implicit Wittgenstein (language), and Socrates vs Plato and/or Aristotle, etc), but I’d wager it sent quite a few a’Googlin’ or off to reverie. This isn’t really a criticism, as I rather enjoyed the effort it took, but that it makes me wonder whether you might want to rate each episode on a 1-5 scale of understanding of or interest in understanding the external references. I also love the “no name-dropping” , but this topic probably can’t be understood without a pretty good familiarity with most of the cards that provide the structure on which it stands.
Keep being awesome.