Moore's Paradox

@Deckard,

Deckard;138774 wrote:

I can see that there are implications but I question how often they actually come up in actual arguments. I guess I'd like an example that better illustrated the implications. Some argument involving a personal belief in God perhaps?

I already gave an example in an earlier post. It was arguing that because the sentence, "I know that p, but p is false" cannot be asserted, that knowledge implies truth. As I said, I agree with the conclusion, but not on account of the argument I just gave, since it confuses truth with assertability.

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;138787 wrote:

I already gave an example in an earlier post. It was arguing that because the sentence, "I know that p, but p is false" cannot be asserted, that knowledge implies truth. As I said, I agree with the conclusion, but not on account of the argument I just gave, since it confuses truth with assertability.

Yeah but can you fill in "p" in your example? Wait a second you're doing something else here.

1 Reply

@Deckard,

Deckard;138791 wrote:

Yeah but can you fill in "p" in your example?

P is any statement at all.

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;138793 wrote:

P is any statement at all.

Yes, I responded too quickly. Your example assumes that someone has used Moore's paradox itself to justify some other conclusion. No one ever makes an MP utterance naively uttered as if it were not absurd. That's the point. It's absurd. I'm trying to get the gist of Moore's paradox down to one sentence.

---------- Post added 03-11-2010 at 07:42 PM ----------

Which takes precedence? Conditions of assertibility or conditions of truth? Bleh, I've messed it up. I gotta stop thinking out loud. Maybe this works:

Thou shalt not use the assertibility or non-assertibility of a proposition as evidence for it's truth value.

0 Replies

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;138676 wrote:

The first conjunct is an assertion about the world, the second conjunct is an assertion about your belief.

There is no asssertion about my belief if I say,"It is rainng, but I believe it isn't."

But that does seem to be a common assumption in this thread.

Is that because there is a general belief that the Assertion Principle is true?

Assertion Principle: If a statement q is an assertion of p, then q is true, if, and only if, p is true.

And since it is true that the speaker does not believe it is raining whether or not it is really raining, then it can't be an assertion about rainfall.

Or is it because many here think that belief is a mental state and so when we say we believe something we are really asserting that we have that mental state?

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@kennethamy,

Ahab wrote:

Or is it because many here think that belief is a mental state and so when we say we believe something we are really asserting that we have that mental state?

The paradox comes into play when the two conjuncts are true (in that particular example), remember?

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

It's not a paradox they're just in bad faith.

QED. Ipso facto. Spiritus Sancti. Game over.

0 Replies

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;138950 wrote:

The paradox comes into play when the two conjuncts are true (in that particular example), remember?

But, as I've pointed out, there is nothing paradoxical about joining two assertions that contradict each other. That is simply a contradiction, not a paradox.

And the two conjuncts in the sentence under discussion are two assertion that contradict each other.

Moore should have looked closer at the assertoric force of expressions of belief.

0 Replies

@kennethamy,

Ahab wrote:

But, as I've pointed out, there is nothing paradoxical about joining two assertions that contradict each other.

The interesting point is that this particular set of utterances can be true, and yet it would be absurd for anyone to speak them.

And a paradox is a statement or set of statements which lead to a contradiction, by the way.

Paradox - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2 Replies

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;138982 wrote:

The interesting point is that this particular set of utterances can be true, and yet it would be absurd for anyone to speak them.

And a paradox is a statement or set of statements which lead to a contradiction, by the way.

Paradox - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not just to speak them, but to assert them.

Isn't a paradox a belief which is contrary is intuitively or commonly believed to be true? For example, for a long time the Copernican theory of the heavens was called, "The Copernican paradox". But it is true that some paradoxes, the logical paradoxes, do imply contradictions. A famous one is the Barber Paradox about the town barber who shaves everyone who does not shave himself. It turns out that it is logically impossible for there to be such a barber since that barber would have both to shave himself and not shave himself. But that would fall under the general description of a paradox as a belief contrary to what we would intuitively believe, since I think that we would intuitively believe that there could be such a barber.

0 Replies

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;138982 wrote:

The interesting point is that this particular set of utterances can be true, and yet it would be absurd for anyone to speak them.

And a paradox is a statement or set of statements which lead to a contradiction, by the way.

Paradox - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thanks for the link.

To quote from it:
"Typically, the statements in question do not really imply the contradiction, the puzzling result is not really a contradiction, or the premises themselves are not all really true or cannot all be true together. The word paradox is often used interchangeably with contradiction."

So I will no longer dispute over whether or not this is paradox or contradiction. Very Happy

Anyways, what I was trying to point out is that this paradox is a real contradiction and not simply having the appearence of a contradiction.

The two assertions are contradictory, but the second one is true regardless of whether or not it is raining. And this is one example that illustrates that an assertion can be true even if what it asserts is false.

1 Reply

@Ahab,

Ahab;139014 wrote:

. And this is one example that illustrates that an assertion can be true even if what it asserts is false.

How is that again? "I believe it is raining" does not assert either that it is raining, or that it is not raining.

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

Ahab wrote:

The two assertions are contradictory, but the second one is true regardless of whether or not it is raining. And this is one example that illustrates that an assertion can be true even if what it asserts is false.

Wait, what is false?

2 Replies

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;139024 wrote:

Wait, what is false?

Good question. (I think he thinks that if I say I believe it is raining, and it is not raining, that what I said is false).

0 Replies

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;139024 wrote:

Wait, what is false?

If I say "I believe it is not raining.", it would be false for you to say, "Ahab believes it is raining.

1 Reply

@Ahab,

Ahab;139031 wrote:

If I say "I believe it is not raining.", it would be false for you to say, "Ahab believes it is raining.

Not necessarily. Ahab might be lying. But that's irrelevant now. Suppose you are right. What follows?

0 Replies

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;139023 wrote:

How is that again? "I believe it is raining" does not assert either that it is raining, or that it is not raining.

Yes it does. It qualifies that assertion with the recognition that it may be wrong. But it is, neverthless, an assertion that it is not raining for I have taken a stand on the question of whether or not it is rainig.

But whether or not it is raining , it is still true that I believe it is raining. As I said above, this is one example that the Assertion Principle I gave above is not true.

---------- Post added 03-12-2010 at 09:37 AM ----------

kennethamy;139041 wrote:

Not necessarily. Ahab might be lying. But that's irrelevant now. Suppose you are right. What follows?

Kenneth,
I think I misunderstood Zetherin's question. In any case, if I say "I believe it is not raining" and it is not raining then I would be right.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'what would follow?'.

1 Reply

@Ahab,

Ahab;139042 wrote:

Yes it does. It qualifies that assertion with the recognition that it may be wrong. But it is, neverthless, an assertion that it is not raining for I have taken a stand on the question of whether or not it is rainig.

---------- Post added 03-12-2010 at 09:37 AM ----------

To assert that p is to endorse p as true. When you say that you believe that p, you are not endorsing p as true.

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;139072 wrote:

To assert that p is to endorse p as true. When you say that you believe that p, you are not endorsing p as true.

If I say "I believe that cat is on the mat" you cannot sensibly go on to ask me where the cat is. After all, you now know my stand on where the cat is.

Most commonly, we will express our belief with the simple assertion "The cat is on the mat." By prefacing that simple assertion with "I believe that" I am indicating that I recognize there is a possibility, however small, that I might turn out to be mistaken.

In either case I've taken a stand on the question of where the cat is at.

1 Reply

@Ahab,

Ahab;139083 wrote:

If I say "I believe that cat is on the mat" you cannot sensibly go on to ask me where the cat is. After all, you now know my stand on where the cat is.

.

As we have already seen, what you can say, need not be any indication of what is true. Of course I can ask where your cat is, since it need not be where you believe it is. I would not ask you, since I already know where you believe it is.

1 Reply

Moore's Paradox

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