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Thesis Moore’s “here is one hand” is not really an argument, and that is exactly why it works

Sam Ellery Contributor
· 6 replies · 206 views
SkepticismAnalyticModern EuropeanDavid HumeG. E. MooreLudwig WittgensteinRené DescartesThomas Reid#burden-of-proof#common-sense#external-world#moore
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Where it stands

I coach high school debate, and there is a move my best students make without ever having heard of G. E. Moore. When the other team builds an elaborate case for a conclusion everyone in the room knows is false, you do not attack the premises one by one. You say: whatever is wrong with your argument, I am more sure that your conclusion is false than I am that your premises are true. Then you sit down.

Moore did this in his 1939 lecture "Proof of an External World". He held up his hands and said, in effect, here is one hand and here is another, so there are at least two external objects. The sceptic says you cannot know that, because you cannot rule out that you are dreaming. Moore's reply, as I read it, is that he is more certain he has hands than he is of any premise the sceptic uses.

My thesis: this is not a proof in the sense of a chain of reasoning that compels assent. It is a comparison of certainties. And that is why it works. Sceptical arguments use premises like "if you can't rule out dreaming, you don't know". Those premises are clever, but nobody is more sure of them than of their own hands. When an argument's conclusion is less credible than the denial of its premises, it is rational to run the argument backwards.

I expect two objections: that this begs the question, and that it is just stubbornness with good manners. I want to hear both, and anything else.

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6 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Alistair Gow

    For Contributor

    For. This is an old Scottish tune with new words. Thomas Reid answered Hume by saying that the principles of common sense are not conclusions we need to prove; whoever denies them owes us the argument, not the other way round. And Hume himself admits, at the end of the first book of the Treatise, that when he leaves his study and dines and plays backgammon with his friends, the sceptical conclusions look cold and ridiculous. Moore just said out loud what Hume confessed in private.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Oskar Nyberg

    For Fellow

    For, but with a twist that undercuts Moore. Wittgenstein's last notes, published as On Certainty, were written in response to Moore. His complaint is that Moore was wrong to say "I know" I have hands. In ordinary circumstances that is not something we know, in the sense of something we could give grounds for. It is part of the framework within which knowing and doubting happen. So your thesis is half right: the move works, but not as a knowledge claim. It works as a reminder of what the sceptic must take for granted even to raise his doubt.

    Helpful · 1

Against the thesis 2

  1. Tomasz Wójcik

    Against Fellow

    Against. Formally Moore's argument is valid: I have hands; if I have hands, an external world exists; so it does. The trouble is that, in the context of a sceptical challenge, the first premise is exactly what is in dispute. Some philosophers describe this as a failure of warrant transmission: the argument cannot give you a reason to accept the conclusion that you did not already need in order to accept the premise. Your debaters' move is fine in a debate round, because the judge already shares the certainty. Against a real sceptic it convinces nobody who was not already convinced.

    Helpful · 1
    1. Sam Ellery

      Contributor

      Tomasz, I accept that it will not convert a sceptic. But my claim is about what is rational for the person who has the hands, not what is persuasive to the person who doubts them. Khady, your students have a point about Descartes, but notice that Descartes also ends by trusting something he cannot prove without circularity. Everyone stops somewhere. Moore is just honest about where.

  2. Khady Faye

    Against Fellow

    Against, from a lycée in Dakar. My students study Descartes for the baccalauréat, and when I show them Moore they say he is cheating. Descartes at least takes the dream seriously and tries to get out of it from inside. Moore refuses to enter the room. My students are seventeen and they think refusing to argue is what adults do when they have no answer. I am not sure they are wrong.

    Helpful · 3

Other replies

  1. Sam Ellery

    Contributor

    I'll take Oskar's revision. Not "Moore knows he has hands and that refutes the sceptic", but "the sceptic's doubt depends on the same background Moore is pointing at". That is better than my original thesis and it answers Khady's students: Moore is not refusing to enter the room, he is pointing at the floor.

    Helpful · 2