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Here is a hand (or "aw come on") is the name of a philosophical argument created by George Edward Moore against Philosophical skepticism and in support of common sense. The argument has become famous among philosophers.
Skeptical hypotheses, such as "you may be dreaming" or "the world is 5 minutes old", create a situation where it is not possible to know that anything in the world exists. They do so in the following form:
The Skeptical Argument Look up argument in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
George Edward Moore, usually known as G.E. Moore, (November 4, 1873 – October 24, 1958) was a distinguished and hugely influential English philosopher who was educated and taught at the University of Cambridge. ...
Philosophical skepticism or nihilistic skepticism (UK spelling, scepticism) is the philosophical school of thought in which one critically examines whether the knowledge and perceptions one has are true, and whether or not one can ever be said to have true knowledge. ...
Look up Common sense in Wiktionary, the free dictionary For the American independence advocacy pamphlet by Thomas Paine, see Common Sense (pamphlet) For the American hip-hop artist, see Common One meaning of the term common sense (or as an adjective, commonsense) on a strict construction of the term, is...
A skeptical hypothesis is a hypothetical situation that raises doubts about knowledge. ...
- If you don't know not H, you don't know O (O = anything)
- You don't know not H
--- - You don't know not 0 (in other words, you can't be sure about O)
Moore's response is as follows: - but I do know O
- if I don't know H, then I don't know O
--- Moore does not attack the skeptical argument, instead, he boldly claims that it is wrong, because its conclusion is unintuitive. Intuition has many but close meanings across many cultures, including: Quick and ready insight seemingly independent of previous experiences and empirical knowledge Immediate apprehension or cognition Knowledge or conviction gained immediately and without detailed consideration The power or faculty of attaining knowledge or cognition immediately without thought and inference. ...
Explanation
He famously put the point into dramatic relief with his 1939 essay "Proof of an External World", in which he gave a common sense argument against skepticism by raising his right hand and saying "Here is a hand," and then raising his left and saying "And here is another," then concluding that there are at least two external objects in the world, and therefore that he knows (by this argument) that an external world exists.
Moore's argument is not simply a flippant response to the skeptic. Moore gives in "Proof of an External World", three requirements for a good proof. (1) the premises must be different than the conclusion, (2) the premises must be demonstrated, and (3) the conclusion must follow from the premises. He claims that his proof of an external world meets those three criteria.
In his 1925 essay "A Defence of Common Sense" he argued against idealism and skepticism toward the external world on the grounds that they could not give reasons to accept their metaphysical premises that were more plausible than the reasons we have to accept the common sense claims about our knowledge of the world that skeptics and idealists must deny. In other words, he is more willing to believe that he has a hand than believe the premises of a strange argument in a University classroom. "I do not think it is rational to be as certain of any one of these ... propositions"[1] A Defence of Common Sense is an essay by the philosopher G. E. Moore. ...
The neutrality of this article is disputed. ...
Not surprisingly, not everyone inclined to skeptical doubts found Moore's method of argument entirely convincing; Moore, however, defends his argument on the (suprisingly simple) grounds that skeptical arguments seem invariably to require an appeal to "philosophical intuitions" that we have considerably less reason to accept than we have for the common sense claims that they supposedly refute.
Logic The skeptical argument takes the form of Modus Ponens: If A then B. A. Therefore B.
Moores argument flips the Modus Ponnens structure into a Modus Tollens: If A then B. Not B. Therefore not A.
"one man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens" (Dretske 1995[2]) In Logic, Modus ponens (Latin: mode that affirms) is a valid, simple argument form (often abbreviated to MP): If P, then Q. P. Therefore, Q. or in logical operator notation: P → Q P ⊢ Q where ⊢ represents the logical assertion. ...
Modus tollens (Latin: mode that denies) is the formal name for indirect proof or proof by contrapositive, often abbreviated to MT. It can also be referred to as denying the consequent. ...
Effect Appeals of this type are subsequently often called "Moorean facts". "A Moorean fact [is] one of those things that we know better than we know the premises of any philosophical argument to the contrary"[3]
The "here is one hand" idea, in addition to fueling Moore's own work, also deeply influenced Wittgenstein, who spent his last weeks working out a new approach to Moore's argument in the remarks that were published posthumously as On Certainty. Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (IPA: ) (April 26, 1889 – April 29, 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who contributed several ground-breaking works to modern philosophy, primarily on the foundations of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind. ...
Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...
Although perhaps not a supplement to Moore's argument, it has been mentioned in undergraduate philosophy classes that Moore famously mistook his own sense perception once in a lecture. Whereby he claimed "there is a window" pointing at a curtain in a gymnasium, but when a student pulled the curtain away it was merely a wall. Whether this is a philosophical urban legend or not, there is little doubt that optical illusions and hallucinations can cause unreliable sense perceptions. Not to mention plain mistakes in judgement are a fact of life for humans. An optical illusion is any illusion that deceives the human visual system into perceiving something that is not present or incorrectly perceiving what is present. ...
A hallucination is a false sensory perception in the absence of an external stimulus, as distinct from an illusion, which is a misperception of an external stimulus. ...
External links A 50 page essay on the existence of moorean facts
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