if you grant that I
> have knowledge of the existence of at least one
> object
> external to me, then that means an external world
> exists. I know my hand exists. Ergo..."
Firstly, Moore doesn't ask you to grant anything. It says, or demonstrates by indicating, that I (and you too) have direct, noninferential perceptions whether you grant it or not.
Second, it says nothing about existence. Moore's implicit argument for the existence of medium size material objects like my hand is not so stunningly question-begging as to say, it exists (qua non ideal object), so it so exists. Moore offers rather you his hand to perceive by way of showing that you do not infer its existence from knowledge of you own mental states.
Third, although perception is a form of knowledge, you question-beggingly import the skeptical/idealist conception of mind into you notion of knowledge as a sort of mentalistic "inner" phenomenon in your construction of the argument here.
You miss the whole point of Moore's refutation if you think that Moore is asking you to infer from something you know, construed as inner contemplation of inner states that somehow mirror the outside world, that there is something apart from your inner states. He's trying, in a way not that dissimilar to Wittgenstein. to break the grip on you of that way of thinking and talking. He's actually attempting to show rather than tell you that this isn't the perception works.
You may say that this begs the question against (Berkleyian and Humean) idealism and skepticism, but you can't even get them off the ground without a very elaborate more or less Cartesian conception of mind and knowledge that Moore invites us to reject as a starting point. He rather suggests that naive realism has an immense presumption in its favor. Why should I even start to doubt that here is my hand? Do you think I am insane? If your premises generate such doubt, why on earth should I adopt them?
--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> "we have direct perceptions of
> medium sized material things, therefore, they
> exist."
>
> This is another way of saying, "if you grant that I
> have knowledge of the existence of at least one
> object
> external to me, then that means an external world
> exists. I know my hand exists. Ergo..."
>
> Wittgenstein's contemplations on this in On
> Certainty
> are much more interesting that the actual
> begging-the-question nonargument.
>
> --- andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > That's not the argument. The Refutation of
> Idealism
> > is
> > based on the not-insane idea, in fact the idea
> that
> > I
> > think is true, that we have direct perceptions of
> > medium sized material things, therefore, they
> exist.
> >
>
>
>
>
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