G E Moore by Ambrose Alice & Lazerowitz Morris

Author:Ambrose, Alice & Lazerowitz, Morris.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

1 Extracted by C. D. Broad from papers published in Inquiry, Vol. I, no. 2, 1958.

Moore on Propositions and Facts

by A. J. Ayer

In the third chapter of Some Main Problems of Philosophy, Moore sets out to explain what he means by a proposition. His method is to mention a couple of sentences and inform his audience that when they understood these sentences they were directly apprehending propositions. They were, of course, in Moore’s view, also directly apprehending the sense-data which were conveyed to them by his utterance of the sentences; but he makes it clear that his use of the word ‘proposition’, unlike that of some other philosophers, is such that a proposition is not to be identified with any collection of words, whether the words be regarded as tokens or types, but only with the meaning of the words, with what a sentence is used to express. He does not attempt to define the relation of direct apprehension, beyond saying that it is the relation that one has to a proposition when one understands a sentence, and he confesses himself unable to decide, whether in speaking of directly apprehending propositions, as well as of directly apprehending sense-data, he is using the term ‘directly apprehending’ in the same or in a different sense.

Having given this account of what he means by a proposition, Moore goes on to list some of the most important characteristics which he thinks that propositions have. The first of these is that, in addition to being apprehended, a proposition may also be the object of the mental attitudes of belief or disbelief, in any of their various degrees. Secondly, he says that while the most common way of apprehending a proposition is to understand some sentence which expresses it, we also often apprehend propositions without seeing or hearing or even having in mind any sentences which express them. Presumably he is referring here to the cases in which we cannot, or cannot immediately, find the words to express exactly what we are thinking. He notes also that even when propositions are verbally expressed, they need not always be expressed by whole sentences; for example, a man who calls out ‘Fire’ may be expressing a proposition. Conversely, he says that he is not sure that all whole sentences express propositions; for example, imperatives may not. His third point is that whenever we apprehend a proposition ‘we always also apprehend things which are not propositions: namely, things which would be expressed by some of the words, of which the whole sentence, which would express the proposition, is composed’.1 In the case where these words designate a concrete particular, other than a present sense-datum, Moore seems to have held that the relation was only one of what he calls indirect apprehension. We are said by him to apprehend a particular indirectly when we do not directly apprehend it but do directly apprehend a proposition which is about it. On the other hand, every sentence which expresses a proposition must

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