George Edward Moore

(English philosopher, 1873–1985). Alongside Russell, Wittgenstein and Frege, G. E. Moore is a seminal figure for the Analytic tradition in philosophy. Moore broke with the idealism dominant among British philosophers during the early part of the twentieth century, and he is well known for his defence of common sense in philosophical analysis. His "Here is a hand" argument against philosophical scepticism, in which he held up one hand, and then another, and then concluded that there were at least two external objects of which he had knowledge and that therefore an external world exists, is understandably famous, and for some philosophers, infamous. Moore is also known for "Moore's paradox"; the paradox concerns the supposed impossibility of a person consistently holding to statements such as "It will rain but I don't believe it will", which are nevertheless not logically inconsistent and commonly asserted. Both the paradox and the "Here is a hand" argument were serious preoccupations for Wittgenstein, who thought the paradox to be Moore's greatest contribution to philosophical discourse. Moore is the author of Principia Ethica, "A Defence of Common Sense", "The Refutation of Idealism" and "A Proof of the External World".