THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27191, 7 November 1953, Page 3

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE

[Reviewed by L.G.W.] Some Main Problems of Philosophy. By G. E. Moore. GeOrge Allen and Unwin. 380 pp. Professor G. E. Moore once held the chair of mental philosophy in the University of Cambridge, and the lectures contained in this book were delivered 40 years ago and have been published at the suggestion of Professor John Wisdom. He says in a foreword that the lectures in the book are out of date but are still worth reading as a guide to the published jungle of modern philosophy. Professor Moore calls his philosophy the philosophy of common sense. He attempts to answer such questions as “Do we really know that there is bread here and now in our mouths?” “What do we mean, when we speak of chairs and tables?” By answering questions of this kind, he thinks we can find out the most important and interesting thing which philosophers have tried to do, viz., to give a general description of the whole universe.

According to Common Sense there exist material objects and acts of consciousness. Comparatively few material objects have the latter attached to them. Material objects may exist, even when we are not conscious of them, and many in fact do so exist. There may have been a time when acts of consciousness were attached to no material bodies anywhere in the universe, and may again be such a time; and that there almost certainly was a time when there were no human bodies, with human consciousness attached to them upon the earth. Common Sense also assumes.that material objects and minds exist in time and space and we know all these things. In order to convert these statements into a general description of the whole universe, we should have to say, “Everything in the universe belongs to one or other of these two classes,” or “Everything in the universe which we know to be there belongs to one or other of these two classes; though there may be in the universe other things which we do not know to be in it.” ) We may now obtain a general (View of what philosophers have taught, by saying that some thinkers have held that there are in the universe some most important things in addition to those which Common Sense asserts to be in it. Others have asserted that some of the things Common Sense supposes to be in it are not in it, or else that, if they are, we do not know it. A third type of philosopher has both added to and contradicted the philosophy of Common Sense. When an attempt is made to prove the truth of certain views of the nature of reality, many new problems arise, e.g. what is the nature of knowledge? It is to the last of these problems that most of the lectures in this book are devoted, though some of them are concerned with such subjects as existence in time and space, the reality of time and the nature of being. .Whether the reader accepts Professor Moore’s method and conclusions or nor, he will find the study of this book a most strenuous intellectual exercise.