WITTGENSTEIN AND MOORE´S PARADOX

Wittgenstein wrote a letter to G. E. Moore after hearing Moore give the paper in
which he first set forth a version of (what has come to be known as) Moore's paradox.
The version of the paradox that Moore first set forward invotved imagining someone
uttering the fottowing sentence: „There is a fire in this room and I don't betieve
there is.“ Wittgenstein's understanding of the importance of Moore's paradox may
be summarized as fottows: Something on the order of a [ogical contradiction arises
when we attempt to combine the affirmation of p and a denial of a consciousness of
p within the scope of a singte judgment.
ln his letter to Moore, Wittgenstein writes:
To catt this, as I think you did, „an absurdity for psychotogical reasons“ seems to
me to be wrong, or highty misteading. (lf I ask someone „ls there a fire in the
next room?“ and he answers „l betieve there is“, I can't say: „Don't be
irretevant. I asked you about the fire, not about your state of mind!“) But what
I wanted to say to you was this. Pointing out that „absurdity“ which is in fact
something similar to a contradiction, though it isn't one, is so important that I
hope you'tt pubtish your paper. By the way, don't be shocked at my saying it's
something „similar“ to a contradiction. This means roughty: it ptays a simitar
rutu irr lugiu. Yuu lrave said sunrethirrg about the togic of assertion. Viz: lt maltcg
sense to say „Let's suppose: p is the case and I don't betieve thatp is the case,“
whereas it makes no sense to assert „p is the case and I don't betieve that p is
the case.“ This assertion has to be ruted out and is ruted out by „common sense,“
just as a contradiction is. And this just shows that togic isn't as simpte as logicians
think it is. ln particular: that contradiction isn't the unique thing people think it
is. lt isn't the only togicatty inadmissibte form. .(Wittgenstein to Moore, October
1944, reprinted in Wittgenstein in Cambridge: Letters and Documents 1911-
1951, ed. B. McGuinness [Oxford: Blackwell, 1995], 365)
The aim of this workshop witt be to understand why Wittgenstein thinks that Moore's
paradox provides an exampte of something that is akin to a contradiction and how it
brings out (as Wittgenstein puts it) that logic isn't as simpte as logicians think it is.
His treatment of this case invotves an expansion of what is ordinarily considered to
betong to togic. Section x of Part ll of Wittgenstein's Philosophical lnvestigations is
devoted to an exploration of Moore's paradox. We there find Wittgenstein making
these three remarks:
1. My own retation to my words is wholty different to other people's.
2. lf there were a verb meaning'to betieve fatsely,'it woutd not have a
meaningfuI fi rst-person present i ndicative.
3. „l betieve….“ throws tight on my state. Conctusions about my conduct can be
drawn from this expression. So there is a similarity here to expressions of
emotion, of mood, etc,.
The workshop witt seek to understand: how my retation to my own words is whotty
different from my retation to those of other peopte; wherein the asymmetry lies
between the use of a range of verbs (such as „believe,“ „know,“ and „perceive“) in
the first-person present indicative form and other uses of the same verbs (e.g., in
the second-person or past tense form); and how the logical grammar of these verbs
is retated to that of expressions of emotion, of mood, and of sensation, including
expressions that takes the form of avowats. Finatty, we wi[[ explore why Wittgenstein
thinks a philosophical investigation of these three points ought to lead to an
expansion and transformation of our entire conception of [ogic.