John N. Williams

It is raining but you don’t believe that it is raining. Imagine silently accepting this claim. Then you believe both that it is raining and that you don’t believe that it is raining. This would be an ‘absurd’ thing to believe,yet what you believe might be true. Itmight be raining, while at the same time, you are completely ignorant of the state of the weather. But how can it be absurd of you to believe something about yourself that might be true of you? This is Moore’s paradox as it occurs in thought. Solving the paradox consists in explaining why such beliefs are absurd. I give a survey of some of the main explanations. I largely deal with explanations of the absurdity of ‘omissive’ beliefs with contents of the form p & I don’t believe that p and of ‘commissive beliefs’ with contents of the form p & I believe that not-p as well as beliefs with contents of the form p & I don’t know that p.

G. E. Moore famously observed that to say, “ I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I don’t believe that I did” would be “absurd”. Why should it be absurd of me to say something about myself that might be true of me? Moore suggested an answer to this, but as I will show, one that fails. Wittgenstein was greatly impressed by Moore’s discovery of a class of absurd but possibly true assertions because he saw that it illuminates “the logic of assertion”. Wittgenstein suggests a promising relation of assertion to belief in terms of the idea that one “expresses belief” that is consistent with the spirit of Moore’s failed attempt to explain the absurdity. Wittgenstein also observes that “under unusual circumstances”, the sentence, “It’s raining but I don’t believe it” could be given “a clear sense”. Why does the absurdity disappear from speech in such cases? Wittgenstein further suggests that analogous absurdity may be found in terms of desire, rather than belief. In what follows I develop an account of Moorean absurdity that, with the exception of Wittgenstein’s last suggestion, is broadly consistent with both Moore’s approach and Wittgenstein’s.

The absurdity of (i) and (ii) arises because asserting 'p' normally expresses a belief that p. Normally, when (i) is asserted, what is conjointly expressed and asserted, i.e. a belief that p and a lack of belief that p, is logically impossible, whereas normally, when (ii) is asserted, it is differently absurd, since what is conjointly expressed and asserted, i.e. a belief that p and a belief that -p, is logically possible, but inconsistent. A possible source of confusion between 'impossible' and 'inconsistent' is the fact that a proposition which is inconsistent tout court is always self-contradictory and hence necessarily false, unlike one which is inconsistent with other propositions. Whereas the proposition Ibp&-Ibp is inconsistent, the proposition IBp &IB-p is not. I cannot hold a belief which I lack, but I can..