John N. Williams – författare

A Unified Treatment of Moore's Paradox is the culmination of a decades-long engagement with Moore's paradox by the world's leading authority on the subject, the late John Williams. The book offers a comprehensive account of Moore's paradox in thought and speech, both in its comissive and omissive forms. Williams argues that Moorean absurdity comes in degrees, and shows that contrary to one tradition in the literature on Moore's Paradox, we cannot explain Moorean absurdity in speech in terms of Moorean absurdity in thought, but must account for each form of absurdity in its own terms. Williams also explores the extent to which Moore's paradox may arise for attitudes other than belief, such as desire. Written with Williams' trademark clarity and wit, the book is packed with arguments bearing on a wide range of topics in epistemology, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind.

G. E. Moore famously observed that to assert, 'I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I don't believe that I did' would be 'absurd'. Moore calls it a 'paradox' that this absurdity persists despite the fact that what I say about myself might be true. Over half a century later, such sayings continue to perplex philosophers and other students of language, logic, and cognition. Ludwig Wittgenstein was fascinated by Moore's example, and the absurdity of Moore's saying was intensively discussed in the mid-20th century. Yet the source of the absurdity has remained elusive, and its recalcitrance has led researchers in recent decades to address it with greater care. In this definitive treatment of the problem of Moorean absurdity Green and Williams survey the history and relevance of the paradox and leading approaches to resolving it, and present new essays by leading thinkers in the area. ContributorsJonathan Adler, Bradley Armour-Garb, Jay D. Atlas, Thomas Baldwin, Claudio de Almeida, André Gallois, Robert Gordon, Mitchell Green, Alan Hájek, Roy Sorensen, John Williams