Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Psychology Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Philosophy

Selected Works

John N. WILLIAMS

Desire

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Psychology

Moore’S Paradox In Belief And Desire, John N. Williams Dec 2013

Moore’S Paradox In Belief And Desire, John N. Williams

John N. WILLIAMS

Is there a Moore’s paradox in desire? I give a normative explanation of the epistemic irrationality, and hence absurdity, of Moorean belief that builds on Green and Williams’ normative account of absurdity. This explains why Moorean beliefs are normally irrational and thus absurd, while some Moorean beliefs are absurd without being irrational. Then I defend constructing a Moorean desire as the syntactic counterpart of a Moorean belief and distinguish it from a ‘Frankfurt’ conjunction of desires. Next I discuss putative examples of rational and irrational desires, suggesting that there are norms of rational desire. Then I examine David Wall’s groundbreaking …


Wittgenstein, Moorean Absurdity And Its Disappearance From Speech, John N. Williams Dec 2010

Wittgenstein, Moorean Absurdity And Its Disappearance From Speech, John N. Williams

John N. WILLIAMS

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 …