The Normative Character of Belief

Abstract

Abstract Moore points to the absurdity of saying such things as ‘I don’t believe that it’s raining, though as a matter of fact it is’ and ‘I believe he has gone out, but he has not’ (Moore 1942: 543; 1959: 175; 1993: 207). He goes on to argue that this kind of absurdity is paradoxical because it disappears once these statements are conjugated into the past tense, as in ‘I did not then believe it was raining, though as a matter of fact it was’, or expressed in the third-person as ‘Moore does not believe that it’s raining, though as a matter of fact it is’ (Moore 1993: 208– 9).