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Tallis in Wonderland

George Moore’s Hands: Scepticism About Philosophy

Raymond Tallis is sceptical about Moore’s scepticism about scepticism.

“Antisthenes the Cynic, unable to answer [Zeno’s arguments against motion], got up and walked, deeming a proof by action more potent than any logical confutation. ”
Jonathan Barnes, The PreSocratic Philosophers

Even we regular readers of Philosophy Now, who may be presumed to be among that minority for whom philosophical questions are important, sometimes question the purpose of the whole enterprise, even its sincerity. A police force would probably be taken into special measures if its clear-up rate were as low as philosophers seem to have achieved with their problems over the millennia. This, however, can be defended: problems change their nature; the discoveries prompted by even insoluble philosophical questions have contributed enormously to humanity’s intellectual development; problems that are soluble are often claimed by the sciences and so philosophy, which may have flagged them up in the first place, loses the credit; and most importantly, taking hold of the mystery of one’s own existence is, surely, an end in itself.

It is however less easy to defend philosophy against one of its most characteristic activities: advancing arguments which seem to demonstrate that what we usually take to plainly be the case is somehow self-contradictory, and inviting us to jettison the most basic aspects of our world picture.

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