CHAPTER IV

MOORE'S CONCEPTION OF ANALYSIS

When, in his paper on 'Moore's Technique', John Wisdom represented Moore

as subscribing to the view that it is analysis which is 'the proper business of
philosophy' Moore was quick to reject what Wisdom termed 'Moore's account
of philosophy as analysis'. 1 While Moore was right in his rejoinder, there is
yet an important element of truth in Wisdom's interpretation. In part, this
is for the reason that, as we saw earlier, the substantive question 'as to the
nature of material things' in the external world remains open in the wake
of Moore's commonsensically based proof of the fact that such a world is
known to exist. And it is to analysis that this open question falls for answer.
Retaining a previously used metaphor, it is common sense which provides
the skeleton of an ontology in Moore's philosophy, but it is analysis which
puts meat on the bones. While this does not make true Wisdom's suggestion,
it does indicate that only with and through analysis comes the detailed
working out of the content of Moore's metaphysical positions as set forth
in outline form in the basic propositions of commonsense realism.

1. ORDINARY LANGUAGE, COMMON SENSE AND ANALYSIS

In his 'Defence of Common Sense' Moore writes of his assumption that

expressions like the sentence, "The Earth has existed for many years past",
have a meaning "which is the ordinary or popular meaning of [them)". 2
While the particular sentence quoted probably dOes have only one meaning
which might be called its ordinary or popular meaning, Moore must not be
supposed to say that all ordinarily used expressions have but a single meaning.
Moore is not claiming that and to do so obviously would be false and a simple
matter to refute. Moore contrasts our ordinary understanding of the expres-
sions used in the normal course of our everyday affairs with "the entirely
different question of whether we know what [an expression) means, in the
sense that we are able to give a correct analysis of its meaning". 3 And this
assumption that the ordinary or non-analytical meanings of expressions
contrast with the 'entirely different' matter of the, philosophically speaking,
analytical meanings of expressions is a career-long feature of Moore's work.
We saw something of this in the previous chapter. There I remarked that
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D. O’Connor, The Metaphysics of G. E. Moore

© D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland 1982
72 CHAPTER IV

Moore systematically uses the word 'meaning' with two different meanings.
In the first place there is his use of 'meaning' to cover the ordinary uses of an
expression and, secondly, his use of the same word as a proxy for 'analysis'.
This latter synonymy points to what A. R. White has called Moore's 'tech-
nical meaning of "meaning".4
We may be said to know what an expression means, in the ordinary sense
indicated by Moore, when we are able to use it correctly and systematically
in a variety of contexts. Failure to manifest a reasonable degree of practical
fluency of this kind provides prima facie good reason for us to say of some-
one that he does not know what such and such an expression means. In short,
repeated incorrect use of an expression indicates a lack of understanding of
the meaning of that expression. s The kind of ignorance in question here is
easily correctable in a variety of obvious ways of course, for instance by
consulting a lexicon or erudite friend or by attending to how others use the
expression and so on. Puzzlements and disputes about the meanings, that
is to say, the ordinary meanings, of expressions, while often interesting, are
not taken by Moore for philosophical puzzles and disputes in their own right,
or, indeed, for matters of particular philosophical concern. This is not to
deny the obvious truth that clear understanding and use of those non-phil-
osophically technical expressions used in philosophical discussion help to
keep philosophy clear. Moore's point, as we saw earlier, is that problems
concerning the ordinary meanings of words, that is to say what he calls
'verbal' disputes, are not by their nature philosophical. 6 Conversely, Moore
does not suppose that the findings of philosophical analyses impinge upon
our ordinary, non-philosophical uses of terms, even of those whose meanings
may have been the analysanda of philosophical investigation. 7 According to
Moore, philosophical analysis is a philosophical response to technical problems
in philosophy, and the findings of such analyses entail no consequences
outside the confines of philosophy. To some degree, of course, this point
raises the, itself technically philosophical, question of what exactly the
confines of philosophy rightly might be said to be, but this is not a question
to which Moore, in keeping with very many other philosophers, addressed
himself. However, without needing to pursue the 'What is philosophy?' ques-
tion it is relatively clear what Moore's thinking is; we can know very well
what a particular expression means in its ordinary context and know too,
when it happens to be a declarative expression, whether the proposition it
makes is true or false, without knowing, or even caring, what the philosophical
analysis of that proposition might be. Indeed, this gap between meaning and
truth can be taken further and the following conjunction shown to be neither