Is This Really My Hand?

The philosopher G. E. Moore famously demonstrated the existence of a mind-independent world by raising his right hand and saying, "This is a hand," and then raising his left hand and saying, "This is another hand." So, Moore continued, at least two things external to the mind exist. QED.

Not every philosopher was won over by the argument, and Moore's proof has been debated ever since. Wittgenstein devoted much of his final time on earth to scribbling notes about Moore's approach, which were collected posthumously in On Certainty. Wittgenstein didn't so much disagree with Moore as explore the grammar--or logic--of sentences like, "I know this is my hand": if you can't not know something, can you really be said to know it?--that sort of thing. In other words, the negation of nonsense is also nonsense. It's a thought-provoking volume, which I've quoted occasionally on this blog.

The thing I want to note here is that Moore got at something important. If I say, "This is my hand," and the skeptic says, "How do you know?" or "Prove it," how can I answer besides pushing my hand closer to the skeptic? To be precise, what could I say in support of my proposition that would be more basic, more plausible, and less controversial than "This is my hand"? Wouldn't you be thought peculiar for asking someone how they knew they were in pain? (That's a Wittgensteinian query.) "I just know" seems more than good enough, though even that seems to miss the mark. A better answer might be, "Do you hear what you're saying?" 

Sometimes really smart people overthink things.

Perception forms part of our cognitive baseline. You really can't get underneath it. This does not mean we are infallible. Perceptual judgments ("That's a real cat, not a Disney animatron") are defeasible--subject to disconfirmation--but the burden of proof is on the challenger. If one has no reason to doubt a perception, one does not doubt it. And remember: "You might be wrong" is not an argument.

The upshot, to bring this back to logical atheism, is that when we open our eyes we see things; they exist. Existence exists, full stop. And this leads to the first grounds for logical (as opposed to skeptical) atheism: nothing can be said to exist outside of existence--and that goes for God. "Logic is constitutive of thought," Auburn philosopher Roderick T. Long, writes. "Nothing counts as thought unless it is logical. Hence the term 'thought' is simply not applicable to anything that deviates from logic." Wittgenstein made the same point when he asked, "What is the difference between inferring wrong and not inferring? Between adding wrong and not adding?"

You cannot think illogically, so you cannot speak illogically. However, you can make noise.