Philosophical Studies. G. E. Moore
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his own. But in many cases a philosopher will leave no doubt upon this point, by expressly assuming that there are other perceptions, which differ in some respects from his own: such, for instance, is the case when (as is so common nowadays) a philosopher introduces psycho-genetic considerations into his arguments—considerations concerning the nature of the perceptions of men who existed before and at a much lower stage of culture than himself. Any philosopher, who uses such arguments, obviously assumes that perceptions other than his own have existed or been real. And even those philosophers who think themselves justified in the conclusion that neither their own perceptions nor any perceptions like theirs are ultimately real, would, I think admit, that phenomenally, at least, they are real, and are certainly more real than some other things.
Almost everyone, then, does believe that some perceptions other than his own, and which he himself does not directly perceive, are real; and believing this, he believes that something other than himself and what he directly perceives is real. But how do we know that anything exists except our own perceptions, and what we directly perceive? How do we know that there are any other people, who have perceptions in some respects similar to our own?
I believe that these two questions express very exactly the nature of the problem which it is my chief object, in this paper, to discuss. When I say these words to you, they will at once suggest to your minds the very question, to which I desire to find an answer; they will convey to you the very same meaning which I have before my mind, when I use the words. You will understand at once what question it is that I mean to ask. But, for all that, the words which I have used are highly ambiguous. If you begin to ask yourselves what I do mean by them, you will find that there are several quite different things which I might mean. And there is, I think, great danger of confusing these different meanings with one another. I think that philosophers, when they have asked this question in one sense, have often answered it in quite a different sense; and yet have supposed that the answer which they have given is an answer to the very same question which they originally asked. It is precisely because there is this ambiguity—this danger of confusion, in the words which I have used, that I have chosen to use them. I wish to point out as clearly as I can, not only what I do mean by them, but also some things which I do not mean; and I wish to make it clear that the questions which I do not mean to ask, are different questions from that which I do mean to ask.
I will take the second of my two questions, since there is in the other an additional ambiguity to which I do not now wish to call attention. My second question was: How do we know that there exist any other people who have perceptions in some respects similar to our own? What does this question mean?
Now I think you may have noticed that when you make a statement to another person, and he answers "How do you know that that is so?" he very often means to suggest that you do not know it. And yet, though he means to suggest that you do not know it, he may not for a moment wish to suggest that you do not believe it, nor even that you have not that degree or kind of conviction, which goes beyond mere belief, and which may be taken to be essential to anything which can properly be called knowledge. He does not mean to suggest for a moment that you are saying something which you do not believe to be true, or even that you are not thoroughly convinced of its truth. What he does mean to suggest is that what you asserted was not true, even though you may not only have believed it but felt sure that it was true. He suggests that you don't know it, in the sense that what you believe or feel sure of is not true.
Now I point this out, not because I myself mean to suggest that we don't know the existence of other persons, but merely in order to show that the word "know" is sometimes used in a sense in which it is not merely equivalent to "believe" or "feel sure of." When the question "How do you know that?" is asked, the questioner does not merely mean to ask "how do you come to believe that, or to be convinced of it?" He sometimes, and I think generally, means to ask a question with regard to the truth, and not with regard to the existence of your belief. And similarly when I ask the question "How do we know that other people exist?" I do not mean to ask "How do we come to believe in or be convinced of their existence?" I do not intend to discuss this question at all. I shall not ask what suggests to us our belief in the existence of other persons or of an external world; I shall not ask whether we arrive at it by inference or by "instinct" or in any other manner, which ever has been or may be suggested: I shall discuss no question of any kind whatever with regard to its origin, or cause, or the way in which it arises. These psychological questions are not what I propose to discuss. When I ask the question "How do we know that other people exist?" I do not mean:
"How does our belief in their existence arise?"
But if I do not mean this what do I mean P I have said that I mean to ask a question with regard to the truth of that belief; and the particular question which I mean to ask might be expressed in the words: What reason have we for our belief in the existence of other persons? But these are words which themselves need some explanation, and I will try to give it.
In the first place, then, when I talk of "a reason," I mean only a good reason and not a bad one. A bad reason is, no doubt, a reason, in one sense of the word; but I mean to use the word "reason" exclusively in the sense in which it is equivalent to "good reason." But what, then, is meant by a good reason for a belief? I think I can express sufficiently accurately what I mean by it in this connection, as follows:—A good reason for a belief is a proposition which is true, and which would not be true unless the belief were also true. We should, I think, commonly say that when a man knows such a proposition, he has a good reason for his belief; and, when he knows no such proposition, we should say that he has no reason for it. When he knows such a proposition, we should say he knows something which is a reason for thinking his belief to be true—something from which it could be validly inferred. And if, in answer to the question "How do you know so and so?" he were to state such a proposition, we should, I think, feel that he had answered the question which we meant to ask. Suppose, for instance, in answer to the question "How do you know that?" he were to say "I saw it in the Times." Then, if we believed that he had seen it in the Times, and also believed that it would not have been in the Times, unless it had been true, we should admit that he had answered our question. We should no longer doubt that he did know what he asserted, we should no longer doubt that his belief was true. But if, on the other hand, we believed that he had not seen it in the Times—if, for instance, we had reason to believe that what he saw was not the statement which he made, but some other statement which he mistook for it; or if we believed that the kind of statement in question was one with regard to which there was no presumption that, being in the Times, it would be true: in either of these cases we should, I think, feel that he had not answered our question. We should still doubt whether what he had said was true. We should still doubt whether he knew what he asserted; and since a man cannot tell you how he knows a thing unless he does know that thing, we should think that, though he might have told us truly how he came to believe it, he had certainly not told us how he knew it. But though we should thus hold that he had not told us how he knew what he had asserted, and that he had given us no reason for believing it to be true; we must yet admit that he had given us a reason in a sense—a bad reason, a reason which was no reason because it had no tendency to show that what he believed was true; and we might also be perfectly convinced that he had given us the reason why he believed it—the proposition by believing which he was induced also to believe his original assertion.
I mean, then, by my question, "How do we know that other people exist?" what, I believe, is ordinarily meant, namely, "What reason have we for believing that they exist?" and by this again I mean, what I also believe is ordinarily meant, namely, "What proposition do we believe, which is both true itself and is also such that it would not be true, unless other people existed?" And I hope it is plain that this question, thus explained, is quite a different question from the psychological question, which I said I did not mean to ask—from the question, "How does our belief in the existence of other people arise?" My illustration, I hope, has made this plain. For I have pointed out that we may quite well hold that a man has told us how a belief of his arises, and even what was the reason