ABSTRACT

The importance for Moore of his lectures ‘Some Main Problems of Philosophy’ is easily seen from the use he makes of ideas presented there in papers published during the next few years (SMPP itself not being published until 1953). The introductory chapter ‘What is Philosophy?’ obviously foreshadows his 1925 paper ‘A Defence of Common Sense’. The next chapter on ‘Sense-Data’, and some of the ensuing discussion of perception, is reworked into his 1914 paper ‘The Status of Sense-Data’. The treatment of scepticism about the external world which he presents in his 1918 paper ‘Some Judgments of Perception’ is similar to that presented in chapter 6 of SMPP. The critical discussion of Bradley on reality and appearance is repeated almost verbatim in his 1917 paper ‘The Conception of Reality’. Finally, although his rejection of propositions is never set out in detail in his published writings, the position he puts forward in his 1928 paper ‘Facts and Propositions’ owes much to lines of thought which go back to the arguments considered in SMPP.