Editing Moore's paradox (section)

==Proposed explanations==
Philosophical interest in Moore's paradox, since Moore and Wittgenstein, has experienced a resurgence, starting with, though not limited to, [[Jaakko Hintikka]],<ref name="Hintikka" /> continuing with Roy Sorensen,<ref name="Sorensen"/> [[David M. Rosenthal (philosopher)|David Rosenthal]],<ref>{{Cite book |first=David |last=Rosenthal |chapter=Moore's Paradox and Consciousness |series=Philosophical Perspectives |volume=9 |title=AI, Connectionism and Philosophical Psychology |year=1995 |location=Atascadero, CA |publisher=Ridgeview |isbn=978-0-924922-73-2 |pages=313–334}}</ref> [[Sydney Shoemaker]]<ref>{{Cite book |first=Sydney |last=Shoemaker |chapter=Moore's Paradox and Self-Knowledge |title=The First-Person Perspective and other essays |url=https://archive.org/details/firstpersonpersp00shoe |url-access=limited |location=New York |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-521-56871-5 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/firstpersonpersp00shoe/page/n89 74]–96 }}</ref> and the first publication, in 2007, of a collection of articles devoted to the problem.<ref>{{Cite book |editor1-first=Mitchell S. |editor1-last=Green |editor2-first=John N. |editor2-last=Williams |title=Moore's Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality and the First-Person |location=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-19-928279-1}}</ref>

There have been several proposed constraints on a satisfactory explanation in the literature, including (though not limited to):
*It should explain the absurdity of both the omissive and the commissive versions.
*It should explain the absurdity of both asserting and believing Moore's sentences.
*It should preserve, and reveal the roots of, the intuition that contradiction (or something contradiction-like) is at the root of the absurdity.

The first two conditions have generally been the most challenged, while the third appears to be the ''least'' controversial. Some philosophers have claimed that there is, in fact, no problem in believing the content of Moore's sentences (e.g. David Rosenthal).  Others (e.g. Sydney Shoemaker) claim that an explanation of the problem at the level of belief will automatically provide us with an explanation of the absurdity at the level of assertion via the linking principle that what can reasonably be asserted is determined by what can reasonably be believed. Some have also denied (e.g. Rosenthal) that a satisfactory explanation to the problem need be uniform in explaining both the omissive and commissive versions. Most of the explanations offered of Moore's paradox are united in claiming that [[contradiction]] is the basis of the absurdity.

One type of explanation at the level of assertion is that assertion implies or expresses [[belief]] in some way, so that if someone asserts that ''p'' they imply or express the belief that ''p''. Several versions of this opinion exploit elements of [[speech act]] theory, which can be distinguished according to the particular explanation given of the link between assertion and belief. Whatever version of this opinion is preferred, whether cast in terms of the Gricean intentions (see [[Paul Grice]]) or in terms of the structure of Searlean illocutionary acts<ref>{{Cite book |first1=John |last1=Searle |name-list-style=amp |first2=Daniel |last2=Vanderveken |title=Foundations of Illocutionary Logic |location=New York |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1985 |isbn=978-0-521-26324-5}}</ref>

An alternative position is that the assertion "I believe that ''p''" often (though '''not''' always) functions as an alternative way of asserting "''p''", so that the semantic content of the assertion "I believe that ''p''" is just ''p'': it functions as a statement about the world and not about anyone's state of mind. Accordingly, what someone asserts when they assert "''p'' and I believe that not-''p''" is just "''p'' and not-''p''" Asserting the commissive version of Moore's sentences is again assimilated to the more familiar (putative) impropriety of asserting a [[contradiction]].<ref>{{Cite journal |first1=Kent |last1=Linville |name-list-style=amp |first2=Merrill |last2=Ring |title=Moore's Paradox Revisited |journal=Synthese |volume=87 |issue=2 |pages=295–309 |doi=10.1007/BF00485405 |year=1991 |s2cid=46960203}}</ref>

Another alternative opinion, due to [[Richard Moran (philosopher)|Richard Moran]],<ref>{{Cite book |first=Richard |last=Moran |title=Authority & Estrangement: An Essay on Self-knowledge |location=Princeton |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-691-08944-7}}</ref> considering the existence of Moore's paradox as symptomatic of creatures who are capable of self-knowledge, capable of thinking ''for'' themselves from a deliberative point of view, as well as ''about'' themselves from a theoretical point of view. On this view, anyone who asserted or believed one of Moore's sentences would be subject to a loss of self-knowledge—in particular, would be one who, with respect to a particular 'object', broadly construed, e.g. person, apple, the way of the world, would be in a situation which violates, what Moran calls, the Transparency Condition: if I want to know what I think about X, then I consider/think about nothing but X itself. Moran's opinion seems to be that what makes Moore's paradox so distinctive is not some contradictory-like phenomenon (or at least not in the sense that most commentators on the problem have construed it), whether it be located at the level of belief or that of assertion. Rather, that the very possibility of Moore's paradox is a consequence of our status as agents (albeit finite and resource-limited ones) who are capable of knowing (and changing) their own minds.