The Refutation of Idealism

Introduction

The essay appeared in Mind in 1903, the year of Principia Ethica, when British philosophy was dominated by idealists such as F. H. Bradley. Moore does not set out to prove that material things exist; he attacks a premise he finds in idealist arguments, Berkeley’s principle that to be is to be perceived. In every sensation, he argues, the act of consciousness must be distinguished from its object – the sensation of blue from blue itself. Consciousness is “diaphanous”: when we try to attend to it, we see only the blue. So the object of an experience can exist without being experienced. With Russell’s work of the same years, the essay is regarded as a starting point of analytic philosophy.

Connections

Criticizes

• A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge1710 · George Berkeley

More works by G. E. Moore

• 1903Principia Ethica
• 1925A Defence of Common Sense