Could this all be a dream?

MOORE’S REFUTATION

Moore believes that contrary to Descartes’ refutation, which I have glossed over for practical reasons, there is no need to appeal to God to prove that the outer world exists. To prove this, just look at your hands. “here is a hand; and here is another”. My hands are external objects, therefore the external world is real. The skeptic would argue back saying that you cannot really know that you have hands, but Moore thinks we should fight back. According to Moore we can know that there are external objects even though we cannot prove it. There is no more basic proof for the existence of an outer world than looking at your hands. And if the skeptic tries to argue against this with a fancy philosophical argument we should not be convinced by such philosophical argument; we should not doubt our everyday knowledge. If the skeptic is right, it is true that looking at my hands does not prove the existence of an outer world and that common knowledge would be in trouble but this is a “big” if and, furthermore, the skeptic has not proved that the skeptical scenario actually obtains.

CTITIQUE

Moore has been accused of begging the question on a number of occasions. However, this charge seems to fall as soon as we consider the skeptic’s reasons to accept his theories. In fact, we cannot have a skeptical argument without the assumption of some basic metaphysical or epistemological principle that is simply assumed without defence. In particular, even if there seems to be some truth in the skeptic’s words, there is no rational ground for considering the skeptical scenario as true; i.e. the skeptic has not demonstrated that his scenario obtains. Therefore, this should successfully dispose of the charge of begging the question.