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Moore's Paradox And Self-Ascribed Belief

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Abstract

Moore's paradox arises from the logicaloddity of sentences of the form ‘P and I do not believe that P’ or ‘P and I believe that not-P’. Thiskind of sentence is logically peculiarbecause it is absurd to assert it, although it isnot a logical contradiction. In this paperI offer a new proposal. I argue that Moore's paradox arises because there is a defaultprocedure for evaluating a self-ascribed belief sentence and one is presumptivelyjustified in believing that one believes a sentence when one sincerely assents to it.

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Lee, B.D. Moore's Paradox And Self-Ascribed Belief. Erkenntnis 55, 359–370 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013382319938

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