Tuesday, February 28, 2006

G.E. Moore on Alberta's Third way

Alberta health plan allows for some private care


On the Album A Poke In the Eye (With a Sharp Stick), British Comedian Peter Cook does a sketch of a meeting between the philosophers G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell.

From memory it goes like this; Russell finds Moore in his cottage at Cambridge with a basket of apples in front of him.
Moore I said are there apples in that basket?
No he said.
Moore I said are there any apples in that basket?
No he said.
Moore I said are there some apples in that basket?
Yes he said and from then on we were the best of friends.

So if we apply Moores logic of common sense to King Ralphs Third Way Health Care Reform, 'Some Privatization' means Privatization of Healthcare. Period. Or as Moore would say; some privatization IS privatization.

One key to Peter Cook's comedy in particular, and to what makes the Cambridge-bred comedy different, is words. Cambridge also happens to be where one of the more famous and influential 20th century styles of philosophy was centered, called "analytic philosophy" or "language analysis." Its most famous proponents at Cambridge were '>Bertrand Russell and '>Ludwig Wittgenstein, but probably the most influential on students in the 50s was '>G.E. Moore, who died in 1958 and was buried in the town of Cambridge. Moore had been a towering intellect at Cambridge for a half century. He was known for testing philosophical assumptions disguised in philosophical language with logical analysis of what the words actually meant. He was a philosophical champion of ordinary language and common sense, and particularly effective in applying language analysis to ethical reasoning.






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