When I took Metaphysics last spring with professor Grey, we started the course discussing what it means to exist. Many in the course proposed a wide array of ideas and definitions, eventually leading to distinguishing between 'being' and 'existing' and whether fictional objects could exist. We found ourselves carving out fine-grained distinctions for the purpose of placing some objects in a different category of existing than others. Some were not, for instance, comfortable with the idea that numbers were real, physical things, and so they were made something else - mathematical objects are ones which exist, but have no being. The distinctions seemed, at the time, worthwhile. However, later in the course after studying factionalism and arguing over Meinong's work, professor Grey paraphrased G.E. Moore: "I have one hand, I have another had. I have two hands". He would later explain that the work we were doing resembled something of a denial of Moorean facts; things which are so obvious it seems absurd to deny their truth. Moore's 'A Defense of Common Sense' seems to be, in many ways, a direct precursor to the work of those in the Vienna Circle, the Positivists, and their progeny. He begins by offering a strong criticism of the work of "some philosophers" (106). He argues that, in some cases, their rejection of common sense is contradictory in their very act of rejecting it. In others, it merely doesn't pan out (110-1). Overall, he seems to be criticizing the metaphysical work of other philosophers, in ways reminiscent but not entirely as explicit as people like Hume or his contemporary Neurath. However, his criticism of Mill's account of material objects at the end is striking. He says that it is "the only possible alternative if (1) and (2) are rejected" (132), but still finds the argument questionable. Indeed, Moore seems to instead want to stick with the far simpler account that he simply knows these facts to be the case, because of common sense. ________________________________________________________________________________ Dilyn Corner (C) 2020-2022