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Composition by Qualification




I've heard that GE Moore once said that whenever he wrote anything down, he saw that it was either false or true but only if qualified.

But then when he wrote the qualification down, he would see that the same was true of THAT.

Much of PRINCIPIA ETHICA reads like what would eventually be produced by someone who has that sort of writer's block. A, but only when B, except that B is not strictly always necessary, in circumstances such as C, but there might be some ambiguity in that statement of C, so ....

And I feel simpatico.

As I've mentioned before, Moore is the great philosopher whose death comes closest to coinciding with my own birth. I was born at a moment when Moore only had six days to live. This story about his unquenchable self-qualifications rather strengthens the case that I am he, despite the brief overlap when we must have shared a soul, ebbing from one body and flowing into the other.
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