Moore on awareness, transparency, and Erlebnis

This paper traces the evolution of G. E. Moore’s ideas regarding inner and outer awareness, transparency, and the doctrine of Erlebnis, as articulated in a series of papers published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society and Mind between 1901 and 1915. I defend two theses. First, I argue that, during this period, Moore gradually moved from an observational view of consciousness in general, including self-consciousness, to a mixed view in which subjects are directly aware of the objects of consciousness, while they “live through” (erleben) their mental acts. Notably, this shift shows that a certain debate between objectifying and non-objectifying consciousness in the Phenomenological school of Brentano and Husserl was to some extent replicated in the early British analytic tradition. Second, I contend that this change in Moore’s thinking was motivated by an attempt to overcome the problem posed by the transparency of consciousness for the possibility of introspecting the act-object relation (an idea that he never abandoned). It is through this chief aim, I believe, that we can make sense of Moore’s shifting ideas concerning awareness.