Abstract
In his 'The Nature of Judgment' (1899), G.E. Moore puts forward an argument against Bradley and Kant's views that concepts are produced by a process of abstraction.
He refers to Kant's doctrine of the so-called 'analytical unity of consciousness' and assumes that Bradley inherited this doctrine from Kant. The general feature attacked by Moore's argument is an idea that concepts are produced by separating part of the content of an intuition.
As Moore suggests, such an act necessitates that the mind is able to judge of which parts the intuition consists. Thus one cannot acquire a concept of red from a perceptual image of a red apple by separating redness of the perceived apple from the rest of the image, since the content of the image would not become intelligible without judging that this apple is red or that this image of an apple contains redness.
In my presentation, I first explain separately Bradley and Kant's accounts of concept-acquisition and inquire into whether Moore's objection applies to them despite their differences. With regards to Kant, I shall be concerned with the relation of several passages from Kritik der Reinen Vernunft to the accounts of 'logical' acts of concept-acquisition in the so-called Jäsche's logic (Kant 1800) and the transcription of Kant's lectures 'Logic Dohna Wundlacken' dated to summer semester of 1792.
I shall provide a formal exposition of Moore's argument, explaining that, although the argument points to a vicious circularity, it is not, despite Moore's claim, a regressive argument. Further, Moore jumps from his critique of Bradley and Kant right to the conclusion that concepts are not acquired.
As Baldwin (1990) pointed out, this is ungrounded. If Moore's argument holds against his opponents, and I shall argue that it does, it still remains open whether there is an account of concept-acquisition which is immune to the argument.