Moore's proposition W (Q2534148)

The purpose of this paper is to clarify and defend Moore's contention that such a sentence as ``The sentence `At least one person is a king of France' means that at least one person is a king of France'', does not express a necessary truth, and that its negation is not contradictory, even though to assert it might be self-defeating. Moore's sentence can be proven true from plausible semantic rules for English and so may qualify as ``semantically valid''. But it is also easy to explain how what it says could be false. It is thus an interesting borderline case with respect to such terms as ``analytic'' and ``necessarily true''. This paper is devoted to assessing the claims for and against regarding the sentence as ``analytic'', and comes out in favor of not so regarding it.