Moore thought that to call common sense into question this way is perverse because the ordinary meaning of a common sense proposition is plain to all competent language-users. So, to question its meaning, and to suggest it has a different meaning, is disingenuous. Moreover, since the bounds of intelligibility seem to be fixed by the ordinary meanings of common sense proposition, the philosopher must accept them as starting points for philosophical reflection. Thus, the task of the philosopher is not to question the truth of common sense propositions, but to provide their correct analyses or explanations.
穆尔认为如果用这种方式将常识视作为可以讨论的问题是不正当的，因为这些命题的日常意义对于能够掌握语言的人来说都是显然的。因此，质疑这些命题的意义并且提出它们含有其它不同的意义，是毫无坦诚的意义的。因此，由于可理解的界限已经被日常命题的意义所确定，哲学家必须接受这些命题的意义并对此作出哲学上的反映。因此，哲学家的任务不是质疑这些日常表达的命题的真实性，而是提供正确的分析和解释。
Moore’s use of the term “analysis” in this way is the source of the name “analytic philosophy.” Early on in analytic history, Moorean analysis was taken to be a matter of rephrasing some common sense proposition so as to yield greater insight into its already-clear and unquestionable meaning. For example, just as one elucidates the meaning of “brother” by saying a brother is a male sibling or by saying it means “male sibling,” so one might say that seeing a hand means experiencing a certain external object—which is exactly what Moore claims in his paper “Proof of an External World” (Moore 1939).
穆尔所使用的这个词“分析”就是分析哲学名称的来源。在分析哲学早期历史中，穆尔的分析方法被用作为改述一些日常表达的命题，来为了洞悉它本身希望表达的真实且逻辑正确，不容置疑的意义。例如，就像一个人将“兄弟”准确地表述为兄弟就是一个男性的兄弟姐妹，或者“male sibling”， 所以一个人可能会说”seeing a hand” （即指看到一个方面)意味着经验一个外观所见的客体，而这正是穆尔在他的论文中所宣称的“对表层世界的证明”。
The argument of that essay runs as follows. “Here is one hand” is a common sense proposition with an ordinary meaning. Using it in accordance with that meaning, presenting the hand for inspection is sufficient proof that the proposition is true—that there is indeed a hand there. But a hand, according to the ordinary meaning of “hand,” is a material object, and a material object, according to the ordinary meaning of “material object,” is an external object, an object that isn’t just in our mind. Thus, since we can prove that there is a hand there, and since a hand is an external object, there is an external world, according to the ordinary meaning of “external world.”
这篇文章的论述如下：“这里有一只手”是一个具有日常意义的命题。 人们用这句话的意识是，将这只手伸出来给别人看是一个完全充分地对于这句话的证明——确实这里有一只手。但是一只手，根据日常的意义而言，是一个物质的实体，而物质的实体，根据传统的意义来看，是一个外在的客体，一个客体不存在于我们的头脑中的。 因此，因为我们可以证明这里确实有一只手，并且因为手是一个外在客体，那么这里必然有一个外在的世界，根据日常所指向的“外在世界”。
These examples are from papers written in the second half of Moore’s career, but his “linguistic method” can be discerned much earlier, in works dating all the way back to the late 1800s—the period of his rebellion against Idealism. Even in Moore’s first influential paper, “The Nature of Judgment” (Moore 1899), he can be found paying very close attention to propositions and their meanings. In his celebrated paper, “The Refutation of Idealism” (Moore 1903b), Moore uses linguistic analysis to argue against the Idealist’s slogan Esseestpercipi (to be is to be perceived).
这些例子都取自于穆尔哲学生涯的第二段中期，但是他的“语言学方法”可以更早地被看到，甚至在他的19世纪晚期所写的论文中——那个他干开始反叛唯心主义的阶段。甚至在穆尔第一篇有影响力的论文中，都可以很明显地看出他十分关注命题和它们的意义。在他的成名作中，”The Refutation of Idealism”，穆尔就用了语言学分析的方法来驳斥唯心主义的口号“存在就是被感知”。
Moore reads the slogan as a definition or, as he would later call it, an analysis: just as we say “bachelor” means “unmarried man,” so the Idealist says “to exist” means “to be cognized.” However, if these bits of language had the same meaning, Moore argues, it would be superfluous to assert that they were identical, just as it is superfluous to say “a bachelor is a bachelor.” The fact that the Idealist sees some need to assert the formula reveals that there is a difference in meanings of “to be” and “to be perceived,” and hence a difference in the corresponding phenomena as well.
穆尔解读这个口号为一个定义，或者他后来所称作的，一个分析：就像我们说“单身汉”意味着“未结婚的男子”一样。所以唯心主义者所说的“存在”意味着“被感知”，然而，如果这些语言上的表述有这样相同的意义，穆尔驳斥道，那么主张说它们是相同的是多余的，就像说“单身汉是单身汉”是多余的一样。事实上，唯心主义者看到为什么需要说明这个口号实际上是因为“存在”和“被感知”的意义不同的，因此在相应的现象中也有类似的不同。
Moore’s most famous meaning-centered argument is perhaps the “open question argument” of his Principia Ethica (Moore 1903a). The open question argument purports to show that it is a mistake to define “good” in terms of anything other than itself. For any definition of good—“goodness is pleasure,” say—it makes sense to ask whether goodness really is pleasure (or whatever it has been identified with); thus, every attempt at definition leaves it an open question as to what good really is. This is so because every purported definition fails to capture the meaning of “good.”
穆尔最著名的以意义为中心的论证可能是在他的心理学原理中的“开放问题论证”。这个开放问题旨在展示在“good”的定义中，按照任何超过它的解释，都是有误的。对任何关于good的解释——“善就是愉快”的言论，它会自然而然地让人质疑到底什么是愉快（或者说愉快是如何被定义的），因此，任何尝试性的定义都会留下一个开放的问题，让人去思考到底什么是善（good）。这是因为每个旨在给出定义的尝试都没有成功捕捉住“善”的意义。