‘Clearly’ covers murky thought

post by KatjaGrace · 2009-09-22T18:26:26.000Z · LW · GW · 0 comments

Why do we point out that statements we are making are obvious? If a statement is actually obvious, there should rarely reason to point the statement out, let alone that it is obvious. It’s obviousness should be obvious. It seems that a person often emphasizes that a statement is obvious when they would prefer not be required to defend it. Sometimes this is just because it is obvious once you know their field but a lot of effort to explain to someone who doesn’t, but often it’s just that the explanation is not obvious to them.

But saying ‘obviously’ is too obvious. A better word is ‘clearly’. ‘Clearly’ sounds transparent and innocent. In reality it is a more subtle version of ‘obviously’.

I have noticed this technique used well in published philosophy from time to time. If getting to your conclusion is going to require assuming your conclusion is true, ‘clearly’ suggests to the reader that they not think over that step too closely.

For instance Michael Huemer in Ethical Intuitionism, while arguing that moral subjectivism is wrong, for the purpose of demonstrating that ethical intuitionism is right:

Traditionally, cultural relativists have been charged with endorsing such statements as,

If society were to approve of eating children, then eating children would be good.

which is clearly false.

Notice that ‘false’ seemingly means that it is false according to his intuition; the thing which he is trying to argue for the reliability of. If he just said ‘which is false’, the reader may wonder where, in a book on establishing a basis for ethical truth, this source of falsity may have popped from. ‘Clearly’ says that they needn’t worry about it.

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