Clear to Reason: What is it?

I've been talking a lot about whether we need for some things to be clear, or whether the Gangadeanians have shown us that some things are in fact, clear to reason. But here, I want to spend a little time focusing on what it means for the Gangadeanians that something is "clear to reason" to begin with.

It turns out that precise definitions are not easy to find from the Ganagdeanians who are quick to throw around the expression. (An interesting sociological note: I'm around philosophers more often than not and not one of them ever talks about things being "clear to reason.") As I've noted before, Gangadean says that to show that something (a proposition) is clear to reason is to show by way of proof that it couldn't possibly be false and to overcome common objections to it. That's about showing what is clear. But what is it for something to be clear? What's confusing is that if we remove the word "show" from the above account, we get that a proposition is clear if it couldn't possibly be false. But that would be a strange account of the clarity of a proposition. All and only necessary truths are such that they couldn't possibly be false. That would mean "clear" would be something like "necessarily true." But not every necessary truth is clear to reason, because not every necessary truth is readily knowable to all who seek (which is really what Gangadean wants out of clarity). For example, that water is H20, seems to be a necessary truth, but it's not like anybody could have deduced it from general revelation. It was discovered fairly recently with respect to world history and by way of empirical observation. No clarity about clarity yet.

That lead me to Anderson's first book, "Reason and Worldviews." Unfortunately, he actually forgoes a straight definition and gives us what he takes to be paradigm examples. He writes,

Throughout this book the term 'clarity' has been used, often in connection to 'reason'. What is clear, is clear to reason and therefore is objectively clear, as opposed to being personally/subjectively clear. The best way to define 'clarity' is to give an example: it is clear that 'a' is not 'non-a'. This is maximal clarity...

Of course, to say that something is clear just in case it's objectively clear, isn't to provide a particularly helpful definition because it uses the very word we'd like defined. But this example isn't entirely useless. Recall that Gangadean claims that God's existence is clear to reason. And what he means by that it is that is readily knowable to all (or at least those of average intelligence--according to that lecture on Youtube). How is it readily knowable? There's a proof that anybody could have come up with if only they were using reason consistently (yes that's a radical claim in itself). The point to stress is that there's a proof here--and on Gangadean's view, God's existence is clear because this argument/proof is in some way readily accessible to all. But as Anderson notes above, it's also supposed to be clear to reason that "a is not-non a" which is to say that propositions about basic distinctions, and the so-called laws of thought are apparently clear to reason, too. If you've been around these parts for a while you know that the Gangadeanians don't actually give an argument or proof for the claim that 'a is not-non-a' (the law of non contradiction). So God's existence is clear to reason dependent on the accessibility of a sound proof, but other things are clear to reason without such a proof being readily available. So, what's going on?

My puzzlement had me poking around one of the Gangadeanian websites, and I ran into this recent post by Kelly Fitzsimmons Burton. Of note is the following passage.

By reason is meant the laws of thought. It is self-evident that we think, and it is self-evident that there are laws of thought. Reason in itself is the laws of thought. These laws include Identity: a is a; Non-contradiction: not both a and non-a; and Excluded middle: either a or non-a.  We use reason to form concepts, judgments, and arguments. We use it to test for meaning. We use it to interpret all of our experiences. And we use it to construct a coherent world and life view (Emphasis added). 

For something to be "self-evident" is for it to be ascertained immediately. It isn't known via any sort of argument or inference. Interestingly--you don't find Burton's claims in particular (that it's self evident that there are laws of thought or that it's self-evident that we think) in Gangadean's book, Philosophical Foundation. But he does speak of self-evident truths in the following passage.

Reason has been misused as a source of truth. Certain convictions are treated as self-evident to reason, and foundational, requiring no further need for defense. Descartes' cogito ergo sum is said to be self-evident every time it is thought. Thomas Jefferson took it as self-evident that all men are created equal. These views may be true, but the question is, are they self-evident? Are alternatives immediately self-contradictory?...Or do they require at least a few steps in reasoning to show they are contradictory? (21). 

So, Gangadean believes that there are such things as self-evident truths. That is to say, things we know (that are clear to reason) immediately and not by way of any inference, or proof. As I've argued before, this is actually to allow that we can know some things via intuitions, which would be problematic for their worldview given how they claim to avoid intuitions. However, what the above passage also aims to do is to provide us with a criteria of distinguishing the legitimately self-evident from the pseudo-self-evident. Whatever it is immediately self-contradictory to deny = self-evident. (And presumably, what is self-evident is clear to reason but without the need for proof). The importance of this for Gangadean should be obvious. Anyone can easily claim that any proposition is self-evident, in which case, we would get "clarity" on the cheap (God's existence could be self-evident!) If there was no principled means of distinguishing between self-evident truths and merely those that people claim to be self-evident, appeals to self-evident truths would be no different than appeals to intuitions, which Gangadean is keen to avoid. (Note I think that ultimately intuitions must play a role in Ganagdean's worldview. That's because I see no way of getting around the idea that one immediately and non-inferentially apprehends when something is a contradiction as opposed to reasoning to it--which means one knows that a proposition is contradictory by way of intuition--but I'm setting this aside for now). So this criteria for self-evidency is crucial for Gangadean's worldview. It's basically a way for Gangadean not having to prove every bit of his worldview while managing to avoid the charge of fideism and intuition mongering which he finds unacceptable in others and skepticism and nihilism entailing. Does it work? Unfortunately, no.

If the litmus test of a self-evident claim is that it is immediately contradictory, then the natural question to ask is how we are to determine when something is immediately contradictory (as opposed to merely seeming to us that it is) vs. requiring "at least a few steps in reasoning to show they are contradictory." Again intuitions are unavoidable here (you either see something as immediately self-contractory or not--and this isn't by way of arguments). But we're setting that aside for the time being.

Instead I want to focus on the matter of conceptual or definitional disputes. Importantly, what strikes ones as immediately self-contradictory or not will depend largely on the conceptual vocabulary one adopts or one's background beliefs about the nature of things. And if there are disputes about what is immediately self-contradictory or not or if what counts as immediately self-contradictory is to some extent relative, Gangadean's purported test of self-evidency is of no use in which case appealing to "self-evident" truths fares no better than appeals to intuition.

Here's what I mean. If I define knowledge as entailing certainty/clarity, then to claim that I know that knowledge is not possible is to express something immediately contradictory. That's because it amounts to saying, "I'm certain that certainty is not possible." Likewise, if knowledge entails clarity, the very statement, "knowledge does not entail clarity" would be immediately self-contradictory because it would amount to saying that "knowledge is not knowledge." But if I define or conceive of knowledge as not entailing certainty, there is no such contradictions to be found. So what counts as immediately-self contradictory (as opposed to requiring multiple steps to show as contradictory) depends on one's concepts or definitions.

We can now appreciate just how important the dispute between the Gangadeanians and me over who has got the right theory of knowledge ends up being for the welfare of Gangadean's worldview. Not only do I submit that knowledge does not entail clarity, my claim is that they will be unable to prove that their theory of knowledge is the correct one over and above alternative accounts without begging the question. Importantly, neither is it self-evident that their theory of knowledge is correct according to Gangadean's own test of self-evidency because it's not immediately self-contradictory to deny that knowledge entails certainty (unless of course Gangadean is allowed to beg the question against me).

This is just one example and the point generalizes to other concepts over which philosophers have disputed (e.g., free will, eternality, epistemic justification, infinitude, justice, good, God, etc).  For instance, some philosophers and theologians define God as a necessary being. On such a conception, to say that God does not exist is to express a contradiction because it amounts to saying that a being who could not fail to exist, fails to exist. That's an immediate self-contradiction. But if you don't conceive of God in that way, then there is no such self-contradiction. So there's a kind of conceptual relativity at play which poses a serious problem for Gangadean's proposed test for self-evidency. What counts as self-evident can vary from person to person in much the same way that intuitions can from person to person.

It's also important to note that the burden of proof at this point is asymmetrical between team Gangadean and me. I am not the one claiming that we can have clarity or that we must have it. Neither am I the one purporting to be able to settle any and all disputes by way of rational presuppositional (note conceptual disputes are disputes). And I'm certainly not aiming to provide a sure-fire test of what makes a claim legitimately self-evidently true. Focusing again on the conflict over theories of knowledge, it is Ganagdean's claim that we need clarity (to avoid skepticism) that is driving him to adopt the theory of knowledge in which knowledge requires clarity/certainty. That being the case, they should be able to show why their theory is correct (on independent grounds) and how the purported test for self-evidency can get around this problem of disputes over concepts and definitions more generally. Another way to make this point about the burden of proof: if it turns out that we've got competing theories of knowledge (or justification, free will, moral responsibility, eternality, God, justice, mercy, good) and no principled way to choose the correct one with certainty/clarity, then that's enough to undermine Gangadean's search for clarity. It's their job to show why we aren't fated to this result.