Clarity and the Grammar of Skepticism

Why ever assert clarity? If It is clear that p is true, then saying so should be at best superfluous. Barker and Taranto (2003) and Taranto (2006) suggest that asserting clarity reveals information about the beliefs of the discourse participants, specifically, that they both believe that p. However, mutual belief is not sufficient to guarantee clarity (It is clear that God exists). I propose instead that It is clear that p means instead (roughly) ‘the publicly available evidence justifies concluding that p’. Then what asserting clarity reveals is information concerning the prevailing epistemic standard that determines whether a body of evidence is sufficient to justify a claim. If so, the semantics of clarity constitutes a grammatical window into the discourse dynamics of inference and skepticism. 1. The Paradox of Asserting Clarity We have two photographs before us. One, labeled ‘Nawal’, shows a grave young woman in ordinary clothes. The other, labeled ‘Abby’, shows a different young woman wearing a white lab coat with a stethoscope around her neck. (1) a. Nawal is a doctor. b. Abby is a doctor. These sentences may or may not be true. Certainly nothing in either of the photographs settles the question. (2) a. It is clear that Nawal is a doctor. b. It is clear that Abby is a doctor. The status of the sentences in (2) is quite different, both from their counterparts in (1), and from each other. (2a) is simply false: even if we have unimpeachable private evidence that Nawal is a doctor, it is not clear that she is a doctor, at least, not based on the photograph alone. (2b), on the other hand, might be true. What does its truth depend on? We have a certain amount of evidence that Abby is a doctor—the white coat, the stethoscope—and we have to decide whether that evidence is sufficiently compelling to justify concluding that she is a doctor. This decision will depend in part on the stakes involved (see, e.g., Stanley, 2005): if Abby’s being a doctor Thanks for valuable discussion to Ariel Cohen, Andy Egan, Peter Pagin, James Pryor, Stephen Schiffer, Christopher Tancredi, Lavi Wolf, participants at the Conference on Vagueness and Language Use, and my editors and referees. Address for correspondence: Department of Linguistics, New York University, 726 Broadway, 7th floor, New York, NY 10003 USA. Email: [email protected] Mind & Language, Vol. 24, No. 3 June 2009, pp. 253–273. © 2009 The Author Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd