Abstract for Chris Barker's talk

Clarity and the grammar of skepticism
Chris Barker (New York University)
April 12, 2007 (Thursday)
4:15 PM - ; Room 6417, The CUNY Graduate Center

Why ever assert clarity? After all, if "It is clear that Abby is a doctor" is true, then saying so seems at best superfluous, since it must already be obvious to everyone that Abby is a doctor. Barker and Taranto (2003) and Taranto (2006) suggest that asserting "It is clear that p" reveals information about the beliefs of the discourse participants, specifically, that they both believe that p. The belief theory of clarity makes a number of accurate predictions, including that "It is clear that p" fails to entail p (perhaps contrary to initial impressions). However, the belief theory is both too weak and too strong: belief is not sufficient to guarantee clarity ("It is clear that God exists"), and clarity is possible without belief ("It is reasonably clear that p"). I will propose that "It is clear that p" means instead (roughly) `the publicly available evidence justifies concluding that p'. 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, then the semantics of clarity constitutes a grammatical window into the discourse dynamics of knowledge and skepticism.

[The manuscript on which the talk is based is available at:
http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/zExYWRkY/barker-clarity.pdf]