[lit-ideas] Clarity Is Not Enough

From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2013 22:17:23 -0500 (EST)

In a message dated 2/18/2013 10:13:47  P.M. UTC-02, 
RichardHenninge@xxxxxxxxxxx writes in post: Re Conant
I think it  cannot be the RESULT of philosophy
"to make propositions clear": this can  only be its TASK. The result must be
that the propositions now have become  clear that they ARE clear." (Letters
to C. K. Ogden [Oxford: Blackwell,  1973], p. 50)

One can see why Ogden might have found this  unhelpful.


----

Fascinating quote.

Oddly, Grice found  'clarity' fascinating. In his earlier Oxford Lectures 
on Conversation, he speaks  of a DESIDERATUM OF CLARITY:

Initially, Grice posits two desiderata:  those relating to CANDOUR on the 
one hand, and CLARITY on the other. 

The  desideratum of CANDOUR contains his general principle of making the 
strongest  possible statement and, as a limiting factor on this, the 
suggestion that  speakers should try not to mislead.

THE DESIDERATUM OF CLARITY concerns  the MANNER of expression for any 
conversational contribution. It includes the  importance of expectations of 
relevance to understanding and also insists that  the main import of an 
utterance 
be CLEAR and explicit.

But then, by this  time, Oxford philosophers (unlike Witters) were being 
challenged by Lewis who  proposed that CLARITY IS NOT ENOUGH.

Witters:

"I think it cannot  be the RESULT of philosophy
"to make propositions clear"".

"this can  only be its TASK."

"The result must be
that the propositions now have  become clear; that they ARE clear." 
(Letters
to C. K. Ogden [Oxford:  Blackwell, 1973], p. 50)


Conant: "One can see why Ogden might have  found this unhelpful." which R. 
Henninge implicates that _Conant_ did.

I  wouldn't know because I never saw an OBSCURE proposition -- I don't have 
an idea  what a clear proposition may look like.

Caravaggio either --  

Chiaroscuro originated during the Renaissance as drawing on coloured  
paper, where the artist worked from the paper's base tone towards light using  
white gouache, and towards dark using ink, bodycolour or watercolour.[2][3]  
These in turn drew on traditions in illuminated manuscripts, going back to 
late  Roman Imperial manuscripts on purple-dyed vellum. Such works used to be 
called  "chiaroscuro drawings", but are more often described in modern 
museum  terminology by such formulae as "pen on prepared paper, heightened with 
white  bodycolour".[4] Chiaroscuro woodcuts began as imitations of this 
technique.[5]  When discussing Italian art, the term is sometimes used to mean 
painted images  in monochrome or two colours, more generally known in English 
by the French  equivalent, grisaille.  

Cheers,
 
Speranza
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[lit-ideas] Clarity Is Not Enough

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