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Question I often find myself to be impatient, often frustrated, when people claim something to be 'obvious', and never more than when I think that they are using it incorrectly. An example of this might be "obviously, Hitler was an evil man", or "obviously, it's better to be poor and happy than rich and sad" - this is because I wish justification for their claim, and do not want to simply accept it (in these cases because of popular opinion). I realise that both of these examples are ethical, but is there anything that is understood by philosophers to be obvious (and by obvious I mean without need of qualification or justification)?

Accepted:
April 10, 2006

Comments

A fair bit of philosophy consists in arguing that things most people think are obvious could in fact be wrong, and so are not really obvious at all. So I hesitate to offer an example of something that most philosophers would agree to be obvious.

But here goes: simple logical truths, such as statements of the form 'P or not-P'. Actually, certain logicians have a problem with that one. So maybe the denial of a simple contradiction would be better, something like 'It is not the case that both P and not-P'. Even there you have a few philosophers who balk, but they are in small (though interesting) minority.

Another sort of possible example of the obvious would include certain claims to do with observation. Not, of course, straightforward claims like 'There is a table in front of me'. Philosophers have a lot of trouble with those. But claims like 'It seems to me that there is a table in front of me' strike many people, even many philosophers, as pretty obvious.

There is an old story told about the famous mathematician X [insert favorite famous mathematician's name]. X had just claimed in class that some result was obvious when a student raised her hand and expressed some uncertainty. X looked puzzled, then sat down and began to think. Minutes, then hours, went by while X was deep in thought. The class period was just about over when X raised his head and triumphantly proclaimed: "Yes, I was right: it is obvious!"

The joke here is related to what makes your question a little peculiar. You want a justification for some claim that is being advanced as obvious? Its being so advanced presumably indicates that the speaker believes it to be in less need of justification than any premises he might offer in an argument for its justification.

Furthermore, if justification consists of an argument, then it must have premises (or starting assumptions) that are not themselves argued for. And the justification will fail to be persuasive if the hearer does not accept those premises as obvious. So, in demanding a justification for the obvious, you don't escape the need to take something to be obvious; you rather push it along to some claim that you are, for the moment at least, content to let stand.

If I may reply in terms of personal experience: when students start"doing philosophy", one of the first thing they (need to) learn isthat what seems obvious to x may be much less so to y. As soon as things become interesting, they stop being obvious. Yet I have noticed that this is not the only important lesson about "obvious". For once they have understood therelativity of "obviousness" then they also need to realize that no answer in terms of “obviously p” will ever convince anyonewho was not already convinced that p in the first place. Philosophy is not doneadverbially, as it were, since “obviously (clearly, truly, certainly…) 2 + 2 =4” is no more (nor less) convincing that “2 + 2 = 4” as a reply to someone whoshare a different sense of the obvious. So there are no obvious p on which philosophers agree (or they would not discuss them) and no obvious way (i.e. "obviously") to tackle them.