Suppose Carol is judging a debate between Alice and Bob. Alice says “X, because Y”. Bob acknowledges the point, but argues “actually, a stronger reason for believing not-X is Z”. Alice acts like she doesn’t understand the point. Bob tries explaining in other words, without success.
Carol, following your advice, says: “Alice made a clear point in favor of X. Bob failed to make a clear point against X.” Therefore, she judges the debate outcome to be in favor of X.
However, this is Carol abdicating her responsibility to use her own judgment of how clear Bob’s point was. Maybe it is really clear to Carol, and to a hypothetical “reasonable person” (significantly less smart than Carol), that Z is a good reason to believe not-X. Perhaps Z is actually a very simple logical argument. And so, the debate outcome is misleading.
The thing is that in any judgment of clarity, one of the people involved is the person making that judgment; and, they are obligated to use their own reasoning, not only to see whether the point was understood by others. You can’t define clarity by whether someone else understood the point, you have to judge it for yourself as well. (Of course, after making your own judgment about how clear the point was, you can define the statement’s clarity as whether you judged it to be clear, but this is tautological)
But in this scenario, understanding still lives inside Carol’s head, not Alice’s.
I wasn’t suggesting that someone like Carol abdicate responsibility in this sort of situation. The point is that it’s still on Alice to get someone to understand her. Who needs to understand her depends on the situation. Clarity without understanding seems meaningless to me. (Perhaps see reply to Zvi: can we taboo ‘clarity?’)
Suppose Carol is judging a debate between Alice and Bob. Alice says “X, because Y”. Bob acknowledges the point, but argues “actually, a stronger reason for believing not-X is Z”. Alice acts like she doesn’t understand the point. Bob tries explaining in other words, without success.
Carol, following your advice, says: “Alice made a clear point in favor of X. Bob failed to make a clear point against X.” Therefore, she judges the debate outcome to be in favor of X.
However, this is Carol abdicating her responsibility to use her own judgment of how clear Bob’s point was. Maybe it is really clear to Carol, and to a hypothetical “reasonable person” (significantly less smart than Carol), that Z is a good reason to believe not-X. Perhaps Z is actually a very simple logical argument. And so, the debate outcome is misleading.
The thing is that in any judgment of clarity, one of the people involved is the person making that judgment; and, they are obligated to use their own reasoning, not only to see whether the point was understood by others. You can’t define clarity by whether someone else understood the point, you have to judge it for yourself as well. (Of course, after making your own judgment about how clear the point was, you can define the statement’s clarity as whether you judged it to be clear, but this is tautological)
But in this scenario, understanding still lives inside Carol’s head, not Alice’s.
I wasn’t suggesting that someone like Carol abdicate responsibility in this sort of situation. The point is that it’s still on Alice to get someone to understand her. Who needs to understand her depends on the situation. Clarity without understanding seems meaningless to me. (Perhaps see reply to Zvi: can we taboo ‘clarity?’)