"new," yet say something worthwhile.
Suppose I catch a student plagiarizing. I'm
Sometimes The Obvious Can Work Like
Insight
By TIMOTHY CHAMBERS
November 22, 2009
In a delightful new book, David Denby argues
that we live in an "age of snark."
What's that? Well, snark is when I reply to
speakers, not by engaging their ideas, but by
venting scorn on them.
A person approaches me, for example, and
dejectedly says something obvious: "People are
sometimes very selfish." Now suppose, instead
of offering consolation, I sarcastically sneer:
"Uh-huh. Yeah. Tell us something we don't
know." That's snark.
So, if a someone says something that everyone
knows, should we conclude that the speaker's
words weren't worth saying?
No. A speaker's words might not add to the facts
we know — and yet, the words' effects make
them valuable.
Think of Hans Christian Andersen's tale, "The
Emperor's New Clothes." In the pivotal final
scene, the emperor parades through town naked,
yet proudly insists he is showing off his new
"clothes." None of his subjects say anything.
Then, a child pipes up: "But he has nothing on!"
In an instant, the town's laughter thunders upon
the emperor's head.
Because, although everyone knew the emperor
was naked, no one realized that everyone —else
— saw things in the same laughable way. The
child prompted everyone to "compare notes."
Then, the hilarity ensued.
Clichés are another way we might say nothing
troubled over what to do. I share my plight with
another teacher.
"Well," she sighs, "to err is human."
I'd be grateful for her counsel. She hasn't
revealed any new facts. Instead, she's shifted
how I interpret those facts. Perhaps it's not an
arrogant student trying to bamboozle me.
Perhaps, instead, it's a student, suffering personal
and academic stresses, who made an all-too-
human moral error.
Cliches usually work — not as teachers of new
facts — as invitations to interpret a new situation
in a familiar way.
In a similar vein, metaphors don't give us new
facts; they just change the way we see the facts.
For instance, it was wonderful when I read the
first two lines of Sylvia Plath's poem
"Insomniac."
"The night is only a sort of carbon paper," she
writes. "Blueblack, with the much-poked periods
of stars."
Plath didn't add to my store of astronomical
knowledge or tell me any facts I didn't know. But
she invited me to see the sky I knew in a new
way. And, much like the exhilaration we feel
when we spy a clever optical illusion, I always
have to catch my breath when I look at the night
sky in the way Plath proposes.
So, in response to the snarker whose sarcasm
opened this essay, we see that valuable words
need not report new facts. They can reassure us
that we're not alone in our view of the world.
They can salve our perplexity in the face of a
troubling world. They can also enhance our
experience of the world. If these boons don't
make words worth saying, what else possibly
could?
•Timothy Chambers teaches philosophy at the
University of Hartford.
 “Sometimes the Obvious Can Work Like Insight”
Some Discussion Questions

1) In short, what are the three ways Chambers says one might “not add to the facts we

know—and yet…[still say something] valuable?” Can you think of other categories?

2) Read Hans Christian Anderson’s story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Read it

carefully. Might Chambers be oversimplifying when he describes the child as “saying

something everyone knows”? Might the case, carefully read, deserve to be placed in one

of Chambers’s other two categories? (Might we need a fourth category?)

3) Consider the “dejected” speaker in Chambers’s example of “snark.” He’s not saying

anything we don’t know. Why, then, is it worthwhile to say it? Is this covered by one of

Chambers’s three categories? Or do we need to frame a new category to cover it?

4) Notice Chambers’s shift between Chambers’s main question (at paragraph 4) and his

answer (at paragraph 5). Specifically, are the following two claims equivalent?

(a) What John said is a fact that everyone knows

(b) What John said didn’t add to the facts that everyone knows

Think of some examples. Is it possible for (a) to be true of a situation, while (b) is false

of that situation? Vice-versa?

5) Chambers compares the effect of Sylvia Plath’s metaphor to “the exhilaration we feel

when we spy a clever optical illusion.” How good is this simile? Discuss Chambers’s

simile in the context of this optical illusion:1

1
The duck-rabbit is classically discussed in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (§§ 118ff).
Perhaps it comes as no surprise that Wittgenstein was John Wisdom’s most influential teacher.
6) Compare Chambers’s thesis to the following passage by philosopher John Wisdom

(emphasis added):2

I should like to say what I aim to do in these lectures and then do it. But there are
difficulties about this. [As a philosopher,] I have nothing to say—nothing except
what everybody knows….Now scientists don’t have to feel like this. They tell us
what we don’t know until they tell us—how very fast germs in the blood breed
and that this stuff will stop them….Even if I were a historian it would be better.
Maybe you don’t want to know just how the Abbey at Bury St. Edmunds was run
in the time of Abbot Samson, but at least you probably don’t know and if only I
did I could tell you. But as it is: [1] I haven’t anything to say except what
everybody knows already. And this instantly puts into my head a thought….
‘Have I [as a philosopher] anything to say at all worth saying?’….[But] I want
to urge that [2] one who has nothing to say except what everybody knows
already may yet say something worth saying and I want to bring out a little
how this happens.

More specifically, Chambers’s essay concerns point [2].3 But we can also consider
Wisdom’s first question:

(a) Is philosophy a case where we only say things that “everybody knows”?

(b) If so, which of Chambers’s three categories captures philosophical claims?

Or might different philosophical claims occupy different categories? Or
might we need more categories to capture the kind of “Everybody-knows-
that”-feature of philosophical claims?

2
From: John Wisdom, “The Modes of Thought and the Logic of God,” in The Existence of God, edited by
John Hick (NY, 1964), pp. 275-298. The essay also appears in Wisdom’s essay-collection, Paradox and
Discovery (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), pp. 1-22. For further discussion of these matters, in a different spirit,
see Wisdom’s dialogue, “Epistemological Enlightenment,” in Owl of Minerva: Philosophers on Philosophy
edited by Charles J. Bontempo and S.Jack Odell (McGraw-Hill, 1975), chapter 18. (“Epistemological
Enlightenment” was originally an address before the American Philosophical Association, in 1971.)
3
As best as I can tell, Wisdom seems to place philosophy in Chambers’s third “metaphor”-category. An
example of his from “Epistemological Enlightenment” (op cit) seems to fit in with his second “cliché”-
category. But don’t take my word for it: read John Wisdom’s essays—they’re well worth it. 