Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
Obscurity and Profundity	tonyrey	11/30/05
............................................ Apparently simple questions, like "What is goodness?" are among the most difficult to answer. Is obscurity and even a degree of unintelligibility to be expected in profound explanations?
Answered By		Answered On
Jim.McGinness		11/30/05
Philosphy Magazine, in the most recent issue I have — though it is a few months old — did a multi-faceted treatment of what it called the intractables. Profound questions, such as "What is Goodness?", "What is Justice?", and the Mind-Body problem, have been discussed for thousands of years. Obscurity and unintelligibility are often signs that a purported explanation is no explanation at all. Because these questions have been around so long, the territory that an explanation must cover is known to have many traps for the unwary. By following a tortuous path around these pitfalls, some writers believe they are blazing a true path — even though few readers can follow. If an explanation is sufficiently obscure, it becomes irrefutable.

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