It is self-evident that I am responding to you, and that the language of my response is English. You can see for yourself that it is so, or you will be able to when I have posted my comment. It might not be self-evident to someone who does not speak English, but since I speak English it is evident to me that you speak English, and thus it will be evident to you that I am speaking English. If an infant were to see these posts, it would not be evident that a discourse was going on, they would see a rather dull screen. So in this sense, things only become self-evident in the light of other things of experience. However, the light of experience fully entitles me to conclude that English does not get written by accident, and thus that you speak English and we are not going to argue about that.

Accordingly, to refine a little, "some truths are self-evident in the light of other knowledge that does in fact obtain."

In what contexts does self evidence arise? Taken literally, it would mean a claim is evidence of itself. Examples of this are 'This sentence is in English' and 'This sentence is grammatically correct in English.' There is also an imagined opponent who might attempt to doubt the alleged self evident claim, and this marks the phrase as occurring only in debate; otherwise the justificatory nature of 'self evidence' would be irrelevant. But by what means do the claims evince themselves?

I think a sufficient condition for "X is self evident" is "X cannot be doubted without performative contradiction". Considering that self evidence arises only in reference to concepts in debate, it's worthwhile to note that the space for 'performative contradictions' is confined to the actions which constitute philosophical debate; various forms of argument, descriptions, and introduction of axioms or already given premises. I imagine 'performative contradiction' has to be meant in a very strong sense here, something like 'by the very way you have made claim X, this necessitates not-X as a matter of logic'.

There is always a context in which a claim is made, and presumably self evidence of a claim is derived from a privileged kind of relation a claim has to its underlying context. If the problems of debate are always questions of some form, then self evidence comes from the framing of a question and the way that framing relates to the underlying context of the debate/questioning procedure. I think this means the analysis should begin from a description of different philosophical constructs self evidence may apply to. I think a reasonably typology might be; axioms and already-given premises | and argument strategies.

The notions of 'axioms' and 'already given premises' are probably the chief sites of claims of self-evidence. But argument forms can operate by being self evident too - like the logical movement of transcendental deduction, which travels from premise to conclusion upon the basis of the impossibility of conceiving otherwise. Derivatives of that such as revealing implicit structures in phenomenology probably have a similar structure - moving from premise to conclusion through some 'expansive rephrasing' of the premise in a manner that exhibits the premise's 'ground'. (to the extent that phenomenological descriptions can be said to have premises anyway)

For axioms - they aren't used by philosophers very often I believe, I can think of Descartes, Spinoza, Ayn Rand, Badiou and Laruelle as people who make use of axioms in some manner in their arguments. Certainty of God, a bunch of stuff about God and substance, a bunch of stuff about ZFC set theory and as a complicated discursive construction antithetical to philosophical thought respectively. However axiomatic systems don't necessarily need the axioms to be self evident - all that matters is that they are posited and operations are done within the rules demarcated by the axiomatic system. More poetic and less formalistic treatments of axioms, like in Rand and Badiou, treat axioms as necessary descriptors capturing the underlying features of some domain of study (all objects for Rand, the nature of the Real for Badiou), but 'self evidence' doesn't have to be used to justify them (like Rand does for A=A).

For already given premises and argument forms - I think these are more slippery to analyse. I believe that already given premises arise out of the questions asked and the argument forms sought to answer them - so these two regimes of self evidence have a large degree of overlap in their targets; they are both correct on pain of the arguer unravelling their own arguments in the making. As if nascent errors unfolded diachronically in the exposition of their negation; rather as if they couldn't. ;)

The premises could be supplied either by a person making an argument or an opponent - or an imagined opponent within the same discursive context. I imagine already given premises to function as purportedly necessary consequences or assumptions of the logical procedures that are operative within in the argument. By this I mean whatever means a debater uses to move from one point to another - like from premise to conclusion. As an example of a logical procedure, I have in mind something like 'rule-following' in Wittgenstein, and as a specific example: during an argument we don't assume there's a possibility of an evil demon destroying all of our knowledge and making all our inferences invalid. Or modus ponens if an argument was set out like a logical proof.

Though, exactly what rules philosophers must play by to be doing philosophy (or to correctly reason from point to point), if there are any universal or broadly applicable rules to begin with, are up for debate. Laruelle has some interesting points on this (see Ray Brassier's summary article 'Axiomatic Heresy' for a slightly more readable form of his arguments). I think Habermas has some ethical conclusions to draw from the purported structure of philosophical operations in discourse. Regardless, there is a supposition of the 'givenness' of a primordial and perhaps unarticulated philosophical structure in order to relate to the claims which are derived from it on pain of performative (that is, philosophical-logical here) contradiction. Which is something Derrida criticises in transcendental idealist and phenomenological traditions by attacking the givenness of experience and its metaphysics of presence.

I think theres's quite a lot of evidence for the ability of philosophers to disagree with each other on everything, every viewpoint has an inverse, every argument a counter point. What is likely is that 'self-evidencing' claims are justified by nothing more than a framing effect of their assumed relation to whatever context of debate they arise in. Self-evidence of a claim has a dark mirror in the questions it seeks to silence.

Some interesting stuff. In my experience, the "X is self-evident" is asserted as a context-independent truth, that some things are literally impossible to deny if you actually understand what the terms mean. So not just in a debate or argument, but that some truths are simple inescapable.

Self-evidence of a claim has a dark mirror in the questions it seeks to silence.

You should put that on a mug. It sounds oddly profound, lol.

'actually understanding what the terms mean' still implicates contextualised learning. There's the classic example of 'all bachelors are unmarried men' which is true by virtue of the definition of bachelor and unmarried man. But, if you showed it to someone who didn't know any of the surrounding terms of marriage, they wouldn't instantly arrive at the truth of the claim because they don't know the meaning of terms, true by definition.

Apparently these language learners are insufficiently cultured savages who won't know self-evident truth when they see it. Truth by virtue of definition is still truth due to X, definition is a somewhat emergent act taken by a community of language users, not a free-floating equivalence in the realm of enlightened English speakers.

is self-evident that I am responding to you, and that the language of my response is English. You can see for yourself that it is so, or you will be able to when I have posted my comment. It might not be self-evident to someone who does not speak English, but since I speak English it is evident to me that you speak English, and thus it will be evident to you that I am speaking English. If an infant were to see these posts, it would not be evident that a discourse was going on, they would see a rather dull screen. So in this sense, things only become self-evident in the light of other things of experience. However, the light of experience fully entitles me to conclude that English does not get written by accident, and thus that you speak English and we are not going to argue about that. — unenlightened

So it's self-evident to those who see it as self-evident, and not self-evident to those who do not see it as self-evident. How does that help MindForged with the problem described? This seems to be a description of the same problem. Some people insist that something is self-evident while others do not see it as self-evident. Wouldn't the person claiming self-evidence be required to justify it, to demonstrate self-evidence, rather than just asserting self-evidence? Then this would refute the claim that the self-evident doesn't need to be justified. It doesn't need to be justified only to those who see it as self-evident. But there will always be those children, or speakers of different languages, who do not see it as self-evident, so the self-evident will always need to be justified.

So it's self-evident to those who see it as self-evident, and not self-evident to those who do not see it as self-evident. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. Evidently we agree.

But there will always be those children, or speakers of different languages, who do not see it as self-evident, so the self-evident will always need to be justified. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. to teach someone a language is not to justify anything to them, it is to indoctrinate them into a community.

No. to teach someone a language is not to justify anything to them, it is to indoctrinate them into a community. — unenlightened

So you don't think that the will is free? You believe that we learn by being indoctrinated rather than through the will to understand? If we learn by understanding, then those principles must be justified or else they would not be understood. If we learn by being indoctrinated then the principles are accepted as necessary without being understood.

So you don't think that the will is free? You believe that we learn by being indoctrinated rather than through the will to understand? If we learn by understanding, then those principles must be justified or else they would not be understood. If we learn by being indoctrinated then the principles are accepted as necessary without being understood. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think you are free to make up the meaning of words, rather you are obliged to adhere to the meanings assigned by the community. To learn the language is to learn that bachelors are unmarried men - free will is not in play.

I don't think you are free to make up the meaning of words, rather you are obliged to adhere to the meanings assigned by the community. — unenlightened

Hmm, why don't you come and teach that lesson to my kids, then I might start to understand some of their contrary terminology. I think, that just like we are free to act morally or immorally, we are also free to use the words however we like. But consequences follow from our actions, and these consequences define what you'd call our obligations. In reality, the so-called obligations are nothing but a desire for positive consequences.

Well yeah, people reject indoctrination - especially when the indoctrination places them at a disadvantage, say black kids in the US for example. And that's bad, motherfuckers! Have you been indoctrinated into that contrary language, or into cockney rhyming slang or any of the languages of resistance? Are you saying that this is evidence against what I am saying? Are you suggesting that your kids can't understand me?

we are also free to use the words however we like. — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure we are, but note the 'we' there. We are a community, and to understand our language is to be inducted into the community and become to that extent part of the 'we' to whom the inversions are self-evident. The inversions are predicated on the understanding of the original, which may eventually fall into disuse and be forgotten, at which point the new language has become simply the language.

Are you saying that this is evidence against what I am saying? Are you suggesting that your kids can't understand me? — unenlightened

No, what I am saying is that the will to be indoctrinated is just as necessary to the process of indoctrination as the actions of the indoctrinators, as an essential part of indoctrination. And that's why justification of the indoctrination, on the part of the indoctrinators is necessary. Without justification the will to be indoctrinated is lost and there is no success for the indoctrinators. If you want to indoctrinate children on language use, then they need to be shown the benefits of language use. You cannot just insist that the benefits are self-evident, because prior to being shown the benefits, the child would not know the benefits. This is what justifies the indoctrination, being shown the benefits of it, and without that justification there would be no success for the indoctrinators, because the will to be indoctrinated would be lost.