  But it is not clear that the Open Question Argument proves even this much. Another criticism, forcefully urged by Michael Smith, is that the Open Question Argument seems to prove too much, being just a particular instance of the piece of reasoning embodied in the Paradox of Analysis. The practice of conceptual analysis, this reasoning goes, aspires to provide real philosophical illumination; however, if all analytic truths have to be as obvious as “a bachelor is an unmarried male”, then all pieces of conceptual analysis must be either false or trivial. That conclusion would be highly embarrassing to much modern philosophy (Smith 1994, 37–39).  But once we allow that analytic truths may be unobvious, the appearance of openness in the question whether an \(N\) thing is a good thing ceases to look very significant.