Philosophy - Philosophy Course Notes

Language Considerations - Critical Thinking

Lecture 7

May 13, 2007

The following four language issues can affect the analysis and evaluation of arguments.  These linguistic factors can help or disguise bad arguments:

1. Ambiguity

2. Vagueness

3. Emotionally charged / euphemistic language

4. Faulty definitions

The above factors are the cause of many fallacies.  A fallacy is a pattern of reasoning which seems plausible but contains an error of reasoning.

I. Ambiguity

A term is ambiguous if it might be meant to mean more than one thing.

The fallacy of equivocation is when it is impossible for both meanings of a word used in different premises to be true at the same time.  This fallacy causes the argument to fail on either the A or the G conditions.

1.  If it fails on the Acceptability condition because it is impossible for all of the premises to be true.

2. If it fails on the Grounds condition, it means that the argument is invalid because the meaning between the words changed in two or more premises.

II. Vagueness

Vagueness occurs when the meaning of a word is not clear due to borderline cases or the context the word appears in.  Vagueness is often a useful feature of our language.  But we should remember that patterns of reasoning that work well for precise terms might not work well for vague ones.

Vagueness is a feature of a single meaning for a word while ambiguity is a problem of multiple meanings.

III. Emotionally Charged and Euphemistic Language

These two problems are 'two sides of the same coin', the same problem in excess or defect.

A lot of words in our language possess not only a literal content but also an emotional one.  Two descriptions could have the same content but one could posses an overly positive or negative emotional element.

Emotionally charged language is when someone uses loaded or abusive language to describe something that could have been described in more neutral terms.

A euphemism is when someone tries to whitewash or minimize a problem.  They are using deliberately bland terms.  This is very common in politics.

IV.  Faulty or Persuasive Definitions

In a debate, the affirmative side is the one that usually gets to define the terms.  Thus everyone is using the same meaning for a word.

This can cause problems if someone defines a word to have a different meaning than most people are used to.   This is sometimes called the problem of persuasive definitions where a person defines a term in a non-legitimate way in order to win an argument.

eg. real democracies, real Scotsman

The problem of bait and switch definitions like this is that the meaning is sometimes changed halfway through a debate.  The person is deliberately committing the fallacy of equivocation.  One of the meanings has been introduced by stipulation by the arguer.