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Equivocation
In logic, equivocation ("calling two different things by the same name") is an informal fallacy resulting from the use of a particular word/expression in multiple senses within an argument. It is a type of ambiguity that stems from a phrase having two or more distinct meanings, not from the grammar or structure of the sentence. Fallacy of four terms Equivocation in a syllogism (a chain of reasoning) produces a fallacy of four terms (). Below are some examples: : Since only man umanis rational. : And no woman is a man ale : Therefore, no woman is rational. The first instance of "man" implies the entire human species, while the second implies just those who are male. : A feather is light ot heavy : What is light rightcannot be dark. : Therefore, a feather cannot be dark. In the above example, distinct meanings of the word "light" are implied in contexts of the first and second statements. : All jackasses ale donkeyhave long ears. : Carl is a jackass nnoying person : There ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mental Reservation
Mental reservation (or mental equivocation) is an ethical theory and a doctrine in moral theology that recognizes the "lie of necessity", and holds that when there is a conflict between justice and veracity, it is justice that should prevail. The doctrine is a special branch of casuistry (case-based reasoning) developed in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. While associated with the Jesuits, it did not originate with them. It is a theory debated by moral theologians, but not part of Canon law. Secular use It was argued in moral theology, and now in ethics, that mental reservation was a way to fulfill obligations both to tell the truth and to keep secrets from those not entitled to know them (for example, because of the seal of the confessional or other clauses of confidentiality). Mental reservation, however, is regarded as unjustifiable without grave reason for withholding the truth. This condition was necessary to preserve a general idea of truth in social relations. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Informal Fallacy
Informal fallacies are a type of incorrect argument in natural language. The source of the error is not just due to the ''form'' of the argument, as is the case for formal fallacies, but can also be due to their ''content'' and ''context''. Fallacies, despite being incorrect, usually ''appear'' to be correct and thereby can seduce people into accepting and using them. These misleading appearances are often connected to various aspects of natural language, such as ambiguous or vague expressions, or the assumption of implicit premises instead of making them explicit. Traditionally, a great number of informal fallacies have been identified, including the fallacy of equivocation, the fallacy of amphiboly, the fallacies of composition and division, the false dilemma, the fallacy of begging the question, the ad hominem fallacy and the appeal to ignorance. There is no general agreement as to how the various fallacies are to be grouped into categories. One approach sometimes fou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fallacy Of Four Terms
The fallacy of four terms ( la, quaternio terminorum) is the formal fallacy that occurs when a syllogism has four (or more) terms rather than the requisite three, rendering it invalid. Definition Categorical syllogisms always have three terms: :Major premise: All fish have fins. :Minor premise: All goldfish are fish. :Conclusion: All goldfish have fins. Here, the three terms are: "goldfish", "fish", and "fins". Using four terms invalidates the syllogism: :Major premise: All fish have fins. :Minor premise: All goldfish are fish. :Conclusion: All humans have fins. The premises do not connect "humans" with "fins", so the reasoning is invalid. Notice that there are four terms: "fish", "fins", "goldfish" and "humans". Two premises are not enough to connect four different terms, since in order to establish connection, there must be one term common to both premises. In everyday reasoning, the fallacy of four terms occurs most frequently by equivocation: using the same word or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fallacy Of Four Terms
The fallacy of four terms ( la, quaternio terminorum) is the formal fallacy that occurs when a syllogism has four (or more) terms rather than the requisite three, rendering it invalid. Definition Categorical syllogisms always have three terms: :Major premise: All fish have fins. :Minor premise: All goldfish are fish. :Conclusion: All goldfish have fins. Here, the three terms are: "goldfish", "fish", and "fins". Using four terms invalidates the syllogism: :Major premise: All fish have fins. :Minor premise: All goldfish are fish. :Conclusion: All humans have fins. The premises do not connect "humans" with "fins", so the reasoning is invalid. Notice that there are four terms: "fish", "fins", "goldfish" and "humans". Two premises are not enough to connect four different terms, since in order to establish connection, there must be one term common to both premises. In everyday reasoning, the fallacy of four terms occurs most frequently by equivocation: using the same word or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evasion (ethics)
In ethics, evasion is an act that deceives by stating a true statement that is irrelevant or leads to a false conclusion. For instance, a man knows that another man is in a room in the building because he heard him, but in answer to a question, says, "I have not seen him," thereby avoiding lying and also avoiding making a revelation. Evasion is described as a way to fulfill an obligation to tell the truth while keeping secrets from those not entitled to know the truth. Evasions are closely related to equivocations and mental reservations; indeed, some statements fall under both descriptions. Question dodging Question dodging is a rhetorical technique involving the intentional avoidance of answering a question. This may occur when the person questioned either does not know the answer and wants to avoid embarrassment, or when the person is being interrogated or questioned in debate, and wants to avoid giving a direct response. Overt question dodging can sometimes be employed hu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
If-by-whiskey
Noah S. "Soggy" Sweat Jr. (October 2, 1922February 23, 1996) was an American judge, law professor, and state representative in Mississippi, notable for his 1952 speech on the floor of the Mississippi state legislature concerning whiskey. Reportedly the speech took Sweat two and a half months to write.Clarion Ledger , "On June 3, Soggy's speech will come to life" 25 May 2003 The speech is renowned for the grand rhetorical terms in which it seems to come down firmly and decisively on both sides of the question. The speech gave rise to the phrase if-by-whiskey, used to illustrate such equivocation in argument. Career Sweat was elected to the House in 1947, at the age of 24. He served only one five-year term, at the end of which he delivered his speech.''The Clarion Ledger'', Saturda ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Circumlocution
Circumlocution (also called circumduction, circumvolution, periphrasis, kenning, or ambage) is the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea. It is sometimes necessary in communication (for example, to work around lexical gaps that might otherwise lead to untranslatability), but it can also be undesirable (when an uncommon or easily misunderstood figure of speech is used). Roundabout speech is the use of many words to describe something that already has a common and concise term (for example, saying "a tool used for cutting things such as paper and hair" instead of "scissors"). Most dictionaries use circumlocution to define words. Circumlocution is often used by people with aphasia and people learning a new language, where simple terms can be paraphrased to aid learning or communication (for example, paraphrasing the word "grandfather" as "the father of one's father"). Among other usages, circumlocution can be used to construct euphemisms, innuendos, and equiv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
When A White Horse Is Not A Horse
When a white horse is not a horse is a paradox in Chinese philosophy attributed to Gongsun Long, a philosopher of the Warring States period. It appears in the form of a dialogue between two unnamed speakers who debate the proposition "a white horse is not a horse". The original text The dialogue constitutes a chapter of the eponymous ''Gongsun Longzi''. The purported author, also known as "Master Gongsun Long" (fl. 284-259 BCE), was counted among the School of Names in the Hundred Schools of Thought. Most of Gongsun's writings have been lost; the received ''Gongsun Longzi'' text contains only six of the supposed 14 original chapters. Parts of the text are dislocated; thus, some commentators and translators rearrange them for clarity. The dialogue is between two unnamed speakers: This dialogue continues with deliberations over colored and colorless horses and whether ''white'' and ''horse'' can be separated from ''white horse''. Other ''Gongsun Longzi'' chapters discuss "white h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syntactic Ambiguity
Syntactic ambiguity, also called structural ambiguity, amphiboly or amphibology, is a situation where a sentence may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous sentence structure. Syntactic ambiguity arises not from the range of meanings of single words, but from the relationship between the words and clauses of a sentence, and the sentence structure underlying the word order therein. In other words, a sentence is syntactically ambiguous when a reader or listener can reasonably interpret one sentence as having more than one possible structure. In legal disputes, courts may be asked to interpret the meaning of syntactic ambiguities in statutes or contracts. In some instances, arguments asserting highly unlikely interpretations have been deemed frivolous. A set of possible parse trees for an ambiguous sentence is called a ''parse forest''. The process of resolving syntactic ambiguity is called ''syntactic disambiguation.'' Different forms Globally ambiguous A globall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Principle Of Explosion
In classical logic, intuitionistic logic and similar logical systems, the principle of explosion (, 'from falsehood, anything ollows; or ), or the principle of Pseudo-Scotus, is the law according to which any statement can be proven from a contradiction. That is, once a contradiction has been asserted, any proposition (including their negations) can be inferred from it; this is known as deductive explosion. The proof of this principle was first given by 12th-century French philosopher William of Soissons. Priest, Graham. 2011. "What's so bad about contradictions?" In ''The Law of Non-Contradicton'', edited by Priest, Beal, and Armour-Garb. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 25. Due to the principle of explosion, the existence of a contradiction ( inconsistency) in a formal axiomatic system is disastrous; since any statement can be proven, it trivializes the concepts of truth and falsity. Around the turn of the 20th century, the discovery of contradictions such as Russell's par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polysemy
Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word has a single meaning. Polysemy is distinct from homonymy—or homophony—which is an accidental similarity between two or more words (such as '' bear'' the animal, and the verb ''bear''); whereas homonymy is a mere linguistic coincidence, polysemy is not. In discerning whether a given set of meanings represent polysemy or homonymy, it is often necessary to look at the history of the word to see whether the two meanings are historically related. Dictionary writers often list polysemes (words or phrases with different, but related, senses) in the same entry (that is, under the same headword) and enter homonyms as separate headwords (usually with a numbering convention such as ''¹bear'' and ''²bear''). Polysemes A polyseme is a word or phrase w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plausible Deniability
Plausible deniability is the ability of people, typically senior officials in a formal or informal chain of command, to denial, deny knowledge of or responsibility for any damnable actions committed by members of their organizational hierarchy. They may do so because of a lack or absence of evidence that can confirm their participation, even if they were personally involved in or at least willful blindness, willfully ignorant of the actions. If illegal or otherwise disreputable and unpopular activities become public, high-ranking officials may deny any awareness of such acts to insulate themselves and Blame#Blame shifting, shift the blame onto the agents who carried out the acts, as they are confident that their doubters will be unable to prove otherwise. The lack of evidence to the contrary ostensibly makes the denial plausible (credible), but sometimes, it makes any accusations only cause of action, unactionable. The term typically implies forethought, such as intentionally setti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
