For instance, the phrase 'ancient philosophy professor' can mean either a teacher of classical Greek and Roman philosophy, or a very old professor of philosophy 2. Structural: A phrase, sentence, or passage that is grammatically ambiguous.When an argument commits a fallacy based on lexical ambiguity, it is called 'equivocation'―see the subfallacy, above. As noted above, 'note' is lexically ambiguous. Lexical: A word or short phrase that is ambiguous.This can happen when an ambiguous word or phrase occurs more than once in an argument and has different meanings in two or more occurrences. For instance, 'is' is highly ambiguous and has, as a result, caused much mischief in metaphysics, and even politics.Īs a logical fallacy, ambiguity occurs when linguistic ambiguity causes an argument to appear cogent when it is not.

In fact, ambiguity tends to increase with frequency of use, and it is rarely-used technical terms that are unambiguous. Opening any dictionary at random will confirm that it is the rare word that is not ambiguous. This situation is not at all unusual, and 'note' is not an especially ambiguous word. Even the part of speech is ambiguous, since 'note' can be either a noun or verb. In fact, my dictionary 1 lists twenty meanings of 'note', though one of these is archaic. For instance, the word 'note' can mean either: Quoting Out of Context Example: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.Īmbiguity is a feature of language that occurs when a word or phrase has more than one meaning.

Taxonomy: Logical Fallacy > Informal Fallacy > Ambiguity

Def of a red herring logical fallacy