Ambiguity

“ For no question can be solved by means of another which itself awaits solution; nor, in the opinion of those possessed of sense, can an ambiguity be explained by means of another ambiguity, or enigmas by means of another greater enigma, but things of such character receive their solution from those which are manifest, and consistent, and clear. ”

“ There is an ambiguity in the use of the term ‘object,’ which has probably been responsible for as many enormous errors in philosophy and psychology as any other single cause. This ambiguity may easily be detected by considering the proposition, which, though a contradiction in terms, is obviously true: That when a man sees a beautiful picture, he may see nothing beautiful whatever. The ambiguity consists in the fact that, by the ‘object’ of vision (or cognition) , may be meant either the qualities actually seen or all the qualities possessed by the thing seen. ”

“ And one of the commonest forms of fallacious reasoning arising from ambiguity, is that of arguing from a metaphorical expression as if it were literal; that is, as if a word, when applied metaphorically, were the same name as when taken in its original sense: which will be seen more particularly in its place. ”

“ But it should not be taken to imply that the ambiguity is for a merely onlooking, beholding psychical mind—especially when the perception is itself regarded as an act of beholding. Nor are we any better off if we suppose the beholding mind to be equipped with a faculty of reason in the form of the principle of "contradiction." ”

“ Clearness in Speeches: This subject has been referred to in Lesson VI, XIII, XVI, and what is there said should here be reviewed not only by those assigned especially to this lesson, but by the whole class. One of the chief faults opposed to clearness is ambiguity. This is defined as follows: "The term 'ambiguity' comes from the Latin ambiguos, which means "wavering" or "uncertain," and an ambiguous sentence is one containing a word, a phrase, or a clause, capable of two or more interpretations." (Composition and Rhetoric, Herrick and Damon, p. 302.) ”

“ This, however, only shows that there is an ambiguity in the word is; a word which not only performs the function of the copula in affirmations, but has also a meaning of its own, in virtue of which it may itself be made the predicate of a proposition. ”

“ Alone is less ambiguous. The ambiguity of only is illustrated by such a sentence as, "Don't hesitate to bring a few friends of yours to shoot on my estate at any time. Only five (fifteen) came yesterday," which might mean, "I don't mind a few; only don't bring so many as fifteen;" or else "Don't hesitate to bring a few more; no more than five came yesterday." In conversation, ambiguity is prevented by emphasis; but in a letter, only thus used might cause unfortunate mistakes. Write "Yesterday only five came," if you mean "no more than five." ”

“ A mind to whom all time is simultaneously present must see all things under the form of actuality, or under some form to us unknown. If he thinks certain moments as ambiguous in their content while future, he must simultaneously know how the ambiguity will have been decided when they are past. ”

“ There is hardly any word which is oftener turned into an instrument of the fallacy of ambiguity than “theory.” There is a class of men in every community, of limited education and narrow observation, who, because they have mingled in the world and dealt with affairs, claim to be preëminently practical men, and ridicule the opinions of thinkers in their closets as the speculations of “mere theorists.” ”

“ To teach the art of writing clearly is the main object of these Rules and Exercises.
Ambiguity may arise, not only from bad arrangement, but also from other causes—from the misuse of single words, and from confused thought. ”

“ If reputation attend these conquests which depend on the fineness and niceties of words, it is no wonder if the wit of men so employed should perplex and subtilize the signification of sounds.—Locke.
It has been remarked by Archbishop Whately that the words whose ambiguity is the most frequently overlooked, and produces the greatest amount of confusion of thought and fallacy, are the commonest,—the very ones whose meaning is supposed to be best understood. “Familiar acquaintance is perpetually mistaken for accurate knowledge.” ”

“ The vague discomfort aroused in one by these epigrammatic productions is due probably to a confusion of kinds. Ambiguity of style keeps one in a perpetual state of tension and self-defense; we ought not to be left in doubt whether the speaker is jesting or serious, mocking or tender. ”

“ There is some ambiguity, if one does not keep guard against it, in what one says of a strong imagination. Strong (it is necessary to understand it by its effects) which goes easily to malaise and even to malady, as fear shows it ”

“ The chief obstacle, therefore, to our improvement in the moral or metaphysical sciences is the obscurity of the ideas, and ambiguity of the terms. ”

“ It is evident that the only check upon their ill-doing lies in the certainty of their disagreement as to the particular kind of confusion which they may think it expedient to create. Some will wish to accomplish their common object by one kind of verbal ambiguity, some by another ”

“ Much ambiguity is also caused by excessive use of such phrases as in this way, of this sort, &c.
"God, foreseeing the disorders of human nature, has given us certain passions and affections which arise from, or whose objects are, these disorders. ”

“ The prospective "it," if productive of ambiguity, can often be omitted by using the infinitive as a subject: "To give indiscriminately is a crime."
*6. Report a speech in the First, not the Third Person, where necessary to avoid ambiguity.* Speeches in the third person afford a particular, though very common case, of the general ambiguity mentioned in (5) . ”

“ It enables the speaker, by the change of a single consonant, to make a full and clear discrimination, and relieves the narration from doubts and ambiguity, where doubts and ambiguity would otherwise often exist. ”

“ We may learn Logic and yet not be able to think; but the science cannot be blamed for the imperfection of the element worked upon, any more than the artificer for the inferiority of the only material within his reach. It is sufficient that Logic, without entering into all the phenomena of mind, provides certain forms which an argument, to be legitimate, must exhibit, certain tests by which fallacy may be detected, and certain barriers against ambiguity in the use of language. ”

“ Case of equivocation when the respondent cannot avoid confutation. 17.3. The ambiguity to be expounded. 17.4. The querist by ambiguity makes two questions, one. 17.5. How reply is to be made. 17.6. What is obscure in argument ought not to be simply conceded. 17.7. Of certain other acts in responsion. Transference of name. Preliminary objections to anticipated questions. Chap. 18. Of True Solution.
18.1. In what consists a true solution. 18.2. What considerations are to be made by those desirous of solving argument. Chap. 19. Of Solution of Elenchi from Equivocation and Ambiguity. ”

“ How do you know that you really exist? Here you are at the end of doubt, and here a still, small voice cries to you, 'I, I am, for I think, I doubt my being; I, the thought, the doubt within me, I exist, even if all around me disappear in illusion and shadow.' Begin with doubt and you can stop at no arbitrary resting-place. ”

“ We see, as knowledge dawns upon it, truth and error strangely commingled; here, a bright spot illuminated by truth-and there, one darkened and distorted by error; and the state of such a soul may be compared to a landscape at early dawn, where the sun is seen superbly gilding some objects, and causing others to send forth their lengthened, distorted, and sometimes hideous shadows. ”

“ And so I entered this world: a being, sliding obscurely in among human beings. But whence, or whither? Those questions belong among the gigantic, terrible ones, insoluble, silent,—the unanswering primeval sphinxes of the mind. We can sit and stare at such questions, and wonder; but staring and wondering are not thought. ”

“ It is a note of crumbling and confusion, of change and seemingly aimless swelling, of a bubbling up and medley of futile loves and sorrows. But through the confusion sounds another note. Through the confusion something drives, something that is at once human achievement and the most inhuman of all existing things. Something comes out of it. ”

“ Alike in ordinary life and in science, even in science where such a result was perhaps hardly to be expected, we found what at least seemed like illusion and what certainly was paradox, and almost against our will we had to conclude that a spirit of contradiction and duplicity and vacillation dwelt at the very centre and the very heart of our human experience. ”

“ The perplexities and ambiguities which arise from our having the same idea presented to us under different aspects, are often difficult to disentangle: and no common acuteness and steadiness of thought must be expended on the task. ”

“ The confusion in the barbaric mind between the objective and the subjective, and between the name [Pg 169] and the person or thing, which has been illustrated in the foregoing pages, will enable us to see more clearly how the like confusion must enter into the interpretation of such occult and compound phenomena as dreams, and all their kind.
They supply the conditions for exciting and sustaining that feeling of mystery which attends man’s endeavour to get at the meaning of his surroundings. ”

“ Some day, at the touch of the true word, the whole confusion will by magic cease; the broken and shapeless notions will cohere and crystallize into a bright and true theory." We are still waiting, no doubt, for that true and final word, but if it is ever spoken, it is likely to be uttered by one of the poets. ”

“ A statement is ambiguous when it leaves the mind of the reader or hearer to fluctuate between two meanings, which would fit the language equally well; it is equivocal when it would naturally be understood in one way, but is capable of a different interpretation; an equivocal expression is, as a rule, intentionally deceptive, while an ambiguous utterance may be simply the result of a want either of clear thought or of adequate expression. ”

“ This was the experience, then, of ‘distinct pre-eminence’ in whose recollection his mind was ‘nourished and invisibly repaired.’ It is in such a moment that the soul’s strength is shown; when common objects evoke what he calls the imagination, the reality, of which they are a suggestion. ”

“ In the contemplation of His essence, our comprehension and knowledge prove insufficient; in the examination of His works, how they necessarily result from His will, our knowledge proves to be ignorance, and in the endeavour to extol Him in words, all our efforts in speech are mere weakness and failure! ”

“ There had seldom been a case in which he had not successfully employed a curious subterranean logic—an apparently wilful insistence upon what seemed at first glance the unvital and immaterial—as a preliminary to a swift volte-face by which he turned the evidence at a new and unexpected angle of inference, and drove home the doubt with a brilliant display of oratory which captivated and—for the moment—convinced. ”

“ Is it possible to trace its connection with some of the noblest feelings of our nature and the most refined ideas of our mind? To a superficial and biassed observer, many things appear contradictory and irreconcilable, which a serious, acute, and dispassionate inquirer after truth readily comprehends, easily connects and accounts for, and satisfactorily reconciles one with the other. ”

“ Have you ever stopped to think that these multiplied impressions might create a current of thought—a mental atmosphere—an inscrutable power of suggestion?”
“Even when one is ignorant? When one does not know the story?” ”

“ The perplexity, confusion, and uneasiness, which we labour under in abstruse inquiries, philosophical, moral, and religious, ought, perhaps, to be referred to this head. Also the secondary perplexity which arises from our being subject to this perplexity, confusion, and uneasiness. ”

“ The instances which we have given of acquired perceptions suggest this affinity, that as, in human languages, ambiguities are often found, so this language of nature in our acquired perceptions is -not exempted from them. We have seen, in vision particularly, that the same appearance to the eye, may, in different circumstances, indicate different things. ”

“ Might not an illusion lurk in the highest interpretation of the word objectivity? We understand by it a certain standpoint in the historian, who sees the procession of motive and consequence too clearly for it to have an effect on his own personality. ”

“ Even if the reason repudiates, the imagination retains, the feeling of some more intimate connection, of some peculiar tie, or mysterious constraint exercised by the antecedent over the consequent. Now this it is which, considered as applying to the human will, conflicts with our consciousness, and revolts our feelings. We are certain that, in the case of our volitions, there is not this mysterious constraint. We know that we are not compelled, as by a magical spell, to obey any particular motive. ”

“ When the nature of things is unknown, or the notion unsettled and indefinite, and various in various minds, the words by which such notions are conveyed, or such things denoted, will be ambiguous and perplexed. ”

“ At times, it seems that you understand that I have a persistent and terrible idea, or that you suspect it, and endeavor to divine what it may be, and at times through my mind there passes the faney—strange, absurd, incredible—but still deludes for the duration of a flash of lightning, and which makes every nerve in my body quiver, this idea that you do know. ”