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Ambiguity vs. Generality: Removal of a Logical Confusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Lawrence Roberts
Lawrence Roberts*
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Binghamton
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Extract

Ambiguous terms (e.g., ‘bank,’ ‘pen’) are applicable to different kinds of things, but so are general terms, since a general kind (e.g., ‘animal’) may include various species. Thus a bank may be the side of a river or a certain kind of financial institution, and an animal may be a dog or a cat. Similarly, an ambiguous sentence is true in different kinds of situations, and so is a general sentence in that different specific situations may make the same general sentence true. Thus the sentence, The bank collapsed yesterday,’ can be true of different varieties of banks, and the sentence, The animal is untrained,’ can be true of different varieties of animals. These similarities of ambiguity and generality have led many linguists and philosophers to confuse the two. Basic to this confusion is a failure to notice a difference in the scopes of disjunctions involved in ambiguity and generality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 295 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1984

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