Video Transcript: Fallacies of Ambiguity

Hi, I'm David Feddes and this talk is about fallacies of ambiguity. These errors occur with  ambiguous words or phrases, the meanings of which shift and change in the course of  discussion. Ambiguity means something can go more than one way it can have a couple of  different meanings. And in a fallacy, you use one meaning in this part of the argument, but  then the meaning shifts, and you use a different meaning of the same word or phrase in a  different part of the argument. Why are fire engines red? They have four wheels and eight  firefighters, four plus eight is 12. There are 12 inches in a foot. One foot is a ruler. A ruler was  Queen Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth was a ship that sailed the seas. The seas have fish, the fish  has fins, Finns hate Russians. The Russians are red. fire engines are always rushin'. So fire  engines are red. That was obvious and clear reasoning wasn't it? equivocation is a fallacy that uses the word in a different way than the author used in the original premise, or changing  definitions halfway through a discussion. When we use the same word or phrase in different  senses. Within one line of argument, we commit the fallacy of equivocation. Here are a couple of examples. The Bible teaches election. Election is voting for leaders. Therefore the Bible  teaches the importance of voting for our leaders. Well, actually, when the Bible teaches  election, it is teaching the doctrine of God's choice of persons for his purposes or for  salvation. And that meaning of election is quite different from our more common meaning of  election as voting for leaders and to say that the Bible teaches voting for your leaders.  Because the Bible contains the doctrine of the election is equivocating on the word election.  Another example, the Bible says that we are saved by grace. Grace is having good manners  and dignity. Therefore, the Bible teaches that we are saved by good manners and dignity. You  see the equivocation on the word grace in the Bible. Grace is God's undeserved favor to sinful people. But sometimes, people use the word grace nowadays to mean good manners and  dignity. And if you're using an argument that says, hey, the Bible says we're saved by grace  and then you shift the meanings of what the Bible means by grace to the way we currently  use that word, then you're going to get a false conclusion when you say the Bible teaches that were saved by good manners, and dignity, and amphibole, is somewhat like equivocation,  except it's dealing more with the grammar than with the meaning of individual words.  statements with ambiguous grammar can mean different things. A fallacy occurs when a  statement is misunderstood and then used to draw an inference. Groucho Marx said one  morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas, I'll never know. You  see, the phrasing is such that you could mean the elephant had the pajamas on even though  Groucho is the guy that probably had the pajamas on when he shot the elephant. Sometimes  you get bullets and bloopers, don't let worry KILL YOU LET THE CHURCH help. Well, does that  mean Let the church help you? Or does that mean Let the church help kill you. So words are  the way things are phrased, can have different meanings. A couple more examples of  amphibole. To take care of creation, we should save soap and waste paper. Therefore, you  should try harder to waste more paper. Well, again, it depends kind of how you pronounce  that. To take care of creation, we should save soap and waste paper. So we want to save soap  and waste paper waste paper is the paper that you throw away. But it could also be taken to  mean as the verb do you want to waste more paper, therefore you should try harder to waste  more paper. There's different meanings of that grammar. Holy Angels and Demons are  powerful. Therefore we should be thankful for the Holy demons as well as the holy angels. He  said, Well, there are no such things as holy demons. But when it's phrased a certain way, you  say Holy Angels and Demons, you can apply the word holy, to just angels or you might apply  it to mean holy angels and holy demons. Just like we might say, funny boys and girls, you  might mean the only the boys are funny and the girls aren't. But you also might mean that  both the boys and the girls are funny. Holy Angels and Demons. What's that mean? Does it  mean only the holy angels and the demons don't get that adjective holy applied to them. Well and amphiboli will take the wrong meaning and draw a wrong conclusion because if you know its context, you know that the word holy applies only the angels. If you didn't know the  context, you might think that holy also applied to demons. Another fallacy is composition  that's inferring that something that's true of a part must be true of the whole. There are some examples. a grain of sand weighs very little, so this truckload of sand weighs almost nothing.  Now a grain of sand, it does weigh very little. And so that's a part of the truckload. But if you 

infer that the truckload has the same quality as the grain, you would be making a false  inference. Another atoms are not alive. Therefore, anything made up of atoms is not alive.  Physicists don't consider atoms to be living things. And yet all living things are made out of  atoms. So something that's true of the part is not true of the whole. Another example, each  church in a denomination is unified, therefore the denomination is unified. But what if one  church in the denomination is unified around one set of ideas and practices, and another  church in the denomination is unified around an entirely different set of practices? Let's say a  denomination has one church that favors same sex marriage, and all the people there believe  in it, and they're unified around it. And another church in the denomination opposes same sex marriage, and everybody in the congregation is agreed on in opposing that, while the two  churches might be unified, but they're not unified with each other, and you could multiply all  sorts of examples of a church that's unified in supporting Christian education, and another  church really is in favor of Christian of public schools and their children going to the public  schools, they might all be agreed on within their congregation, but not in agreement with  each other. So you see the fallacy of composition. Just because something can be said about  one part does not mean that it can be said about the whole. The fallacy of division kind of  works in the opposite direction. That's reasoning that what's true of the whole must also be  true of the individual parts. For instance, each church has all the spiritual gifts that are  needed, those are supplied by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, each member has all the spiritual  gifts that are needed. Well, the church as a whole might have a variety of gifts, all of which  contribute to the life of the church and supply each member what they need. But that does  not mean each member individually has all the spiritual gifts just because the whole church  does. Another fallacy of division, Jesus came to save the world, therefore every individual in  the world will be saved. Well, just because he came to save the world as a whole, does not  mean that every individual in that world is saved. That's the fallacy of division, assuming that  what's true of the whole, when God redeems his whole creation, that means that he's going to redeem every individual part of that creation, as well, the Bible often speaks of God  redeeming the whole creation of Jesus saving the world. And it also often speaks of individuals within that world, being lost and not having to share in that salvation. And it's the fallacy of  division to take a statement about the whole, and then insist that it's true of every part within that whole. reification is a fallacy in which you treat an idea or an abstraction, like a concrete  thing. For example, past generations fought Hitler and other enemies and won, therefore, we  must fight today's enemy, poverty and win. Now, Hitler was a real man, and the Germans had a real army, and fighting them was quite a different thing than taking something abstract like  poverty, and deciding that you can win against that. Now, I'm not saying Poverty isn't real in a certain sense, but it's not real in the same way that Hitler and his armies were real, you can  shoot at them, you could try to conquer them. And poverty is quite a different thing. Or  another example of reification Mother Nature knows how to fight back. Therefore, don't mess  with Mother Nature, or she will punish you. Mother Nature is not some sort of vengeful female  person who gets offended by you, and then punches back. If you offend her. This might just  be of course, a figurative way of saying hey, don't mess up the earth or pollute the earth or  you're probably going to pay a price because if you ruin your own environment, how are you  going to live? So it can be a figurative way of saying that but when you start talking as though Mother Nature is, itself a living thing that takes offense and gets angry and upset and comes  after you, if you're not behaving properly, then that's reification taking an idea or an  abstraction like nature as a whole and turning it into a person. So those are some of the  fallacies of multiple meanings or equivocation that we want to avoid. And we need to be able  to understand then how we use our words, understand when we're speaking figuratively, but  be very careful not to use double meanings in and use one meaning here another shift the  meaning over there and then reach a conclusion that simply does not follow