As J notes, philosophers can be the grandest equivocators.
I thought 'equivocality' was ALL-ways a wrong word. Till I got hold of Warner's reprint of Grice's Kant Lectures.
Grice's handwriting left a lot to be desired (by those who read it).
When Warner typed the thing, he used the italic-cum-non-italic type. I.e. a word which is italic in part, but not in OTHER part(s).
Thus
equivocality
Grice handwrote in such a way that in Warner's reprint it becomes or comes out as:
equivocality.
----
Most philosophers (before Grice, notablly Hocke and Lobbes) disparaged equivocality. Grice and I are not sure these two philosophers would have disparaged 'AEQUIvocality'. (I prefer the spelling 'ae-').
Why?
Well,
Grice applies 'aequi'-vocality to the famous Kant pair. As is well known, Kant wrote two books. One he originally entitled,
"Critique of pure reason"
The other, less originally,
"Critique of practical reason".
Grice found that they should be two parts of the same book -- by Kant, sure. But he fails Kant is not emphatic enough about 'reason' meaning the SAME thing in the titles of the two (rather disparate) books. This is VERY anti-Humean.
---
So Grice wants to say that if you say,
"It must snow in January".
--- i.e. "It is necessary that it will snow in January".
------ or, if you prefer, "that a circle should not be square".
----
the MEANING of 'must' is the same as when we say,
---- 'Every Englishman must do his duty'.
------- or something less vacuous if you must! (I thought Nelson should have defined what an Englishman should do in less 'circular' terms, since I find, 'to ought to do one's duty' such a redundancy that it hurts ALL of Grice's maxims!).
----
So there!
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There are a few flavors of Equivocation, are there not? Usually it's a pun of a sort, but... there are formal equivocations as well. In the days when the boneheads aka protestants were running rampant in Engeland, suspected priests, and really any papists were often put to trial--and would at times use a clever equivocation to avoid outright mendacity. Shakespeare's Fools also engage in similar quasi-logic...FoolLogic
ReplyDeleteand who can forget Ambrose Bierce's equivocationally exquisite def. of syllogistic!
Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds; therefore –
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
QED.
Actually, I'm not entirely sure what fallacy AB points out here (though he's taking advantage of an ambiguity in the first premise)
Yes, we should analyse that. I'm posting a new post on equivocation qua fallacy for our enjoyment!
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