Ambiguity. A property of linguistic expressions, primarily. An expression is ambiguous if it has two or more distinct meanings. Back in the day a guy asked me, "Where's your head, man?" I thought he was inquiring into my psychological state, but he merely needed to relieve himself. 'Head' is ambiguous. In its nautical use it refers to a toilet. Ambiguity is either syntactic or semantic. The example lately offered is semantic.
Amphiboly. An amphiboly is a syntactic ambiguity. Scope ambiguity is one subspecies. Consider 'Whatever happens must happen.' On an innocuous parsing with the modal operator operating on the whole sentence, it comes out a trivial logical truth:
Necessarily, whatever happens, happens.
But if the modal operator is imported into the sentence and attached to the consequent of the conditional, we get a probably false piece of fatalist metaphysics:
Whatever happens, necessarily happens.
Equivocation. An equivocation is a semantic ambiguity. Consider this abortion argument:
The fetus is a part of a woman's body.
A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with any part of her body.
Therefore
A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with the fetus, including having it killed.
Is 'part' being used in the same sense in the first and second premises? If not, the argument succumbs to the fallacy of equivocation. I would say that the argument does so succumb. For the minor to be uncontroversially true, the term 'part' must be given a narrow reading that exclude the fetus. But for the major to be true, 'part' must be construed broadly so as to include it. Ergo, etc.
Vagueness. If an ambiguous expression harbors a multiplicity of distinct meanings, a vague expression lacks a definite meaning. Ambiguity and vagueness should therefore not be confused. To have multiple definite meanings is not the same as to have no one definite meaning.
Generality. Statements divide into the singular and the general. General statements divide into the universal, the particular, and the generic. 'Socrates is a man' is singular. 'All men are mortal' and 'Some mortals are men' are universal and particular respectively. 'Germans are industrious' is generic. For more on generics see Generic Statements.
Please avoid the phrase 'vague generalities.' Just as you shouldn't confuse ambiguity with vagueness, you shouldn't confuse vagueness with generality. Most generalizations have a definite meaning.
Disambiguation. If an expression is ambiguous, then it cries out for disambiguation. To disambiguate is to remove ambiguity by listing the different meanings of a word or phrase or sentence.
Class dismissed.
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