Logical Fallacies 5: Equivocation

Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4fujI8CpI0&feature=watch_response

            Consider for a moment the first joke I ever got.

Q: How do you stop a skunk from smelling?

A: By holding its nose.

            Now consider a joke used in a Mastercard commercial a few years ago.  The setting was various African locations with natives passing this particular joke from one to another.

“How you stop a rhino from charging?”

(Repeat several times)

“Give him an American Express Card.”

“You got a hair cut.”

“I got ‘em all cut.”

            Now let’s turn our attention to a debate Dan Barker had with Dinesh D’souza at Memorial Chapel at Harvard University.  D’souza indicated the laws of nature; the law of conservation of energy, the law of entropy, the law of gravity, the inverse-square law, etc.  He argued that, surely, the existence of laws establishes the existence of a law-giver; a law-maker; a great, transcendent legislator of some sort.

            Now what if someone were to reason: “If God is love, love is blind, and my father’s brother is blind, then God must be my uncle.”?

            It may not be apparent, but these are each the same logical fallacy: equivocation, in which one vacillates between different meanings of the same word.  The reason examples one, two, and three are funny is the very reason examples four and five are erroneous.

            Example one equivocates on the meaning of the word “smell” vacillating between “to smell” as in “to produce an unpleasant odor” and “to smell” as in “to perceive with one’s olfactory sense.”

            Example two equivocates on “charge” which could describe the act of approaching an intended target with all available speed in an effort to collide with it or the act of paying for a purchase with credit.

            Example three equivocates on “hair” which could refer to a single follicle or a cluster of them.

            Example four equivocates on “law” which could refer to something determined by observation and extrapolation to the end of describing observable phenomena or to something brought into existence by legislation with the intent to establish enforceable limitations on human behavior.  In one sense a law is something which already exists which we have to figure out by studying the observable world; something formulated as an instrument of description and prediction and in the other, it is something brought into existence and established by us as a means of regimentation.

            And finally, example five equivocates on the word “is.”  When one says that “God is love,” one is saying that God and love are the same thing.  Here, “is” is being used to link a subject to an object.  But in “Love is blind,” and “My father’s brother is blind,” “is” links the subject in question to a predicate adjective which describes something about it.  (John Allen Paulos)

            The claim “God is love” has the same significance as the claim that “Love is God.”  If the two are the same, that makes them interchangeable.  But clearly, “My father’s brother is blind” is a far cry from saying “blind is my father’s brother.”  Clearly “blind” and “my father’s brother” are not interchangeable.  Of course not.  One is a noun and one is an adjective.  Nouns and adjectives are not interchangeable.

            “Speculation” has a completely different significance in the colloquial or scientific sense then in the sense of commerce, business, or economics.  In the sense of science or colloquialism, “speculation” describes the act of following lines of reasoning to make educated guesses about something.  But in commerce, business, and economics, “speculation” describes the act of buying something in the hope that its price will increase and one can sell it later for a profit.  Both are the same word.  But though one depends on the other, both are clearly not the same thing.

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A: To get the Chinese newspaper.

Q2: Did you get it?

A2: Neither did he.

            What if someone is talking about getting something?  Well, one can get a new bike, one can get groceries, or one can get a concept.  Do you get it?

            This is a fallacy you really have to watch out for when dealing with a language barrier.  Different languages usually equivocate different ways.  Different senses of the same word in one language are often different words in another language.  Consider the sentence: “I’m tired of being tired.”  What does it mean?

            It means “I’m fed up with being in a state of fatigue.”  These are two very different senses of the word “tired.”  Thus, it’s hardly surprising that, in Spanish, these are two different words.  “Tired” as in “in a state of fatigue” is “cansado,” and “tired” as in “fed up” is “harto.”

“¡Estoy harto de estar cansado!” is how this would be said in Spanish.

            Now consider this:

“I have complete confidence (faith) in the system of beliefs (faith) we accept on assumption (faith).”

            When someone asks, “Don’t you have any faith?” what are they asking?  Are they asking about assumptions, belief, a system of beliefs, or confidence?  After all, one can have plenty of faith (confidence), but no faith (religion), or vice-versa.  The two don’t necessarily go together.

            Now as far as I know, the United States is the only country in the first world where monolingualism is the norm; that is, where the majority of the populace speaks only one language.  This makes us more susceptible than a lot of places in the first world to this particular fallacy.  So this is something we have to be especially wary of.

            I’ve dabbled in a few other languages, and I know of none that equivocate nearly as much as English seems to.  The joke is made that the United States and the United Kingdom are separated by a common language.  The joke is also made that all English-speakers should be sent to an asylum for the verbally insane.  In what other language can one have a nose that runs and feet that smell?  A building burns down as it burns up.  An alarm comes on as it goes off.  A fat chance and a slim chance are the same while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites.