How to Think Straight by Antony Flew

Author:Antony Flew
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781615922154
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2014-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

5.13 Vagueness, too, can be a fault. The first thing to notice about vagueness is that it ought not to be, although it often is, equated with ambiguity. To say of some word or expression or of some whole statement that it is ambiguous is to say that it can be construed in at least two different ways. (See, for instance, paragraphs 1.14–1.15 and 4.4–4.12.) Anyone who says this asks for, and should be ready to meet, the challenge: What two interpretations do you want to distinguish?

5.14 To complain of vagueness is to complain that what has been said is unacceptably indeterminate in some relevant dimension. To promise to stop by during the afternoon is to make a less precise commitment than to promise to arrive between four and six o’clock. Neither the more vague nor the more precise of these alternative promises is in any obvious way ambiguous. Equally a person may call something ambiguous without either of its alternative interpretations being such as to expose that person to the charge of imprecision. Suppose, however, that you ask me: “How did you expect them to behave?” Then your question will be importantly ambiguous. For it might reasonably be construed as an inquiry: either about what I had believed that they would in fact do; or about what I had considered that they ought to have done. Yet in neither of these different interpretations would your question have been in any obvious way vague or imprecise. Since this ambiguity of the word “expect” is one we need to keep in mind, I must follow some of my own advice (see paragraph 4.9). Let the first of the two senses just distinguished be labeled descriptive and the second prescriptive.

5.15 The second thing to notice about vagueness is that it is not a fault in a language that it provides, or provides for, some words and expressions that are more vague than others. It is reasonable to complain only when and insofar as “what has been said is unacceptably indeterminate in some relevant dimension.” Suppose that I am in no position to say more about my time of arrival than that it will be during the afternoon. Then it must be unjust to condemn me for not specifying closer limits, and it would be an awkward defect, not a merit, in my language if it rendered me unable to say the only thing I was entitled to assert. The traditional stock example of a vague term is the word “bald.” No doubt we could so redefine this word that in its future correct usage it implied some specific density of, or some specific total, hair population. But this would be a silly move. For we should be exchanging a humbly serviceable tool, which we often have occasion to employ, for a shiny new piece of futile equipment, which in our normal everyday life we never should be in a position to use correctly.

5.16 Vagueness, insofar as it is a matter of “what

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.