Original post date: September 2, 2011. What the hell is this, Debbie?

*Debbienote: A “fallacy,” in terms of philosophy, is a mistake in an argument or something in a statement or passage that doesn’t quite line up. Logicians have labels for all the different kinds of fallacies you can commit, one of which is the fallacy of ambiguity – statements that are simply unclear (i.e. ambiguous). Things can be interpreted in several different ways, so since you can’t tell what the actual argument is, the whole argument becomes fallacious. You see a lot of fallacies of ambiguity on the Colbert Report, etc. – they typically aren’t meant to be taken seriously, and are done to be witty. A fallacy of equivocation is a specific type of fallacy of ambiguity. It is the label that is applied to an error in an argument that happens when someone “misunderstands” a word or phrase in a sentence, and equates it to meaning something else.

I know all of this probably doesn’t make much sense. The following post will clarify.

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