PHI 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: The History Teacher

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHI 1101
• Professor: Iva Apostolova

Document Summary

Both are a result of the way that we use words and not a property of the words. Ambiguity and vagueness themselves should be avoided whenever possible. Ambiguous statement: two+ different but usually quite precise meanings: referential ambiguity: the referring word or phrase can be interpreted as pointing to more than one thing. Either the person is confused about which thing we"re referring to, or the person believes that we"re referring to the wrong thing. Referential ambiguity between the collective and the distributive use of the word: When we refer to every object within a class of objects, we use the word distributively. When we refer to the class as a whole, we use the word collectively. Eg: look at the big family at the other end of the mall the amount of people is big or the size of the each of the family"s body is big? (probably mean collective, all together) Eg: your dog may have kidney problems.