Fallacies of Ambiguity

A landlord's notice says tenants may not keep “pets” in the flat, and one tenant argues her aquarium fish don't count because nobody walks a fish. She may even be right — but she is exploiting exactly the kind of shift in meaning this topic studies: the point where an argument trades on a word, or a whole sentence, doing two different jobs at once.

In two minutes

A fallacy of ambiguity happens when a word, phrase, or sentence structure can genuinely be read in more than one way, and the argument depends on silently switching between those readings to make its conclusion look supported.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Logic – II on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.