Equivocation

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Equivocation is the misleading use of a word with more than one meaning (by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time).

There are two closely-related uses of the word

• In formal logic: equivocation is a type of logical fallacy, also known as ambiguity, and closely linked with amphiboly.
• Outside formal logic: equivocation is a technique for misleading opponents used by people who want to be able to claim that they have "not actually lied".

Contents 1 In formal logic 2 Outside formal logic 3 See also 4 External links 5 References

[edit] In formal logic

Equivocation is the use in a syllogism (a logical chain of reasoning) of a term several times, but giving the term a different meaning each time. For example:

A feather is light.

What is light cannot be dark.

Therefore, a feather cannot be dark.

In this use of equivocation, the word "light" is first used as the opposite of "heavy", but then used as a synonym of "bright" (the fallacy usually becomes obvious as soon as one tries to translate this argument into another language). Because the "middle term" of this syllogism is NOT one term, but two separate ones masquerading as one (all feathers are indeed "not heavy", but is NOT true that all feathers are "not bright") equivocation is actually a kind of the fallacy of four terms.

The fallacy of equivocation is often used with words that have a strong emotional content and many meanings. These meanings often coincide within proper context, but the fallacious arguer does a semantic shift, slowly changing the context as they go in such a way to achieve equivocation by treating distinct meanings of the word as equivalent.

In English language, one equivocation is with the word "man", which can mean both "member of species Homo sapiens" and "male member of species Homo sapiens". A well-known equivocation is

"Do women need to worry about man-eating sharks?"

where "man-eating" is taken as "devouring only male human beings".

A separate case of equivocation is metaphor:

A Jackass is a male member of the species Equus asinus

All Jackasses have long ears

Karl is a jackass

Therefore, Karl has long ears

Here the equivocation is the metaphorical use of "jackass" to imply a stupid or obnoxious person instead of a male ass.

[edit] Outside formal logic

Apart from its use as a technical term in logic, "equivocation" can also mean the use of language that is ambiguous, ie equally susceptible of being understood in two different ways. There is usually a strong connotation that the ambiguity is being used with intention to deceive.

This type of equivocation was famously mocked in the porter's speech in Shakespeare's Macbeth, in which the porter directly alludes to the practice of deceiving under oath by means of equivocation.

"Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven."

(Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3)

See, for example Robert Southwell and Henry Garnet, author of A Treatise of Equivocation (published secretly c. 1595) — to whom, it is supposed, Shakespeare was specifically referring. Shakespeare made the reference to priests because the religious use of equivocation was well-known in those periods of early modern England (eg under James VI/I) when it was a capital offence for a Roman Catholic priest to enter England.

A Jesuit priest would equivocate in order to protect himself from the secular authorities without (in his eyes) committing the sin of lying. For example, he could use the ambiguity of the word "a" (meaning "any" OR "one") to say "I swear I am not a priest", because he could have a particular priest in mind who he was not. That is, in his mind, he was saying "I swear I am not one priest" (eg "I am not Father Brown who is safely in Brussells right now".)

According to Malloch (1966), this doctrine of permissible "equivocation" did not originate with the Jesuits.

Malloch cites a short treatise, in cap. Humanae aures, that had been written by Martin Azpilcueta (also known as Doctor Navarrus), an Augustinian who was serving as a consultant to the Apostolic Penitentiary. It was published in Rome in 1584. The first Jesuit influence upon this doctrine was not until 1609, "when Suarez rejected Azpilcueta's basic proof and supplied another" (Malloch, p.145; speaking of Francisco Suárez).

[edit] See also

• Loki's Wager
• Pun
• Fallacy of four terms

Informal fallacies v • d • e
Special pleading | Red herring | Gambler's fallacy and its inverse Fallacy of distribution (Composition | Division) | Begging the question | Many questions
Correlative-based fallacies:
	False dilemma (Perfect solution) | Denying the correlative | Suppressed correlative
Deductive fallacies:
	Accident | Converse accident
Inductive fallacies:
	Hasty generalization | Overwhelming exception | Biased sample False analogy | Misleading vividness | Conjunction fallacy
Vagueness:
	False precision | Slippery slope
Ambiguity:
	Amphibology | Continuum fallacy | False attribution (Contextomy | Quoting out of context) Equivocation (Loki's Wager | No true Scotsman)
Questionable cause:
	Correlation does not imply causation | Post hoc | Regression fallacy Texas sharpshooter | Circular cause and consequence | Wrong direction | Single cause
Other types of fallacy

[edit] External links

• Equivocation as a figure of speech
• Examples of Ambiguity @ Humbug! Online.

[edit] References

• F.L. Huntley. "Some Notes on Equivocation: Comment", PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Vol. 81, No 1, (March 1966), p.146.

• A.E. Malloch. "Some Notes on Equivocation", PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Vol. 81, No 1, (March 1966), pp 145–146.