Is anyone else concerned with the ubiquitous use of undefined terms in philosophical discourse?

As philosophers, or as people with philosophical ambitions, we should be more concerned with the linguistic and conceptual problems that vagueness and ambiguity impose on the information we transmit through our philosophical discourse. Vagueness and ambiguity affect our ability to evaluate the meaning of the information contained in a sentence or a word, thus rendering it logically impossible to determine the truth-value of any statement thereby expressed. To be clear, a statement is the meaning intended by any sentence which is capable of being true or false. A sentence is simply the linguistic vehicle through which a statement is expressed. Multiple sentences may express the same statement (“Every man is a mortal” and “All men are mortal” are different sentences that express the same thing). Moreover, a sentence may allow for multiple statements to be plausibly expressed (“The organ is not working” the word “organ” can denote either a body part or a musical instrument).

Sentences which allow for more than one known and reasonable interpretation of its meaning are ambiguous. This is because the information contained by the sentence is capable of conveying more than one distinct meaning, and thus is capable of expression more than one distinct statement. If the sentence “John is at the bank” can mean either that John is at the edge of a river, or that John is at a financial institution, then there is no way to distinguish whether or not the sentence expresses a true or false statement. This may seem trivial in the example, but it is crucial for the application of logic. Since we apply logic to guide our moral, legal, and political decisions in every day life, it follows, then, that our accuracy in the application of logic is very important indeed.

In order for us to accurately apply logic, we must therefore learn how to disambiguate the informational content and structures of our sentences so that they only allow for the expression of one truth bearing statement. However, before we learn how to disambiguate the information we intend to transmit through a sentence, it is important to understand how to distinguish between information which has ambiguity from information which has vagueness.

Information which has ambiguity occurs whenever the meaning of a word, phrase, or sentence has several interpretations as a result of not being explicitly defined (“Right to bear arms” the word “Right” may denote “correctness” or “Something which cannot be infringed upon” and the phrase “Bear arms” may denote “The limbs of an animal” or “To acquire weapons”). Information which has vagueness, on the other hand, occurs whenever the meaning of a predicate cannot be precisely defined because, though it may clearly apply to the majority of cases, it cannot however be clearly applied to border line cases, thus making it difficult to form any interpretation with a high level of specificity (“That is a big rock” the word “big” is successfully applied in practical use, but it is not clear where to draw the line where objects are no longer big without a relative frame of reference).

It should be noted that semantic ambiguity occurs when an expression has multiple senses when uttered out of context. There are several subtypes of semantic ambiguity, one of which occurs at the word level and is called lexical ambiguity. Lexical ambiguity is ambiguity which offers a choice between multiple known and meaningful interpretations of a word or phrase depending on context of its usage (the word “bank” is an example of lexical ambiguity with multiple distinct lexical definitions, such as “financial institution” and “rivers edge”).

However, there are semantic ambiguities which are much more difficult to detect than lexical ambiguities (when a word form corresponds to more than one meaning). For example, the sentence “The moon is lighter than the raven” has lexical ambiguity stemming from the word “light” (describing either weight or color), which is much easier to detect than say syntactic ambiguities. Syntactic ambiguities, such as in the sentence “I saw the neighbors down the street with a telescope” are much harder to detect or determine the meaning of. This is because the constituents of the sentence, though all may be individually understood semantically, are syntactically structured in such a way that understanding their pragmatic meaning is problematic because it is not clear what exactly the sentence means. Did they use a telescope to see the neighbors down the street? Did they see the neighbors down the street holding a telescope? Was it the neighbors next-door who were seen down the street, or was it the neighbors who stay down the street? As you can see, it is quite possible for the information contained in the sentence to be interpreted in many different ways, thus expressing many distinct statements, which could subsequently undermine the successful communication of information.

This is an issue commonly observed in casual language users when people, often undisciplined to use precision of language, presuppose that others share the meaning of the language they use. This is why people of this sort spend time arguing about which flavor of ice cream is the best. They usually aren’t aware of the vagueness imposed on the term “best” or that it is utterly dependent upon the taste preferences relative to an individual. If they did it would be clear that each argument is correct if framed subjectively and predicated relative to the individual who the statements is indexed to. However, in their ignorance of such vague application of the predicate, they use it in an objective manner which makes no sense whatsoever (if we define “subjective” as the dependence of a mind, and “objective” otherwise as the independence of a mind).

In the philosophy forum, we should expect to observe two things regarding vagueness and ambiguity. First, a far more extensive, interdisciplinary vocabulary as compared to common language users by virtue of the scope and breadth of philosophy upon all domains of research. Second, an intense concern for how we apply logic consistently as we use language which accurately represents the information we intend to communicate in our legal, political, and ethical discourse, as well as a disciplined, systematic approach to minimize our dependence of interpretation regarding the information we encode into signals which we subsequently transmit via linguistic messaging insofar as the abstracted meanings allowed of such messages, once the signals are received and information is decoded, is of limited variation, if not precisely defined.

Precisely defined means that the terms we use are not vague to the point of obfuscation, nor are they ambiguous to the point of equivocation. This means that if one intends to encode information onto a linguistic vehicle in the form the sentence “Numbers are real” that one makes sure to define terms such as “numbers” and “real”. This is important because if we define “numbers” as abstract entities which act as variables representing a quantity, and define “real” by conventional standards as that which is true, which subsequently is defined as that which comports to the state of affairs, we then realize that the actual truth value of the statement is a function of the way the world is (according to correspondence theories of truth). In other words, it is a description of the nature of reality — of that which exists in the world, not as a mere being, as such can be fictitious entities, but rather as a thing the truth of which is obtained by its very existence in the world.

Therefore, the sentence “Numbers are real” expresses a statement which makes a claim about the nature of reality. In philosophy, such claims are metaphysical, and so the truth value of such a statement refers to the metaphysical concept of “truth”. However, if the statement was framed a little differently, so as to claim “I know that numbers are real” then the issue becomes whether or not the subject knows the truth value of a statement making a metaphysical claim, and thus it becomes a claim about the nature of knowledge rather than of reality. As such, the sentence would be considered a statement referring to the epistemological concept of “truth”. Sentences expressing statements which make a claim about what is true are metaphysical, whereas sentences expressing statements making claims about what one knows is true are epistemological.

These are just a few examples of how philosophical discourse has both an increased complexity, thus increased proclivity towards ambiguity and vagueness, and an increased need for the disambiguation of the semantic structure and content of words and sentences, the disequivocation of border line case predicates, and the intensification of meaning without a proliferation of redundancies.

To review:

The meaning of an undefined term is wholly dependent upon the interpretation of the reader. A bayesian approach would lead us to infer that terms are most likely to be interpreted in their most common usage. Admittedly, as members of the philosophy forum, we can presume a higher awareness of, not only the vagueness and ambiguity which plagues the communication of common language users, but also of the interdisciplinary specificity, and controversy in defining philosophically diverse terms. This in-itself, however, offers little aid for the meaningless use of undefined terms in philosophical discourse.

In fact, if we don’t take the time to clarify our use of a term and employ it consistently throughout our discourse, then a higher awareness of vagueness, ambiguity, specificity, and generality of terms will only serve to further obfuscate the semantics of our discourse rather than provide any elucidation. With the realization of vague, ambiguous, discipline specific, generalized or otherwise controversially defined terms, we only increase the diversity, and thus the complexity of our meanings.

To increase the semantic complexity of our discourse without proper clarification or specification of the terms therein, is analogous to increasing the terrain complexity of a geographical location, while providing no additional map to guide us through. How can a discussion about such things as God, reality, consciousness, truth, morality—or even unspecified subsets of ideological or philosophical subjects such as liberalism or realism, have sufficient meaning in the absence of precise definitions?

In conclusion, since we can only share our meaning through the way we use a term, and better yet, if we provide a definition for key terms we are using in our discourse, then we, especially us engaged in philosophical discourse, must be more attentive to possible alternative interpretations, and be far more scrupulous in our efforts to minimize them.