CHAPTER THREE

LOGIC AND LANGUAGE

3.1. PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

Language is the most important thing in the study of logic. Giving that logic is the study
of arguments, and language is the fundamental tool of communication, there is not only
a strong relationship between language and logic but also the former has a prominent
position within the discipline of the latter.

Argument, as the most special subject matter of logic, is nothing but a reasoning process
that is constructed and conveyed through language. The clarification and analysis of
terms and statements is the objective of philosophy in general and logic in particular.

In order to interpret, analyze, and evaluate arguments well, one must pay close
attention to language. Many errors in logic stem from a careless or imprecise use of
language, and many misunderstandings about the nature of language. Any good
argument must be presented by clear, accurate and understandable language.

Philosophy of Language is the reasoned inquiry into the origins of language, nature of
meaning, the usage and cognition of language, and the relationship between language
and reality. It is an important discipline in its own right, and hence, it poses questions
like:

- "What is meaning?",
- "How does language refer to the real world?",
- "Is language learned or is it innate?",
- "How does the meaning of a sentence emerge out of its parts? and other related
issues.

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3.2. LOGIC AND MEANING

3.2.1. The Functions of Language

We use language in many different ways. It is the tool of communication and the means
of expressing ideas. It is the way of conveying information and evoking feelings. Thus,
two linguistic functions are particularly important:

(1) to convey information, and

(2) to express or evoke feelings.

Terminology that conveys information is said to have COGNITIVE MEANING,

Example:
“Death penalty, which is legal in thirty-six states, has been carried out most often in
Georgia.”
Terminology that expresses or evokes feelings is said to have EMOTIVE MEANING.

Example:
“Death penalty is a cruel and inhuman form of punishment.”

These statements accomplish their respective functions through the distinct kinds of
terminology in which they are phrased. Thus, in the first example the words:

“legal,” “thirty-six,” “most often,” “Georgia,” have primarily a cognitive meaning,

While in the second example the words:

“cruel,” and` “inhuman,`` have a strong emotive meaning.

However, since logic is concerned chiefly with cognitive meaning, it is important to

disengage the VALUE CLAIMS of emotively charged statements from the emotive
meaning and treat these claims as separate statements. A value claim is a claim that

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something is good, bad, right, wrong, or better, worse, more important or less important
than some other thing.

Example:
(1) “Abortion is disgusting! I hear that when they do it they have to snip the helpless
little baby into pieces. How horrific! It takes a sick, sick human being to think that
abortion is ok. Or an idiot.”
(2) “Abortion is morally wrong. It would clearly be wrong to end the life of a newborn
baby, because the baby has the potential to be a wonderful human being. But,
unborn fetuses also have the potential to be wonderful human beings. So, if it is
wrong to end an infant’s life, it is also wrong to end a fetus’s life.”

Both of the above passages make what are called value claims. They are BOTH making
the value claim that abortion is bad, or wrong. But, do you notice a difference between
these two passages? The first passage use very EMOTIONAL language. The intent seems
to be to get the listener to share the strong negative emotional reaction to abortion that
the speaker clearly has. But, notice that this first passage does not really offer any
REASONS for having such a reaction. Instead, it merely uses very emotionally charged
words and graphic imagery to force an emotional response in the listener (e.g., words
like “disgusting”, “horrific”, “sick”, and “idiot”, and graphic imagery like “snipping
helpless little babies into pieces”).

On the other hand, the second passage merely cites some obvious facts without using
emotionally charged language at all.

3.2.2. Deficiency of Cognitive Meanings

There are two problems that affect our cognitive use of language; these are VAGUENESS
and AMBIGUITY.

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i). Vagueness:

A linguistic expression is said to be VAGUE if there are borderline cases in which it is

impossible to tell if the expression applies or does not apply. Vague expressions often
allow for a continuous range of interpretations. The meaning is hazy, obscure, and
imprecise.

For instance, terms like “happy”, “sad”, “normal”, “abnormal”, “big”, “small”, “fast”,
“slow”, “excessive”, “moderate”, “dirty”, “clean”, “dangerous”, “safe”, and so on are all
vague, because the definitions of these terms are not clearly laid out. For instance, how
many crumbs have to be on the kitchen floor before we call it “dirty”? How many people
have to die each year in automobile accidents before we call automobile as “dangerous”?
It is difficult to say.

Let’s see the dialogue between Biruk and Tilaye as example:

Bruk: You’re rich.
Tilaye: Me? No way. I only have one automobile and one private jet. Tamirat has
two automobiles and two private jets!
Therefore, how much money does one have to have to be “rich”? Since there is no
definitive answer to this question (the answer is vague), the dispute will not likely be
resolved.

Vagueness can also affect entire statements. Such vagueness may arise not so much from
the individual words as from the way in which the words are combined.

For example, suppose someone were to say,

“Today our job situation is more transparent.”

Then, what is the meaning of “job situation‘‘? Does it refer to finding a job, keeping a job,
filling a job, completing a job, or bidding on a job? And what exactly does it mean for a

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job situation to be “transparent‘‘? Does it mean that the job is more easily perceived or
comprehended? That the job is more easily completed? That the job is more easily
completed? That we can anticipate our future job needs more clearly? Or what else?

ii). Ambiguity:

The other way in which cognitive meanings can be defective is AMBIGUITY. An

expression is said to be ambiguous when it can be interpreted as having more than one
clearly distinct meaning in a given context.

For example:-
Words such as “light,” “proper,” “critical,” “stress,” “mad,” “inflate,” “chest,” “bank,”
“sound,” and “race” can be used ambiguously.
Thus, if someone says, “This is a light beer”, do they mean that it is light in color, light in
calories, or light in taste? If someone was “given a seat”, were they given something to
sit on, or were they given a position in, say, the Senate? If one were to describe an action
as “proper,” does this mean proper in a moral sense or proper in the sense of being
socially acceptable? Or if one were to describe a person as “critical,” does this mean that
the person is essential for a certain task or that the person tends to criticize others?

But, terms are not the only sources of ambiguity. Entire phrases can be ambiguous too.
Consider some of the following humorous HEADLINES from newspapers:
“Local Children Make Delicious Snacks”
“Stolen Necklace Found By Tree”
“Girl Attacked by Bear In Hospital”
Each of these headlines is ambiguous. For instance, in the first example, are the children
MAKING SNACKS themselves, or are people EATING THE CHILDREN? Probably the
children are making snacks. But, not all cases of ambiguity are so easy to disambiguate.

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However, there are many forms of expression that are ambiguous in one context and
vague in another.

For example:-
The word “slow” in one context could mean either mentally retarded or
physically slow, but when the word refers to physical slowness, it could be vague.
How slow is slow? Similar remarks apply to “light”, ‘‘fast,” and ”rich.”

Vagueness and ambiguity in disputes

The role of vagueness and ambiguity in arguments may be conveniently explored in the
context of conflicting arguments between individuals. Such conflicts are called disputes.
There are two forms of DISPUTES:
- VERBAL DISPUTES:- disputes that arise over the meaning of language. These are
disputes in which the apparent conflict is not genuine and can be resolved by
coming to agreement about how some words or phrases is to be understood.
- FACTUAL DISPUTES :- disputes arisen because of the truth or falsity of claims.
In dealing with disputes, the first question is whether the dispute is factual, verbal, or
some combination of the two. If the dispute is verbal, then the second question to be
answered is whether the dispute concerns ambiguity or vagueness. In order to
understand these disputes better, we need to consider the following examples:

Example-1:
Kassa:- Mrs. Zenebech abuses her children. And how do I know that? I saw her
spank one of her kids the other day after the kid misbehaved.
Jemal:- Don’t be silly. Kids need discipline, and by disciplining her children,
Mrs. Zenebech is showing that she loves them.
Here, the problem surrounds the vagueness of the words “abuse” and “discipline”. When
does discipline become abuse? The line separating the two is hazy at best, but unless it
is clarified, disputes of this sort will never be resolved.
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Example-2:
Mullu:- I’m afraid that Dagim is guilty of cheating in the exam. Last night he
confessed to me that he was sate closer to Tsedale, who is the most excellent
student in our class, and takes almost all answers from her.
Worku:- No, you couldn’t be more mistaken. In this country, no one is guilty until
proven so in a court of law, and Dagim has not yet even been accused of
anything.
In this example, the dispute arises over the ambiguity of the word “guilty”. Mullu is using
the word in the moral sense. Given that Dagim has admitted to cheating in the exam, it is
very likely that he did indeed cheated in the exam and therefore is guilty of cheating in
the exam in the moral sense of the term.

Worku, on the other hand, is using the word in the legal sense. Because Dagim has not
been convicted in a court of law, he is not legally guilty of anything. Let`s see disputes
centers on the factual issues.

Example: 1
Debebe:- I know that Fisseha stole a computer from the old school house. Aberash
told me that she saw Fisseha do it.
Maru:- That‟s ridiculous! Fisseha has never stolen anything in his life. Aberash
hates Fisseha, and she is trying to pin the theft on him only to shield her
criminal boyfriend.
Here, the dispute centers on the factual issues of whether Aberash told the truth and
whether Fisseha stole the computer.

3.2.3. The Intension vs. Extension of Terms

One of the causes of ambiguity is derived from confusion between the “INTENSION” and
the “EXTENSION” of a term.

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Intension: The intension of a term, which is otherwise known as connotation, is the list
of attributes or qualities in an object or individual that the term picks out.
For instance, the intension of the term “dog” picks out attributes like
“mammal, four legs, fur”, and other characteristics that dogs all have.
Extension: The extension of a term, which is otherwise known as denotation, is the set
of all the individuals to whom that term applies. For instance, the extension
of the term “dog” picks out individuals like Lassie, Benji, Fido, Sparky, and so
on—in fact, the extension includes ALL of the dogs in the world; past,
present, and future.

Note that some terms can have an empty extension. For instance, the term “unicorn” has
an empty extension, because there ARE NO individuals to whom that term applies (i.e.,
there aren’t any unicorns).

When people disagree with one another, it is sometimes the case that the only reason
they are disagreeing is that one of the parties is using the term to refer to the
INTENSION of that term, while the other party is using the term to refer to its
EXTENSION.

For example: To a cat lover the term “cat‘‘, might connote the attributes of being cuddly
and adorable, while to someone who hates cats it might connote the attributes
of being obnoxious and disgusting.

To avoid this problem, logicians typically restrict the meaning of connotation to what is
usually called the conventional connotation. The conventional connotation of a term
includes the attributes that the term commonly calls forth in the minds of competent
speakers of the language. Under this interpretation, the connotation of a term remains
more or less the same from person to person and from time to time.

3.3. LOGIC AND DEFINITION

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3.4.1. Meaning, Types, and Purposes of Definitions
Words have their own meanings that are to be conveyed through definitions. Definition
is a technical and structural organization of words and/or terms or phrases in
explaining the meaning of a given term. Good definitions are very helpful in eliminating
verbal disputes.

For most logicians, definitions are intended exclusively to explicate the meaning of
words. Hence, we may define definition as a group of words that assigns a meaning to
some word or group of words. Accordingly, every definition consists of two parts:
- the DEFINIENDUM:- that is the word or group of words that is supposed to be
defined, and the
- the DEFINIENS:- that is the word or group of words that does the defining.
For example,
In the definition ‘Tiger’’ means a large, striped, ferocious feline indigenous to the
jungles of India and Asia. The word “tiger‘‘ is the definiendum, and everything after
the word “means‘‘ is the definiens. The definiens is not itself the meaning of the
definiendum; rather, it is the group of words that symbolizes (or that is supposed to
symbolize) the same meaning as the definiendum.
3.4.2. The Types and Purposes of Definitions
There are various kinds of definitions that are actually used in our practical life. Based
on the functions that they actually serve, definitions can be classified into five:
stipulative, lexical, précising, theoretical, and persuasive definitions.
1) Stipulative Definitions
A stipulative definition assigns a meaning to a word for the first time. This may
involve either coining a new word or giving a new meaning to an old word. The
purpose of a stipulative definition is usually to replace a more complex expression
with a simpler one.
2) Lexical Definitions

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 This definition is used to report the meaning that a word already has in a language.
Dictionary definitions are all instances of lexical definitions. Thus, in contrast with a
stipulative definition, a lexical definition may be true or false depending on whether
it does or does not report the way a word is actually used. Because words are
frequently used in more than one way, lexical definitions have the further purpose of
eliminating the ambiguity that would otherwise arise if one of these meanings were
to be confused with another.
3) Précising Definitions
The purpose of a précising definition is to reduce the vagueness of a word. As we saw
in the first section of this chapter, an expression is vague if there are borderline cases
in which it is impossible to tell if the word applies or does not apply. Words such as
‘’fresh,‘‘ ‘’rich,‘‘ and ‘’poor‘‘ are vague. Once the vagueness of such words is reduced
by a précising definition, one can reach a decision as to the applicability of the word
to a specific situation.
For example, if legislation were ever introduced to give direct financial assistance to
the poor, a précising definition would have to be supplied specifying exactly
who is poor and who is not. Hence:
“Poor” means having an annual income of less than $4,000 and a net worth of less
than $20,000‘‘ is an example of a précising definition.
4) Theoretical Definitions
A theoretical definition assigns a meaning to a word by suggesting a theory that gives
a certain characterization to the entities that the term denotes. Such a definition
provides a way of viewing or conceiving these entities that suggests deductive
consequences, further investigation (experimental or otherwise), and whatever else
would be entailed by the acceptance of a theory governing these entities.
For example: The definition of the term “heat” found in texts dealing with the kinetic
theory of heat provides a good example:

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 ‘heat‘ means the energy associated with the random motion of the molecules of a
substance.‘‘
This definition does more than merely assign a meaning to a word; it provides a way of
conceiving the physical phenomenon that is heat.
5) Persuasive Definitions
The purpose of a persuasive definition is to engender a favorable or unfavorable
attitude toward what is denoted by the definiendum. This purpose is accomplished
by assigning an emotionally charged or value-laden meaning to a word while making
it appears that the word really has (or ought to have) that meaning in the language in
which it is used. Thus, persuasive definitions amount to a certain synthesis of
stipulative, lexical, and, possibly, theoretical definitions backed by the rhetorical
motive to engender a certain attitude.
Consider these two examples:
1). “Abortion‟ means the ruthless murdering of innocent human beings.
2). “Abortion‟ means a safe and established surgical procedure whereby a woman
is relieved of an unwanted burden.
3.4.3. Techniques of Definition
i). The Extensional (Denotative) Definitional Techniques
An extensional definition is one that assigns a meaning to a term by indicating the
members of the class that the definiendum denotes. There are at least three ways of
indicating the members of a class:
i. pointing to them (demonstrative or ostensive definitions),
ii. naming them individually (enumerative definitions), and
iii. naming them in groups (definitions by subclass).
1) Demonstrative (Ostensive) Definitions
Demonstrative (Ostensive) Definitions are probably the most primitive form of
definition. All one need know to understand such a definition is the meaning of
pointing. Such definitions may be either partial or complete, depending on whether
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 all or only some of the members of the class denoted by the definiendum are pointed
to.
2) Enumerative Definitions
Enumerative Definitions assign a meaning to a term by naming the members of the
class the term denotes. Like demonstrative definitions, they may also be either
partial or complete.
3) Definition by Subclass
Definition by Subclass assigns a meaning to a term by naming subclasses of the class
denoted by the term. Such a definition, too, may be either partial or complete,
depending on whether the subclasses named, when taken together, include all the
members of the class or only some of them.
ii). The Intensional (Connotative) Definitional Techniques
An intensional definition one that assigns a meaning to a word by indicating the qualities
or attributes that the word connotes. There are at least four strategies that may be used
to indicate the attributes/qualities that a word connotes. These strategies result:
i. synonymous definitions,
ii. etymological definitions,
iii. operational definitions,
iv. definitions by genus and difference.
1) Synonymous Definition
Synonymous Definition is one in which the definiens is a single word that connotes
the same attributes as the definiendum- that the definiens is a synonym of the word
being defined.
2) Etymological Definition
Etymological Definition assigns a meaning to a word by disclosing the word‘s
ancestry in both its own language and other languages.
3) Operational Definition

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 Operational Definition assigns a meaning to a word by specifying certain
experimental procedures that determine whether or not the word applies to a
certain thing.
4) Definition by Genus and Difference
Definition by Genus and Difference assigns a meaning to a term by identifying a genus
term and one or more difference words that, when combined, convey the meaning of
the term being defined.
3.4.4. Criteria for Lexical Definitions
Lexical definition is the most important and common type of definition that we often use
in our day-to-day life. Giving the function of a lexical definition, lexical definitions are
what we most frequently encounter and are what most people mean when they speak of
the “definition‘‘of a word. Accordingly, it is appropriate that we have a set of rules that
we may use in constructing our own lexical definitions and in evaluating the lexical
definitions of others. While some of these rules apply to the other kinds of definitions as
well, the unique functions that are served by stipulative, précising, theoretical, and
persuasive definitions prescribe different sets of criteria.
Rule 1: A Lexical Definition Should Conform to the Standards of Proper Grammar.
Rule 2: A Lexical Definition Should Convey the Essential Meaning of the Word Being
Defined.
Rule 3: A Lexical Definition Should Be Neither Too Broad nor Too Narrow.
Rule 4: A Lexical Definition Should Avoid Circularity.
Rule 5: A Lexical Definition Should Not Be Negative When It Can Be Affirmative
Rule 6: A Lexical Definition Should Avoid Figurative, Obscure, Vague, or Ambiguous
Language.
Rule 7: A Lexical Definition Should Avoid Affective Terminology.
Rule 8: A Lexical Definition Should Indicate the Context to Which the Definiens Pertains.

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