CHAPTER THREE: LOGIC AND LANGUAGE

■ The Functions of Language: Cognitive and Emotive Meanings

■ Ludwig Wittgenstein thought the number of these functions to be virtually
unlimited.
■ language is used to: Ask questions Tell jokes, Tell stories Flirt with someone,
Tell lies Give directions, Guess at answers Sing songs, Form hypotheses Issue
commands Launch verbal assaults Greet someone and so on.
■ Two linguistic functions are : (1) to convey information and (2) to express or
evoke feelings.
■ Examples: “Death penalty, which is legal in thirty-six states, has been carried
out most often in Georgia; however, since 1977 Texas holds the record for the
greatest number of executions.”
■ “Death penalty is a cruel and inhuman form of punishment in which hapless
prisoners are dragged from their cells and summarily slaughtered only to satiate
the bloodlust of a vengeful public.”
Logic and Meaning…
■ Terminology that conveys information is said to have cognitive meaning,
and terminology that expresses or evokes feelings is said to have emotive
meaning.
■ The emotively charged statement about the death penalty illustrates two
important Points:
■ Such statements have both cognitive meaning and emotive meaning.
■ Part of the cognitive meaning of such statements is a value claim.
■ A value claim is a claim that something is good, bad, right, wrong, or
better, worse, more important or less important than some other thing.
■ Emotive Terminologies in Arguments
■ It allows the arguer to make value claims about the subject matter of the
argument without providing evidence.
■ Gives the argument a kind of steamroller quality by which it tends to crush potential
counter arguments
■ Now that we know that the rocks on the moon are similar to those in our backyard
and that tadpoles can exist in a weightless environment, and now that we have put the
rest of the world in order, can we concentrate on the problems here at home? Like
what makes people hungry and why is unemployment so elusive?
P-1: The space program has been confined to work on ordinary rocks and tadpoles.
P-2: Ordinary rocks and tadpoles are less important than domestic hunger and
unemployment.
P-3: Our international efforts have restored order to every nation on earth but our own.
P-4: These efforts have been directed to problems that are less important than our own
domestic problems.
C: Therefore, our government should redirect funds that have been spent on these
projects to solving our own domestic problems.
Deficiency of Cognitive Meanings: Vagueness and Ambiguity

■ An expression is 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 example, words such as
“love,‘‘ “happiness, ―peace, excessive,‘‘ “fresh,‘‘ “rich,‘‘ “poor,‘‘
“normal,‘‘ “conservative,‘‘ and “polluted‘‘ are vague.
■ Vagueness can also affect entire statements. “Today our job situation is
more transparent.”
■ 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.
■ E.G. 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?
■ The difference between ambiguity and vagueness is that vague terminology
allows for a relatively continuous range of interpretations, whereas ambiguous
terminology allows for multiple discrete interpretations.
■ In a vague expression there is a blur of meaning, whereas in an ambiguous
expression there is a mix-up of otherwise clear meanings.
■ 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.‘‘
Forms of Disputes in Logic: Verbal and Factual Disputes
■ 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.
■ 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.
Forms of Disputes in Logic
■ Disputes that arise over a disagreement about facts are called factual
disputes.
■ Example:
■ 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.
■ If the dispute is verbal, then the second question to be answered is whether
the dispute concerns ambiguity or vagueness.
2.2 The Intension and Extension of Terms
■ A term is any word or arrangement of words that may serve as the subject of
a statement.
■ Terms consist of proper names, common names, and descriptive phrases.

■ Words that are not terms include verbs, non-substantive adjectives, adverbs,
prepositions, conjunctions, and all non-syntactic arrangements of words.
■ The following words or phrases are not terms; none can serve as the subject
of a statement: dictatorial, above and beyond, craves, runs quickly, moreover,
cabbages into again the forest
Contd
■ The use of a word from the mention of a word.
■ “‘Wherever’ is an eight-letter word.”- Mentioned
■ “I will follow you wherever you go.”- Used
■ Words are usually considered to be symbols, and the entities they
symbolize are usually called meanings.
■ The intentional meaning (intension or connotation) consists of the qualities
or attributes that the term connotes, and the extensional meaning (extension
or denotation) consists of the members of the class that the term denotes.
■ E.g. The term “cat” consists of the attributes of being furry, of having four
legs, of moving in a certain way, of emitting certain sounds, and so on,
while the extensional meaning consists of cats themselves- all the cats in
the universe.
Contd
■ logic uses the terms ‘connotation‘‘ and ‘denotation‘‘ differently from the way
they are used in grammar.
■ In grammar, ‘connotation‘‘ refers to the subtle nuances of a word, whereas
‘denotation‘‘ refers to the word‘s direct and specific meaning.
■ 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.
■ The connotation of a term remains more or less the same from person to person
and from time to time.
■ The denotation of a term also typically remains the same from person to person,
but it may change with the passage of time. The denotation of ‘currently living
cat,‘‘ for example, is constantly fluctuating as some cats die and others are born.
The denotation of the term ‘cat,’ on the other hand, is presumably constant
because it denotes all cats, past, present, and future.
Contd
■ Empty extension- e.g. “current king of France”
■ Intension determines extension- The intentional meaning of a term
serves as the criterion for deciding what the extension consists of.
■ Looking at serious of terms
■ Increasing intension: animal, mammal, feline, tiger
■ Increasing extension: tiger, feline, mammal, animal
■ Decreasing intension: tiger, feline, mammal, animal
■ Decreasing extension: animal, mammal, feline, tiger
■ E.G exceptions
■ Unicorn; unicorn with blue eyes; unicorn with blue eyes and green horn;
unicorn with blue eyes, green horn, and a weight of over 400 pounds
Meaning, Types, and Purposes of Definitions
■ definition as a group of words that assigns a meaning to some word or
group of words.
■ Every definition consists of two parts: the definiendum and the definiens.
■ The definiendum is the word or group of words that is supposed to be
defined, and the defines is the word or group of words that does the
defining.
■ E.g. 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.
Types and Purposes of Definitions
■ Based on the functions that they actually serve, definitions can be classified
into five: stipulative, lexical, précising, theoretical, and persuasive
definitions.
■ Stipulative Definitions:- assigns a meaning to a word for the first time.
■ It involve either coining a new word or giving a new meaning to an old word.
E.g. ‘tigon‘‘ and ‘liger‘‘
■ a stipulative definition is a completely arbitrary assignment of a meaning to a
word for the first time, there can be no such thing as a ‘true‘‘ or ‘false‘‘
stipulative definition.
■ Lexical Definitions- used to report the meaning that a word already has in a
language. Dictionary definitions
■ can be true or false depending on whether it does or does not report the way a
word is actually used
Types …
■ Précising Definitions- reduce the vagueness of a word.
■ May assign meaning but not arbitrarily.
■ Theoretical Definitions- assigns a meaning to a word by suggesting a theory that
gives a certain characterization to the entities that the term denotes. ‘heat’ – kinetic
theory : ‘heat’ means the energy associated with the random motion of the molecules
of a substance.’
■ Persuasive Definitions- engender a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward what is
denoted by the definiendum. E.g.
■ “Abortion’ means the ruthless murdering of innocent human beings.
■ “Abortion’ means a safe and established surgical procedure whereby a woman is
relieved of an unwanted burden
■ While persuasive definitions may, like lexical definitions, be evaluated as either true
or false, the primary issue is neither truth nor falsity but the effectiveness of such
definitions as instruments of persuasion.
Techniques of Definition
■ 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
■ Demonstrative (Ostensive) Definitions
■ a definition is the meaning of pointing. Either partial or complete
■ “Chair” means this and this and this- as you point to a number of chairs, one
after the other.
■ “Washington Monument” means that- as you point to it
■ Enumerative Definitions
■ assign a meaning to a term by naming the members of the class the term
denotes.
■ Either partial or complete
■ E.g. “Actor” means a person such as Abebe Balicha, Samsom Taddesse, or
Mahder Assefa
■ Definition by Subclass:- assigns a meaning to a term by naming subclasses of
the class denoted by the term.
■ may be either partial or complete.
■ E.g. “Tree” means an oak, pine, elm, spruce, maple, and the like.
“Fictional work” means a poem, a play, a novel, or a short story.
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.
 Synonymous Definition- 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. “Physician” means doctor. “Observe “means see.
■ Etymological Definition- assigns a meaning to a word by disclosing the
word‘s ancestry in both its own language and other languages.
■ 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.
■ Examples: One substance is ‘harder than’ another if and only if one
scratches the other when the two are rubbed together.
■ A solution is an ‘acid’ if and only if litmus paper turns red when dipped
into it.
■ 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.
■ generally applicable and achieves more adequate results than other def.
■ ‘genus’ means a relatively larger class, and
■ ‘species‘‘ means a relatively smaller subclass of the genus
■ ‘difference’ is the attribute or attributes that distinguish the various species
within a genus
■ E.g. Species Difference Genus
■ Ice means frozen water
■ Species Difference Genus
■ Daughter means female offspring
■ Husband means married man