Why people in honest conversations don’t just change definitions of words.
“From a contradiction, anything follows.” — The Principle of Deductive Explosion
Words encode meanings.
Logic is basically the study of meaning relations, from the Greek word logos, which means word.
When words follow proper grammatical rules they can create larger, composite meanings; otherwise, they cannot.
For example, the following words are individually meaningful, but the way they are configured violates English grammar, and so they form a meaningless word salad:
shapeless squares an if of six because extra less purple.
Some word salads like this are obviously meaningless.
But others are not so obviously meaningless, which is why political campaigns are often so successful.
Some people deliberately shift meaning
In recent years, the meanings of politically-charged words have begun to be warped while giving the impression of retaining their original meaning, words like violence.
It is not a problem when the same word has different meanings, so long as the context makes clear which meaning is intended. You can bank on seeing tadpoles in the river bank in the Spring, but I wouldn’t deposit my savings there.
The problem is when different meanings of a term are related but the context does not make clear which is intended.
The fallacy of equivocation
If an argument — a line of reasoning — only appears sound because the meaning of one of its terms has changed without any indication, that is a logical error: the fallacy of equivocation.
The fallacy of equivocation is speaking with equal vocalization of two distinct meanings as if they are the same, but if the two different meanings were made explicit, the argument would obviously be unsound.
If this is intentional, then the fallacy rises to the level of sophistry: the use of a fallacy in order to mislead.
Intention aside, a fallacy is a logical error in reasoning and thus its conclusion is invalid. Fallacies — instances of illogic — are analogous to bad computer code. If we allow them to remain, the program will fail.
A primary function of logic is to preserve truth across inferences. The premises in a chain of logical reasoning to a conclusion — in an argument — are like the data in a program, and the program in a computer is like its logic: it preserves the value of the data across its manipulations of the data.
Logic
Assumption 1: If humans are mortal, then humans die.
Assumption 2: Humans are mortal.
Valid Conclusion: Thus, humans die.
Now imagine arriving at the Invalid Conclusion: “Thus, whales are fish.” [!?]
Bad logic does not preserve truth, whereas good logic does.
Fallacies are bad logic: they do not preserve truth.
Equivocation destroys truth
For these reasons, we must not equivocate — we must not treat words as if they have only one meaning when we are tacitly injecting another meaning into our reasoning.
Doing so is like switching a mathematical value for the same variable in the same equation: it injects bad logic into our programming language, our code.
There are other fallacies of word meaning, such as vagueness, hyperbole, decontextualization, etc., but let’s stick with equivocation, to keep things simple. The same general points apply to any fallacies of word meaning, and to most fallacies in general.
If the meaning of words can be switched within the same argument or context, then we are on a slippery slope towards which words can mean anything, including contradictory things. For example, consider these two statements from the social justice movement:
1. Speech is violence.
2. Silence is violence.
But (1) and (2) contradict each other!
For, if speech is violence, then non-speech — silence — must be non-violence.
Contradiction beget contradictions!
Contradictions break the code
If we accept a contradiction, it would allow a glitch in the program (language, logic, and meaning) that would break the system, the way bad code could break a computer program.
Informally, a contradiction is something that goes against (contra) meaning or logic. It violates the sound/meaning code that is a word.
Remember, words are just codes for conceptual information, i.e., meanings.
If you do not know the code that constitutes a language, the meanings of the words (definition), and the rules of their meaningful combination (grammar), then you cannot decode the meaning in language.
In short: good code gives you meaning but contradictions break the code.
The Principle of Deductive Explosion
There is a principle in formal deductive logic called the Principle of Deductive Explosion. The Principle of Deductive Explosion asserts that if we allow a contradiction in our logic, the system will explode.
This explosion occurs because logical principles together with that flawed contradiction can be used to deduce or conclude anything, from things like whales are fish to things like unicorns are made of round square gods that are smaller than their biggest parts.
If we allow contradictory meanings in our language, our logic will explode and our language will lose all meaning.
Thus, we are only creating a tossed word salad when we simultaneously try to assert contradictions like: silence is violence and speech is violence.
Words can inspire. Words can destroy. Choose yours well.
About the Authors:
Rick Repetti: Professor of Philosophy at CUNY, Vice President at the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA), and Chief Philosophy Officer at Knowledgecoin.io.
Mark Gleason: Mark Gleason is a Chief Enterprise Architect, Venture Capitalist, and Board Member at Knowledgecoin.io.
