Logic 101: Guarding against Ambiguity

For our next lesson in logic again we begin with a reference from Isaac Watts book on logic:

"In our own studies, as well as in the communication of your thoughts to others, merely for their information, avoid ambiguous and equivocal terms as much as possible."

Not to insult anyone's intelligence, but one of my pet peeves is to define the terms I'm reference before I use them. That being said let's look to our friend Google for the definition of the term "Ambiguity":

Ambiguity

Definition 1: An expression whose meaning cannot be determined from its context.

Definition 2: A property of being ambiguous, where a word, term, notation, sign, symbol, phrase, sentence, or any other form used for communication, is called ambiguous if it can be interpreted in more than one way.

Definition 3: Having no intrinsic or objective meaning; not organized in conventional patterns; "an ambiguous situation with no frame of reference"; "ambiguous inkblots"

So I think 3 definitions is enough and you get the picture; Given a proposition there must be a clear symbolic link (Linux does apply to non-tech stuff) between the terms being used and the totality of the statement being said. The most obvious spectrum for where this is violated is in politics and in an area where arguments are presented and conclusions are drawn based on the validity of the arguments demonstrated. So I'm use the format of showing this between a "good" and "bad" statement for avoiding ambiguity.


Bad Example: John Wayferd entered his cubicle looking very green.

Good Example: John Wayferd entered his cubicle looking green in the face from a night of all night drinking.

So we can see from the two examples given above that what separates the good from the bad is the qualifications used to provide context for the term "green" used in our "good" example.