The Book of All Arguments: An Infinite Prospectus
My stock in trade as an analytic philosopher is arguments. This refers to arguments in the sense of giving a reason for something (as opposed to, say, getting into a quarrel). The very fact that I need to explain how I am using the word “arguments” highlights what I mean to be writing about in this essay. All words are ambiguous (including the words that comprise this sentence and even this parenthesis), and hence also are the assertions in which they may figure. Therefore to aid comprehension and avoid misunderstanding it is often useful to make explicit which sense of a word or phrase one intends. But of course this clarification will itself be composed of words, so potentially the process might go on forever and not even a single statement ever get expressed completely unambiguously. Naturally, however, we rely on context most of the time to do the job of disambiguating. This often seems to do the trick, and anyway the alternative would be supremely impractical (to put it supremely ...