Like Ships Passing in the Day

Communication is a constant problem for me. It’s not because I have any trouble articulating my thoughts. Far from it: Try and silence me! And I am forever striving to speak or write precisely, with continual self-editing. Nor do I have a hearing problem, and I always strive to listen intently. The problem is that, as both a wordsmith and a philosopher, I have become aware of the ambiguity inherent in all verbal (not to mention other kinds of) expression. 

My simplest way to express this idea about expression is to point to any half-decent dictionary: For every word there will be multiple definitions. These are not homonyms, mind you, but one and the same word having multiple meanings. (Savings) “bank” and (river) “bank” are homonyms, but even (savings) “bank” alone means: 

noun

3. an institution for receiving, lending, exchanging, and safeguarding money and, in some cases, issuing notes and transacting other financial business.
4. the office or quarters of such an institution.
5. Games.
1. the stock or fund of pieces from which the players draw.
2. the fund of the manager or the dealer.
6. a special storage place: a blood bank; a sperm bank.
7. a store or reserve.

and (river) bank:

noun

3. a long pile or heap; mass: a bank of earth; a bank of clouds.
4. a slope or acclivity.
5. Physical Geography. the slope immediately bordering a stream course along which the water normally runs.
6. a broad elevation of the seafloor around which the water is relatively shallow but is not a hazard to surface navigation.
7. Coal Mining. the surface around the mouth of a shaft.
8. Also called cant, superelevation. the inclination of the bed of a banked road or railroad.
9. Aeronautics. the lateral inclination of an aircraft, especially during a turn.
10. Billiards, Pool. the cushion of the table.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/bank

 Therefore the possibility of misunderstanding is omnipresent, and, I find, its actuality also.

             The problem this presents, in practical terms, is itself double. For in order to assure genuine communication of intended meanings, both speaker or writer and listener or reader not only need to disambiguate, but also to be aware of ambiguity in the first place. It has taken me a lifetime of being a writer to realize that I need to look up a word in the dictionary not only when I am unsure of its meaning, which I have always done, but also when I think I know the meaning well enough or even precisely. 

For example, when I wrote the first sentence of the preceding paragraph I chose the word “double” spontaneously. All I meant by it was that there are two problems. But then it occurred to me that – of course! – the word has multiple meanings: It can also suggest that two things are identical or similar. That was not my intention, but a reader might have just as spontaneously supposed it was, and then be expecting or hunting for the similarity of the two problems and what further significance that might have. Furthermore, I myself, who had not even considered the question before, began to think about that too. But not very much, because I wanted to get on with what I was writing and didn’t think any similarity – and any two things are similar in some way – would have much bearing on my main point. But meanwhile a reader might be off on this sidetrack. 

            It’s not just words, but phrases … and ultimately whole tracts. Take this sentence I just read in an article about the contemporary UK: “He expelled twenty-one Conservative M.P.s … for attempting to stop the country from leaving the E.U. with no deal at all.” For the life of me I cannot be sure whether the phrase at the end -- “with no deal at all” – refers to the manner in which “He” expelled the M.P.s or, instead, the way the M.P.s attempted to stop the country from leaving the E.U. and hence the reason “He” expelled them. I encounter this kind of ambiguity all the time, and it drives me to distraction because it leaves me with no practical recourse for finding out what in fact the writer meant, not to mention what actually happened. But for many readers the situation is even worse because they will take away the wrong meaning since they were not aware of the ambiguity in the first place. 

It is true that taking context into consideration will sometimes solve the problem. Also, one interpretation may seem much more likely than the other. However my experience has been that even such a plausible surmise must be taken with a grain of salt, as further query or just subsequent events have, with surprising regularity, proved it wrong. One’s own assumptions do get in the way of interpretation at every turn.  

            I sometimes picture all of us, therefore, as like ships passing in the … day. For we can see (and hear) one another just fine. But the impression we get from examining the exterior of the other ship, with all of its details, is still not enough … indeed, vastly inadequate … to know what cargo and engine and passengers and crew it carries, nor the captain’s intentions. Consider the Andrea Doria.

            This is why for a philosopher, or any thoughtful person, dialogue is an essential part of communication. You need to keep checking in with each other to be sure your interlocutor understands what you are saying as you intended it and that you likewise are understanding what they intended. Unfortunately my experience is that most people feel no need to do this (since they know what they mean) or tolerance for anyone else doing it (perhaps mistaking it for an attack), and so misunderstanding abounds. 

            But there are also two traps that can arise from an awareness of the problem. One is to engage in dialectic rather than dialogue. By dialectic I mean picking apart the other person’s meaning, not with the intent to clarify it, but only to win a debate. Given the ever-present ambiguity in what a person says, it is easy enough to get them tangled up in self-contradictions. This is the favorite move of prosecuting attorneys, and even philosophers can fall into this trap (both as prosecutor and defendant, as it were) by mistaking the purpose of dialogue. I take that purpose to be, not to refute the other person’s position, but rather to help each other achieve mutual understanding (for I no longer believe that either side can ever emerge victorious from a philosophical dialogue). 

            The other trap is to keep questioning, even for the purpose of disambiguation, without allowing the other person to speak long enough, or unrushedly enough, to convey their meaning. For it is a happy fact that you will often be able to get the intended drift of what someone else is saying if you but listen … or at least listen until they stop talking, at which point you can clarify any remaining fine points. The failure to practice this dialogic etiquette can result in your interlocutor losing patience with your constant interrupting, and so, once again, the upshot will be a failed communication.