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3 Clear Thinking, Critical Thinking, and Clear Writing

Students will learn to . . . 1. Determine acceptable and unacceptable degrees of vagueness 2. Understand and identify types of ambiguity 3. Identify the problems generality causes in language 4. Understand the uses and types of definitions 5. Acquire skills for writing an effective argumentative essay

his appeared as part of an agreement one of your authors was required to sign for a credit card:

All transactions effected pursuant to this instrument shall be effected for the account and risk and in the name of the undersigned; and the undersigned hereby agrees to indemnify and hold harmless from, and to pay promptly on demand, any and all losses arising therefrom or any debit balance due thereon.

What this turns out to mean is simply that the cardholder will be responsible for anything he or she owes on the account. Now, in this case it isn’t worth your while to read this passage carefully enough to actually dig the meaning out of it. It is an example of gobbledygook, which is pretentious or unintelligible jargon designed as much to obfuscate and confuse as to explain and inform.*

This chapter is about dealing with this and other obstacles to clear thinking, speaking, and especially writing. Here’s another example that fails to pass muster, from former Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien, when asked in Parliament about old versus new money in the health care program:

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Let the Weirdness Bloom

Allan Bloom, the famous American educator who authored The Closing of the American Mind, which was read (or at least purchased) by millions, wrote in that book:

If openness means to “go with the flow,” it is necessarily an accommodation to the present. That present is so closed to doubt about so many things impeding the progress of its principles that unqualified openness to it would mean forgetting the despised alternative to it, knowledge of which makes us aware of what is doubtful in it.

Is this true? Well, that’s hard to say. The problem, of course, is that we don’t know exactly what Professor Bloom is asserting in this passage. It may look deadly serious and “over our heads,” but it may be that it simply makes no sense. At any rate, whatever he has in mind, he has asked us to work much too hard to understand it.

They say that the money we had promised three years ago to be new money this year is not new money. We have not paid it yet and it is old money versus new money. For me new money is new money if paying in $5 or $10, it’s the same money. *

We have no clue what he had in mind. One of the authors noticed this as a tease on the front page of a newspaper: “49ers upset.” This

probably means that somebody who was not supposed to beat the San Francisco football team did manage to beat them. On the other hand, it could mean that the team is dismayed about something.

Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said, “Thank God, I’m still alive.” But, of course, those who died— their lives will never be the same again.

—U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D), California

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Although obscurity can issue from various causes, four sources of confusion stand out as paramount: excessive vagueness, ambiguity, excessive generality, and undefined terms. In this chapter, we will consider vagueness, ambiguity, and generality in some detail and then talk about definitions.

If I said anything which implies that I think that we didn’t do what we should have done given the choices we faced at the time, I shouldn’t have said that.

—Bill Clinton (reported by Larry Engelmann)

Also, from time to time situations arise in which we need to think critically about what we write, especially when we are trying to produce an argumentative essay. In this type of writing enterprise, one takes a position on an issue and supports it with argument. A good argumentative essay usually consists of four parts: a statement of the issue, a statement of one’s position on that issue, arguments that support one’s position, and rebuttals of arguments that support contrary positions. Obviously, an argumentative essay is weakened by statements that are obscure, and what we say in this chapter has direct application to writing clear argumentative essays. We’ll give more pointers about this important subject later in the chapter, after we discuss vagueness, ambiguity, generality, and definitions.

Has anyone put anything in your baggage without your knowledge?

This question was asked of our colleague Becky White by an airport security employee.

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Say What??

Unclear on the concept:

“We don’t discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people.”

—Colonel Gerard Wellman, ROTC instructor

Unclear on everything:

“Half this game is ninety percent mental.”

—Danny Ozark, Philadelphia Phillies manager

VAGUENESS Perhaps the most common form of unclear thinking or writing is excessive vagueness. Pursued to its depths, the concept of vagueness can be a knotty one, and it has been the focus of much philosophical attention in the past few decades.* Fortunately, at a practical level the idea is not difficult to grasp. A word or phrase is vague if we cannot say with certainty what it includes and what it excludes. Consider the word “bald.” It’s clear that Paris Hilton is not bald. It’s equally clear that Patrick Stewart is bald. (See box on next page.) But there are lots of people in between (including both your authors). Many of those between the two extremes are borderline cases: It is not at all clear whether the word “bald” should apply to them—it’s the sort of thing about which reasonable people could disagree. For this reason, it is correct to say that baldness is a vague concept.

Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him.

—Paul Eldridge

Vagueness plays an important role in much that we do. In the law, for example, how we deal with vagueness is crucial. Whether the word “torture” applies to various types of interrogation techniques, especially including “water-boarding,” for example, has been a serious issue for several years. Many former officials have claimed that these techniques did not count as torture, but many others have disagreed. Possibly more relevant to us and to you personally, whether a bit of driving is “reckless” or not may determine whether you pay a small fine or a large one—or even go to jail. Consider, too, the speed limits we are asked to observe on the highways. Ideally, the offense in question would be

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something like “driving too fast for the circumstances” rather than driving faster than a particular speed. This is because what is safe at 80 miles per hour in one set of circumstances (midday, no traffic, clear weather, and dry roads) might be dangerously unsafe at 40 miles per hour in another (dark, heavy traffic, rain or fog, slick roads). But we have opted for set speed limits because “driving too fast” is a vague term, and we do not want to put our fate in the hands of patrol officers and judges who are in a position to make arbitrary decisions about whether it applies in our case. So, because we are afraid of the consequences of the vague concept, we sometimes get away with driving dangerously fast under bad circumstances, and we are sometimes ticketed for driving over the posted limit when it is quite safe to do so.

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize until you have tried to make it precise.

— BERTRAND RUSSELL

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Vaguenes at the Border

As the text explains, vagueness results when the scope of a concept is not clear— that is, when there are borderline cases. “Bald” is a typical example. Here, Ms. Hilton is clearly not bald, and Mr. Stewart clearly is bald. But whether Bruce Willis is bald or not is a good question. He has hair—although it seems to be on the wane — but much of the time he keeps his head shaved and thus appears bald. How much hair would he have to lose to be bald whether or not he shaved his head? The fact that there is no good answer demonstrates that “baldness” is a vague concept. Similarly, “blond,” “wealthy,” “tall,” “short”—these and many more have clear-cut examples, but they have very fuzzy borders.

Sometimes vagueness is just annoying. Suppose that it’s late and you’re looking for someone’s house and you’re given the following directions: “Go on down this street a ways until you get to the first major intersection, make a sharp right, then, when the street starts to curve to the left, you’ll be there.” The vagueness in these directions is more likely to get your blood pressure up than it is to help you find your destination. (How do you decide that a particular intersection is “major,” for example?)

Vagueness is often intentional, used as a means to avoid giving a clear, precise answer. Politicians often resort to vague statements if they don’t want their audience to know exactly where they stand. A vague answer to the question “Do you love me?” may mean there’s trouble ahead in the relationship.

Ask a man which way he is going to vote, and he will probably tell you. Ask him, however, why, and vagueness is all.

—Barnard Levin

Vagueness occurs in varying degrees, and it is difficult to the point of impossibility to get rid of it entirely. Fortunately, there is no need to get rid of it entirely. We live very comfortably with a certain amount of vagueness in most of what we say. “Butte City is a very small town” presents us with no

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problems under ordinary circumstances, despite the vagueness of “very small town.” “Darren has no school loans because his parents are rich” doesn’t tell us how much money the parents have, but it tells us enough to be useful. “Rich” and “small,” like “bald,” are vague concepts; there is no accepted clear line between the things to which they apply and those to which they don’t. Nonetheless, they are valuable notions; we get a lot of good use out of them.

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Problems arise with vagueness when there is too much of it, as in our previous direction-giving example. Similarly, if a politician claims he will “raise taxes on the wealthy,” what should we take that to mean? Unlike with the earlier example of Darren’s rich parents, in this case it would be worthwhile to spend some effort trying to pin down just what our speaker means by “wealthy,” since where the borders fall here really does make a difference.

So, when is a level of vagueness acceptable and when is it not? It’s difficult to give a general rule, aside from urging due care and common sense, but we might say this:

When a claim is not too vague to convey appropriately useful information, its level of vagueness is acceptable.

For example, if the directions we’re given are not too vague to help us find our destination, they pass the test. If the politician specifies enough about his tax plan to assure us that we understand how it would apply, then we should not complain of vagueness. But when a speaker or writer does indulge in excessive vagueness, thereby making it difficult or impossible for us to fairly assess his or her claim, it is our job to hold that person accountable.

Asked why the desertion rate in the army had risen so much, director of plans and resources for Army personnel Roy Wallace replied, “We’re asking a lot of soldiers these days.”

You might at first want to know what they’re asking the soldiers, until you see the ambiguity in Wallace’s remark.

AMBIGUITY A word, phrase, or sentence is said to be ambiguous when it has more than one meaning. Does “Paul cashed a check” mean that Paul gave somebody cash, or that somebody gave cash to him? It could mean either. “Jessica is renting her house” could mean that she’s renting it to someone or from someone. Jennifer gets up from her desk on Friday afternoon and says, “My work here is finished.” She might mean that she has finished the account she was working on, or that her whole week’s work is done and she’s leaving for the weekend, or that she’s fed up with her job and is leaving the company. If you look online, you can find several collections of amusing headlines that are funny because of their ambiguity: “Kids make nutritious snacks,” for example, or “Miners refuse to work after death.”

■ Joe Biden is not pleased with this book. Of course, he is not displeased, either, since it’s almost certain he’s never heard of it. Note the ambiguity in the original statement.

Most of the time the interpretation that a speaker or writer intends for a claim is obvious, as in the case of these headlines. But ambiguity can have consequences beyond making us smile.

In discussions of gay rights, we’ve seen an ambiguity in the term “rights” that often stymies rational

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debate. The issue is whether laws should be passed to prevent discrimination against gays in housing, in the workplace, and so forth. One side claims that such laws would themselves be discriminatory because they would specifically grant to gay people rights that are not specifically guaranteed to others—they would be “special” rights. The other side claims that the laws are only to guarantee for gays the right to be treated the same as others under the law. When the two sides fail to sort out just what they mean by their key terms, the result is at best a great waste of breath and at worst angry misunderstanding.

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Semantic Ambiguity A claim can be ambiguous in any of several ways. The most obvious way is probably by containing an ambiguous word or phrase, which produces a case of semantic ambiguity. See if you can explain the ambiguity in each of the following claims:

Collins, the running back, always lines up on the right side. Jessica is cold. Aunt Delia never used glasses.

What day is the day after three days before the day after tomorrow?

Complicated, but neither vague nor ambiguous.

In the first case, it may be that it’s the right and not the left side where Collins lines up, or it may be that he always lines up on the correct side. The second example may be saying something about Jessica’s temperature or something about her personality. In the third case, it may be that Aunt Delia always had good eyes, but it also might mean that she drank her beer directly from the bottle (which was true of one of your authors’ Aunt Delia). Semantically ambiguous claims can be made unambiguous (“disambiguated”) by substituting a word or phrase that is not ambiguous for the one making the trouble. “Correct” for “right,” for example, in #1; “eyeglasses” for “glasses” in #3.

The story goes that a burglar and his 16-year-old accomplice tripped a silent alarm while breaking into a building. The accomplice was carrying a pistol, and when police arrived and tried to talk him out of the weapon, the older burglar said, “Give it to him!” whereupon the youngster shot the policeman.

—Courtesy of Collen Johnson, currently of the California State Prison, Tehachapi

Ambiguity can be dangerous!

Grouping Ambiguity There is a special kind of semantic ambiguity, called grouping ambiguity, that results when it is not clear whether a word is being used to refer to a group collectively or to members of the group individually. Consider:

Secretaries make more money than physicians do.

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The example is true if the speaker refers to secretaries and physicians collectively, since there are many more secretaries than there are physicians. But it is obviously false if the two words refer to individual secretaries and physicians.

“Lawn mowers create more air pollution than dirt bikes do” is something a dirt biker might say in defense of his hobby. And, because it is ambiguous, there is an interpretation under which his claim is probably true as well as one under which it is probably false. Taken collectively, lawn mowers doubtless create more pollution because there are so many more of them. Individually, we’d bet it’s the dirt bike that does more damage.

Like other types of ambiguity, grouping ambiguity can be used intentionally to interfere with clear thinking. A few years ago, federal taxes were increased, and opponents of the change referred to it as “the biggest tax increase in history.” If true, that makes the increase sound pretty radical, doesn’t it? And it was true, if you looked at the total tax revenue that was brought in by the increase. But this result was largely due to the numbers of people and the circumstances to which the increase applied. If we look at the percentage increase paid by individual taxpayers, this was not the biggest increase in history. Since most of us are mainly interested in how much more we as individuals have to pay, it is the latter interpretation that is usually more important. But the grouping ambiguity underlying the phrase “the biggest tax increase in history” allows one to give another interpretation under which the claim is true; although the individual tax increases were not the biggest, the collective tax increase was.

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Syntactic Ambiguity Syntactic ambiguity occurs when a claim is open to two or more interpretations because of its structure —that is, its syntax. Not long ago, one of us received information from the American Automobile Association prior to driving to British Columbia. “To travel in Canada,” the brochure stated, “you will need a birth certificate or a driver’s license and other photo ID.”

Just what is the requirement for crossing the border? Under one interpretation, you have to have a photo ID other than a birth certificate or a driver’s license, and under another, you don’t. If we group by brackets, we can make the two interpretations clear, we hope:

[You will need a birth certificate or a driver’s license] and [other photo ID]. [You will need a birth certificate] or [a driver’s license and other photo ID].

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

—Sigmund Freud

Okay. But it’s still true that we should not have to live with too much of it!

The problem with the original version of the claim is that, because of its poor construction, we don’t know whether to associate the driver’s license requirement with the birth certificate (as in interpretation 1) or with the “other photo ID” (as in interpretation 2). Rewriting is the key to eliminating syntactic ambiguity. Depending on the intended interpretation, the original could have been written:

You will need either a birth certificate or a driver’s license and you will also need an additional photo ID. Or You will need either a birth certificate or both a driver’s license and an additional photo ID.

It’s hard enough just to keep track of the things that are really happening, without having to worry about all the things that aren’t really happening.

—Former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, at a Department of Defense news briefing

We suspect the problem is that there are just so many things that are not happening.

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Neither of these is ambiguous. In the previous example, the problem was produced by a failure to make clear how the logical words

“or” and “and” were to apply.* Here are some other examples of syntactic ambiguity, along with various possible interpretations, to help you get the idea.

Players with beginners’ skills only may use Court 1.

In this case, we don’t know what the word “only” applies to. This word, as we’ll see in later chapters, is both very useful and very easy to use incorrectly. Here, it might mean that beginners may use only Court 1. Or it might mean that players with only beginners’ skills may use Court 1. Finally, it might mean that only players with beginners’ skills may use Court 1. Obviously, whoever puts up such a sign needs to be more careful. (And so does the person who put up a sign in our university’s student union that said, “Cash only this line.” Do you see the ambiguity?)

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Susan saw the farmer with binoculars.

This ambiguity results from a modifying phrase (“with binoculars”) that is not clear in its application. Who had the binoculars in this case? Presumably Susan, but it looks as though it was the farmer. “Looking through her binoculars, Susan saw the farmer” clears it up.

People who protest often get arrested.

This is similar to the previous example: Does “often” apply to protesting or to getting arrested?

There’s somebody in the bed next to me.

Does “next to me” apply to a person or to a bed? One might rewrite this either as “There’s somebody next to me in the bed” or as “There’s somebody in the bed next to mine.”

Ambiguous pronoun references occur when it is not clear to what or whom a pronoun is supposed to refer. “The boys chased the girls and they giggled a lot” does not make clear who did the giggling. “They” could be either the boys or the girls. A similar example: “After their father removed the trash from the pool, the kids played in it.” A less amusing and possibly more trouble-making example: “Paul agreed that, once Gary removed the motor from the car, he could have it.”

Making Ambiguity Work for You

Have you ever been asked to write a letter of recommendation for a friend who was, well, incompetent? To avoid either hurting your friend’s feelings or lying, Robert Thornton of Lehigh University has some ambiguous statements you can use. Here are some examples:

I most enthusiastically recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever.

I am pleased to say that this candidate is a former colleague of mine.

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I can assure you that no person would be better for the job.

I would urge you to waste no time in making this candidate an offer of employment.

All in all, I cannot say enough good things about this candidate or recommend the candidate too highly.

In my opinion, you will be very fortunate to get this person to work for you.

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What does Gary have permission to take, the motor or the car? (Just imagine a written agreement containing this sentence. We’d predict a lawsuit.) It pays to be careful; a speaker or writer who is thinking critically will make clear exactly what he or she means to say.

There are other examples of ambiguity that are difficult to classify. For example, one of us was at lunch with the dean of a college at our university, and the dean said to the server, “You can bring the sauce separately, and I’ll put it on myself.” The ambiguity, obviously, is in how he’ll put the sauce on versus where he’ll put it. As in all cases of ambiguity, it is important to see that the claim is ambiguous rather than to be able to classify the type of ambiguity. (This one could be called either semantic or syntactic, by our lights.) By improving your ability to notice when claims are ambiguous, you will be less likely to be misled by them and less likely to mislead others by using them—unless, of course, you mean to mislead them!

GENERALITY We turn now to the notion of generality, which is closely related to both vagueness and ambiguity and which can cause trouble in the same way they do.

The traveler must, of course, always be cautious of the overly broad generalization. But I am an American, and a paucity of data does not stop me from making sweeping, vague, conceptual statements, and, if necessary, following these statements up with troops.

—George Saunders, The Guardian, July 22, 2006

From what we learned of vagueness, we realize that the word “child” is vague, since it is not clear where the line is drawn between being a child and no longer being a child. It can also be ambiguous, because it can refer not only to a person of immature years but also to a person’s offspring. As if this weren’t enough, it is also general because it applies to both boys and girls. Generality is lack of specificity. The more different kinds of Xs to which the word “X” applies, the more general it is. Regarding specific words and phrases, the more different kinds of Xs to which a word applies, the more general the word “X” is. “Moore has a dog” is more general than “Moore has an otterhound.” “Moore has a pet” is still more general.

If you learn that Clarence has an arrest record, it may well lower your estimate of him and may