|
|
On Sophistical Refutations 
4
There are two styles of refutation: for some depend on the
language used, while some are independent of language. Those ways of
producing the false appearance of an argument which depend on language
are six in number: they are ambiguity, amphiboly, combination,
division of words, accent, form of expression. Of this we may assure
ourselves both by induction, and by syllogistic proof based on
this-and it may be on other assumptions as well-that this is the
number of ways in which we might fall to mean the same thing by the
same names or expressions. Arguments such as the following depend upon
ambiguity. 'Those learn who know: for it is those who know their
letters who learn the letters dictated to them'. For to 'learn' is
ambiguous; it signifies both 'to understand' by the use of
knowledge, and also 'to acquire knowledge'. Again, 'Evils are good:
for what needs to be is good, and evils must needs be'. For 'what
needs to be' has a double meaning: it means what is inevitable, as
often is the case with evils, too (for evil of some kind is
inevitable), while on the other hand we say of good things as well
that they 'need to be'. Moreover, 'The same man is both seated and
standing and he is both sick and in health: for it is he who stood
up who is standing, and he who is recovering who is in health: but
it is the seated man who stood up, and the sick man who was
recovering'. For 'The sick man does so and so', or 'has so and so done
to him' is not single in meaning: sometimes it means 'the man who is
sick or is seated now', sometimes 'the man who was sick formerly'.
Of course, the man who was recovering was the sick man, who really was
sick at the time: but the man who is in health is not sick at the same
time: he is 'the sick man' in the sense not that he is sick now, but
that he was sick formerly. Examples such as the following depend
upon amphiboly: 'I wish that you the enemy may capture'. Also the
thesis, 'There must be knowledge of what one knows': for it is
|
