1 00:00:00,012 --> 00:00:05,452 >> You'll remember that in Unit four of our course, we studied fallacies and one 2 00:00:05,452 --> 00:00:11,232 of the first fallacies that we studied was the fallacy of equivocation, a fallacy 3 00:00:11,232 --> 00:00:15,840 that results from using an expression in two different ways. 4 00:00:15,841 --> 00:00:22,562 Well, one very nice example of the fallacy of equivocation was provided by the 5 00:00:22,562 --> 00:00:29,408 argument I Am Nobody, submitted by Ubof/g Alanek/g, who I presume is somebody. 6 00:00:29,408 --> 00:00:34,680 Ubof's argument goes as follows. Premise one, I am nobody. 7 00:00:34,680 --> 00:00:39,404 Premise two. Nobody is perfect, conclusion, therefore I 8 00:00:39,404 --> 00:00:43,764 am perfect. Now, superficially, this argument might 9 00:00:43,764 --> 00:00:47,391 appear valid. Consider parallel arguments. 10 00:00:47,391 --> 00:00:53,120 If I am Clark Kent and Clark Kent is Superman, doesn't it follow that I am 11 00:00:53,120 --> 00:00:57,392 Superman? If the number two is the lowest prime 12 00:00:57,392 --> 00:01:05,051 number and the lowest prime number is the first even number, then doesn't it follow 13 00:01:05,051 --> 00:01:09,186 that the number two is the first even number? 14 00:01:09,186 --> 00:01:13,828 Sure. So what's wrong with Ubof's argument? 15 00:01:13,829 --> 00:01:20,070 Well, what's wrong with it is that it suffers from a fallacy of equivocation. 16 00:01:20,070 --> 00:01:26,808 In particular, the verb to be that occurs in both premises one and two, can mean two 17 00:01:26,808 --> 00:01:31,210 different things. Sometimes the verb to be is used to 18 00:01:31,210 --> 00:01:37,310 express a claim of identity. When I say, I am Clark Kent, what I am 19 00:01:37,310 --> 00:01:45,229 saying is I am identical with Clark Kent. Clark Kent is a name for the very same 20 00:01:45,229 --> 00:01:50,549 thing as me. There's an identity between me and Clark 21 00:01:50,549 --> 00:01:54,261 Kent. Sometimes however, the verb to be is not 22 00:01:54,261 --> 00:01:59,023 used to express identity but rather to express predication. 23 00:01:59,023 --> 00:02:04,916 To express the fact that a certain thing has a certain feature or property. 24 00:02:04,916 --> 00:02:10,025 So for instance, if I say my car is red, I'm not saying that my car is identical 25 00:02:10,025 --> 00:02:14,946 with redness. I'm saying that my car has the property or 26 00:02:14,946 --> 00:02:20,261 the feature of being red. So the verb to be can be used in these two 27 00:02:20,261 --> 00:02:24,745 different ways. And in Ubof's argument, the verb to be is 28 00:02:24,745 --> 00:02:30,501 used differently in the first premise than it is in the second premise. 29 00:02:30,501 --> 00:02:35,819 In the first premise, I am nobody, the verb to be as inflected in am, seems to be 30 00:02:35,819 --> 00:02:39,551 used to express an identity. I am identical to nobody. 31 00:02:39,551 --> 00:02:44,837 In the second premise, nobody is perfect, the verb to be is not used to express an 32 00:02:44,837 --> 00:02:48,293 identity. It's not saying that there's an identity 33 00:02:48,293 --> 00:02:53,282 between nobody and perfection. It's saying that nobody has the feature or 34 00:02:53,282 --> 00:02:58,360 the property of being perfect. And so the verb to be is used in different 35 00:02:58,360 --> 00:03:02,960 ways in the two premises. Since it's used in different ways in the 36 00:03:02,960 --> 00:03:08,672 two premises, we can't connect up the two premises to draw the conclusion that I am 37 00:03:08,672 --> 00:03:12,472 perfect. This argument suffers from another 38 00:03:12,472 --> 00:03:16,453 problem. Which is that, while it uses the word 39 00:03:16,453 --> 00:03:22,420 nobody, as what seems to be a noun referring to a particular thing. 40 00:03:22,420 --> 00:03:28,728 In fact, the word nobody isn't a noun that refers to a particular thing. 41 00:03:28,728 --> 00:03:34,041 The word nobody is a quantifier. Meaning no person whatsoever. 42 00:03:34,041 --> 00:03:39,871 And when we plug that explanation of nobody into premise one, then we get, I am 43 00:03:39,871 --> 00:03:44,371 no person whatsoever. Which is clearly a false statement. 44 00:03:44,371 --> 00:03:50,449 Because anyone whatsoever, who can refer to themselves using the first person 45 00:03:50,449 --> 00:03:56,138 pronoun I, must be some person. And so they can't be no person whatsoever. 46 00:03:56,138 --> 00:04:02,084 And so in addition to the ambiguity of the argument, there's also the necessary 47 00:04:02,084 --> 00:04:07,093 falsehood of premise one. Now, of course, if we're using nobody the 48 00:04:07,093 --> 00:04:11,035 way it's idiomatically used sometimes in English. 49 00:04:11,036 --> 00:04:17,002 To mean I'm not a significant person. All right, then I am nobody doesn't mean I 50 00:04:17,002 --> 00:04:21,766 am no person whatsoever. It means I'm not a significant person. 51 00:04:21,766 --> 00:04:25,289 I'm not a major player, I'm not a person of note. 52 00:04:25,289 --> 00:04:29,200 Okay, but from the fact that I'm not a person of note. 53 00:04:29,201 --> 00:04:36,040 And from the fact that nobody is perfect. Nothing follows about my perfection.