Concept

Ambiguity

Overview

Ambiguity is a state in which the meaning of a phrase, statement, situation, or resolution is not explicitly defined, making for several plausible interpretations. It arises when available information lacks sufficient context or a shared frame, so people cannot reliably determine what the problem is, what matters, what causes what, or what solution would count as correct. As a result, interpretation depends heavily on prior experience, assumptions, and imagination.

An outcome of ambiguity is uncertainty, but uncertainty itself refers to a state in which outcomes or meanings are known but their likelihood, stability, or implications cannot be reliably assessed. Ambiguity is not simply the absence of information. It is the lack of meaning and direction caused by insufficient context and unclear framing, which obstructs the ability to determine what counts as a valid interpretation or resolution. The prefix ambi- reflects the idea of “two” or “multiple,” as in multiple possible meanings.

The concept of ambiguity is generally contrasted with vagueness. In ambiguity, multiple distinct interpretations compete because the frame of meaning is unclear and is shaped by personal history and mental models. With vagueness, in contrast, the general interpretation is often understood, but the boundaries are fuzzy, so it is difficult to specify the meaning at the desired level of precision.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Ambiguity is discussed.

Here some one will ask, "Whence comes this ambiguity? How can a mere perception or memory as such be ambiguous? Must it not be ambiguous to, or for, something, or some one?" The point is well taken. But it should not be taken to imply that the ambiguity is for a merely onlooking, beholding psychical mind--especially when the perception is itself regarded as an act of beholding. Nor are we any better off if we…
John Dewey, Creative Intelligence
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
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In this ambiguity of language we have, then, a possible source of error with regard to the bearing of truths that assert reality upon truths that assert goodness. And that this ambiguity is actually neglected by those metaphysical writers who profess that the Supreme Good consists in an eternal reality may be shewn in the following way. We have seen, in considering the possible bearing of Metaphysics upon Practical…
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica
states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
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“The second ambiguity is that of confounding a right of any kind, with a right to enforce that right by resisting or punishing a violation of it. People will say, for example, that they have a right to good government, which is undeniably true, it being the moral duty of their governors to govern them well.
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
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Abel, to whom we owe this information, writing in 1884, begs us not on any account to imagine that there was any ambiguity in what one person said to another by means of ambivalent words of this sort. On the contrary, intonation, gestures and the whole context can have left no doubt whatever which of the two opposites the speaker had in mind to convey. In writing where gestures are absent the addition of little…
Sigmund Freud, Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis
states what it is; names the idea
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It would, however, be an unnatural status if the popular opinion which I cited at the outset were correct. If 'physical' and 'mental' meant two different kinds of intrinsic nature, immediately, intuitively, and infallibly discernible, and each fixed forever in whatever bit of experience it qualified, one does not see how there could ever have arisen any room for doubt or ambiguity. But if, on the contrary, these…
William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism
states what it is; names the idea
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Philosophers who discussed Ambiguity

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Logic translation

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Part of Logic translation.

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