People understand “getting comfortable with ambiguity” in different ways. That is, the phrase is ambiguous. And I’m not entirely comfortable with that, since on some readings of the phrase “getting comfortable with ambiguity” it isn’t always a good thing. For instance, sometimes what people mean by getting comfortable with ambiguity is just accepting that people understand things in different ways and being OK with that. Of course, people do understand things differently. This much is an inevitable consequence of people having their own minds. This much is fine. But in order to understand each other, we often have to disambiguate ambiguous language by clarifying and tracking our various usages. We don’t want to get too comfortable here, since tracking the various senses of ambiguous language is real work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Simply being comfortable with ambiguity doesn’t move the needle on the sometimes-challenging project of clarifying and sharing our various ways of understanding words or phrases. So, there is a sense of “being comfortable with ambiguity” that can be a barrier to understanding others. If you and I understand expression in differing ways, I don’t understand you until I’ve inquired into how you understand that expression and tried to get clear on how my own understanding differs. So, ambiguity calls for inquisitive sharing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here we can see a sense of “getting comfortable with ambiguity” that is intellectually healthy and plays an integral part in shared inquiry. The way to get comfortable with ambiguity is to develop some skill at disambiguation. But the process of getting comfortable with ambiguity in this sense is not all that comfortable. It’s rather a hard-earned achievement that involves a fair amount of skill. We need to get in the habit of recognizing ambiguities that can be easily glossed over. Then we need to engage in some analysis of the different meanings that might be expressed by a word or a phrase. And then we need to track these in context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, critical thinking students often struggle with the word “valid.” In everyday language, we often use this word to mean something like true. But even this is not so clear. If we are debating the fate of Palestinians in Gaza and your friend remarks out of the blue that the weather is beautiful today, it would be sarcastic to reply that he has a valid point. This reveals that everyday usage also carries some implication of relevance. But then we probably mean something different when we assure our upset friend that his feelings are valid. Feelings themselves aren’t true or false since they aren’t representations of the world one way or another. Here, “valid” means something more like appropriate. And then in critical thinking, we use the term “valid” to refer to a specific property of arguments. An argument is valid when its conclusion would have to be true if its premises are true. It’s often a bit of work to get a clear understanding of this definition of “valid.” One of the obstacles students often face is just tracking this usage and bearing in mind that “valid” in the context of logic and critical thinking has its own specific definition that isn’t the same as “valid” in everyday language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Similar effort goes into achieving conceptual clarity throughout philosophical inquiry. We are often aiming for a better understanding of concepts we loosely appeal to in everyday life. Concepts like belief, rational, good, person, love, meaning, knowledge, justice, agency, free will. . . . The list is long. Philosophers become very adept at tracking clear analytic definitions of terms, understanding that many different definitions of the same word may be considered, tested, rejected, amended, or endorsed even in a single article. This is how conceptual analysis often goes. We try out, clarify, reject or revise many proposed definitions along the way to developing a clearer understanding of an interesting concept. Getting comfortable with ambiguity in ways that facilitate this process takes a good deal of critical thinking skill and attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortunately, it isn’t always important that we understand each other in precise detail. Everyday language carries lots of vagueness and ambiguity for a reason. A dash of vagueness and ambiguity lubricates many social interactions. In everyday life we require just enough clarity and precision to solve everyday problems, signal our objectives, and come to agreement about what to do. Seeking more clarity than needed for these purposes would be tedious. We are generally complacently comfortable with ambiguity when it doesn’t matter so much. However, it is also worth learning how to get comfortable with ambiguity through disambiguation and clarification when greater precision does matter. This is important for inquiry, including the sort of inquiry that leads to better understanding our friends and loved ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People understand “getting comfortable with ambiguity” in different ways. That is, the phrase is ambiguous. And I’m not entirely comfortable with that, since on some readings of the phrase “getting comfortable with ambiguity” it isn’t always a good thing. For instance, sometimes what people mean by getting comfortable with ambiguity is just accepting that people … Continue reading Critical Thinking Note 36: Getting Comfortable with Ambiguity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1241"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1253,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions\/1253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}