Ambiguity

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Ambiguity is a type of meaning in which some interpretations make sense. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. Thus the attribute of any idea or statement which means can not be resolved definitively according to rules or processes with a limited number of steps. (The ambi - part of the term reflects the idea of ​​"two", as in "two meanings".)

The concept of ambiguity is generally contrasted with obscurity. In ambiguity, specific and different interpretations are allowed (although some may not be immediately obvious), whereas with unclear information, it is difficult to form any interpretation at the desired level of specificity.

Context can play a role in resolving ambiguity. For example, the same information may be ambiguous in one context and unambiguous in one context.

Video Ambiguity

Language form

The lexical ambiguity of a word or phrase with respect to more than one meaning in the language of the word. "Meaning" here refers to whatever a good dictionary must take. For example, the word "bank" has several different lexical definitions, including "financial institutions" and "riverside". Or consider "pharmacist". One can say "I buy herbs from pharmacies". This could mean someone is actually talking to a pharmacist (pharmacist) or going to a pharmacist (pharmacy).

The context in which the ambiguous word is used often makes it clear where the intended meaning is. If, for example, someone says "I buried $ 100 in the bank", most people would not think someone was using a shovel to dig mud. However, some linguistic contexts do not provide enough information to distinguish the word used.

Lexical ambiguity can be overcome by algorithmic methods that automatically associate the precise meaning with the word in context, a task called disambiguation of the word taste.

The use of multi-definition words requires writers or speakers to clarify their context, and sometimes describe their intended meaning specifically (in which case, less ambiguous terms should be used). The purpose of clear short communication is that the recipient does not have a misunderstanding of what is meant to be delivered. Exceptions to this may include a politician whose "weasel" and confusion are needed to gain the support of many constituents with conflicting opposing desires from their chosen candidates. Ambiguity is a powerful political science tool.

The more problematic are the words whose senses express the closely related concepts. "Good", for example, can mean "useful" or "functional" ( That's a good hammer ), "model" ( He's a good student ), "fun" This is a good soup ), "moral" ( good people versus lessons to be learned from a story ), "right", etc. "I have a good daughter" is not clear about the intended meaning. Different ways to apply prefixes and suffixes can also create ambiguity ("unlockable" can mean "unlockable" or "impossible to lock").

Syntactic ambiguity arises when a sentence can have two (or more) different meanings because of the sentence structure - its syntax. This is often caused by a changing expression, such as a preposition phrase, its application is not clear. "She eats a cake on the couch", for example, it could mean she eats the cakes on the couch (compared to the one on the table), or it could mean she is sitting on the couch when she eats the cake. "To sign in, you will need a $ 10 entry fee or your voucher and driver's license." This could mean that you need GOOD ten dollars OR BOTH of your vouchers and licenses. Or it could mean that you need your license AND you need GOOD ten dollars OR voucher. Just rewriting the sentence, or placing the appropriate punctuation can solve syntactic ambiguity. For ideas, and theoretical results about, syntactic ambiguity in artificial formal languages ​​(such as computer programming languages), see the ambiguous grammar.

Oral language can contain more types of ambiguity called phonological ambiguity, where there is more than one way to organize a set of sounds into words. For example, "ice cream" and "I shout". This ambiguity is generally resolved in context. A mishearing of that sort, based on the wrong ambiguity solved, is called mondegreen.

Semantic vagueness occurs when a sentence contains an ambiguous word or phrase - a word or phrase that has more than one meaning. In "We see the duck" (example because Richard Nordquist), the word "duck" can refer also

1. to that person's bird (the "duck" noun, modified by the pronoun "he"), or
2. in the movements he made (the verb "duck", the subject is the "him" objective pronoun, the verb object "see").

Lexical ambiguity contrasts with semantic ambiguity. The former represents a choice between a limited number of interpretations that depend on a known and meaningful context. The latter is a choice between a number of possible interpretations, none of which may have an agreed standard meaning. This form of ambiguity is closely related to obscurity.

Linguistic ambiguity can be a problem in law, because the interpretation of written documents and oral agreements is often very important.

Philosophers (and other logic users) spend a lot of time and effort searching and deleting (or deliberately adding) ambiguity in the argument as it can lead to incorrect conclusions and can be used to deliberately hide bad arguments. For example, a politician might say, "I am against taxes that impede economic growth," a glittering general example. Some people will think he is against the tax in general because they are hampering economic growth. Others may think he's just opposing the taxes he believes will hamper economic growth. In writing, the sentence can be rewritten to reduce the possibility of misinterpretation, either by adding a comma after "tax" (to convey the first meaning) or by changing "that" to "it" (to convey a second meaning) or by rewriting in another way. The cunning politician hopes that every constituency will interpret the statement in the most desirable way, and think politicians support everyone's opinion. However, the opposite can also be true - the opponent can change a positive statement to be bad if the speaker uses ambiguity (intentionally or not). The logical mistakes of amphiboly and superficiality depend heavily on the use of ambiguous words and phrases.

In continental philosophy (especially phenomenology and existentialism), there is a much greater ambiguity tolerance, since it is generally seen as an integral part of the human condition. Martin Heidegger argues that the relationship between the subject and the object is ambiguous, such as the relationship of mind and body, and part and whole. [3] In the phenomenology of Heidegger, Dasein has always been in a meaningful world, but there is always an underlying background for every example of marking. Thus, although some things may be certain, they have nothing to do with Dasein's sense of concern and existential anxiety, for example, in the face of death. In reference to his work Being and Nothingness, an essay in phenomenological ontology, Jean-Paul Sartre follows Heidegger in defining human essence as ambiguous, or relating fundamentally to that ambiguity. Simone de Beauvoir attempted to base his ethics on the writings of Heidegger and Sartre (The Ethics of Ambiguity), where he highlighted the need to overcome ambiguity: "as long as the philosophers and they [men] have thought, most of them have tried to cover it... And the ethics that they propose to their disciples is always pursuing the same goal.This is a matter of removing ambiguity by making oneself pure into or pure externality, by escaping from a plausible world or being swallowed by it, by succumbing to immortality or enveloping oneself in a pure moment. "Ethics can not be based on the authoritative certainty given by mathematics and logic, or is determined directly from the empirical findings of science. He states: "Since we do not manage to escape, let us, therefore, try to see the truth in the face Let's try to assume our fundamental ambiguity.This is the knowledge of the original condition of our lives that we must draw our strength to life and reason we act ". Other continental philosophers claim that concepts like life, nature, and sex are ambiguous. Corey Anton argues that we can not be sure what is separate from or united with something else: the language, he asserts, shares what is not, in fact, separate. Following Ernest Becker, he argues that the desire to 'authoritatively disambiguate' the world and its existence has led to various ideologies and historical events such as genocide. On this basis, he argues that ethics should focus on "combining dialectically integrated" and balancing tension, rather than seeking validation or a priori certainty. Like existentialists and phenomenologists, he sees the ambiguity of life as the foundation of creativity.

In literature and rhetoric, ambiguity can be a useful tool. Groucho Marx's classic jokes depend on the grammatical ambiguity for his humor, for example: "Last night I shot an elephant with my pajamas, how he got into my pajamas, I'll never know". Songs and poems often rely on ambiguous words for artistic effects, as in the title song "Do not It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" (where "blue" can refer to color, or sadness).

In its narrative, ambiguity can be introduced in several ways: motif, plot, character. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the last type of ambiguity with an important effect in his novel The Great Gatsby.

Christianity and Judaism use the concept of paradox synonymously with 'ambiguity'. Many Christians and Jews support Rudolf Otto's description of the sacred as 'mysterium tremendum et fascinans', the amazing mystery that fascinates man. [Doubtful - discuss] The orthodox Catholic writer GK Chesterton regularly uses the paradox to uncover meaning in the general concept. which he finds ambiguous or to express the meaning that is often ignored or forgotten in common phrases. (The title of one of his most famous books, Orthodox, itself uses such a paradox.)

Metonymy involves using the name of the subcomponent part as an abbreviation, or jargon, for the name of the whole object (eg "wheel" to refer to a car, or "flower" to refer to the beautiful offspring, the whole plant, or the collection of blooming plants). In modern vocabulary, critical semiotics, [9] metonymy includes ambiguous ambiguous word substitutions that are based on contextual contextual (located adjacent), or functions or processes the object performs, such as "sweet travel" to refer to the car. Metonization miscommunication is considered the main mechanism of linguistic humor.

Maps Ambiguity

Music

In music, pieces or parts that obscure expectations and may or may be interpreted simultaneously in different ways are ambiguous, such as some polytonality, polymeter, meter or other ambiguous rhythm, and ambiguous phrases, or the musical aspect. African music is often deliberately ambiguous. To quote Sir Donald Francis Tovey (1935, p.Ã, 195), "Theorists tend to trouble themselves with futile attempts to eliminate the uncertainty in which it has a high aesthetic value."

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Visual art

In the visual arts, certain images are visually ambiguous, like the Necker cube, which can be interpreted in two ways. The perception of these objects remains stable for a while, then can change, a phenomenon called multistable perception. The opposite of the ambiguous image is an impossible object.

Images or photos may also be ambiguous at the semantic level: visual images are not ambiguous, but their meaning and narrative may be ambiguous: is the expression of a certain face that is one of joy or fear, for example?

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Built-in language

Several languages ​​have been created with the aim of avoiding ambiguity, especially lexical ambiguity. Lojban and Loglan are two related languages ​​that have been made for this, focusing primarily on syntactic ambiguity as well. Language can be used both oral and written. These languages ​​are intended to provide greater technical precision over large natural languages, although historically, such language corrective efforts have been criticized. Languages ​​composed of many diverse sources contain many ambiguities and inconsistencies. Many exceptions to syntax and semantic rules are time consuming and difficult to learn.

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Computer science

In computer science, the SI begins a kilo-, mega- and giga-which historically used in a particular context to mean one of the first three powers of 1024 (1024, 1024 ² and 1024 ³ ) contrary to the metric system in which these units clearly mean a thousand, a million, and a billion. This usage is highly prevalent with electronic memory devices (eg DRAM) handled directly by binary register machines where decimal interpretations do not make sense.

Furthermore, Ki, Mi, and Gi prefixes are introduced so that binary prefixes can be written explicitly, as well as rendering k, M, and G unambiguous in text corresponding to the new standard - this leads to new ambiguity in engineering documents that are less traceable than binary prefix (necessarily indicates new style) whether the use of k, M, and G remains ambiguous (old style) or not (new style). Note also that 1 M (where M is ambiguous 1,000,000 or 1,048,576) is less uncertain than the 1.0e6 technique value (defined to specify intervals of 950,000 to 1,050,000), and that as non-volatile storage devices start to generally exceed 1 GB in capacity (where ambiguity begins to routinely impact the second significant figure), GB and TB almost always mean 10 ⁹ and 10 ^{12 byte.}

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Mathematical notation

Mathematical notation, widely used in physics and other sciences, avoids a lot of ambiguity compared to expression in natural language. However, for various reasons, some lexical, syntactic and semantic ambiguities persist.

Function names

The ambiguity in the writing style of a function should not be equated with a multinational function, which can (and should) be defined in a deterministic and unambiguous way. Some special functions still do not have notation. Typically, conversion to another notation requires the scale of the argument or value generated; sometimes, the same name of the function is used, causing confusion. Examples of unassigned functions like this:

• Sinc Function
• Elliptic integrals of the third kind; translating the elliptic integral form MAPLE into Mathematica, one must replace the second argument to the square, see Talk: Elliptic integral # List of notations; dealing with complex values, this can cause problems.
• Exponential integral
• Hermite polynomial

Expressions

Ambiguous expressions often appear in physical and mathematical texts. It is a common practice to eliminate multiplication signs in mathematical expressions. Also, it is common to assign the same name to the variables and functions, for example, ${\ displaystyle f = f (x)}$ . Then, if someone looks at ${\ displaystyle f = f (y 1)}$ , there is no way to distinguish whether it means ${\ displaystyle f = f (x)}$ multiplied by ${\ displaystyle (y 1)}$ , or the ${\ displaystyle f}$ evaluated in the same argument as ${\ displaystyle (y 1)}$ . In any case the use of such notation, the reader should be able to deduct and reveal the true meaning.

The algorithmic language builder avoids ambiguity. Many algorithmic languages ​​(C and Fortran) require the * character as a multiplication symbol. The Wolfram language used in Mathematica allows the user to remove multiplication symbols, but requires brackets to show the arguments of a function; square brackets are not allowed for groupings of expressions. Fortran, in addition, does not allow the use of identical names for different objects, for example, functions and variables; in particular, the expression f = f (x) is qualified as an error.

The order of operations can depend on the context. In most programming languages, the division and multiplication operations have the same priority and are executed from left to right. Until the last century, many editorials assume that multiplication is done first, for example, ${\ displaystyle a/bc}$ interpreted as ${\ displaystyle a/(bc)}$ ; in this case, the insertion of parentheses is required when translating the formula into an algorithmic language. In addition, it is common to write arguments of a function without parentheses, which can also cause ambiguity. Sometimes, someone uses the letter italics to indicate the basic function. In the style of a scientific journal, the expression ${\ displaystyle sin \ alpha}$ means the product variable ${\ displaystyle s}$ , ${\ displaystyle i}$ , ${\ displaystyle n}$ and ${\ displaystyle \ alpha}$ , though in the slide show, it could mean ${\ displaystyle \ sin [\ alpha]}$ .

Tanda koma dalam subscript dan superskrip terkadang diabaikan; itu juga merupakan notasi ambigu. Jika ditulis ${\ displaystyle T_ {mnk}}  ÂÂ$ , pembaca harus menebak dari konteksnya, apakah itu berarti objek indeks tunggal, dievaluasi sementara subskrip sama dengan produk variabel ${\ displaystyle m}  ÂÂ$ , ${\ displaystyle n}  ÂÂ$ dan ${\ displaystyle k}  ÂÂ$ , atau ini merupakan indikasi untuk tensor trivalen. Penulisan ${\ displaystyle T_ {mnk}}  ÂÂ$ daripada ${\ displaystyle T_ {m, n, k}}  ÂÂ$ dapat berarti bahwa penulisnya direntang dalam ruang (misalnya, untuk mengurangi biaya publikasi) atau bertujuan untuk meningkatkan jumlah publikasi tanpa mempertimbangkan pembaca. Hal yang sama mungkin berlaku untuk penggunaan notasi ambigu lainnya.

Subskrip juga digunakan untuk menunjukkan argumen ke fungsi, seperti dalam ${\ displaystyle F_ {x}}  ÂÂ$ .

Contoh ekspresi matematis ambigu yang berpotensi membingungkan

${\ displaystyle \ sin ^ {- 1} \ alpha}  ÂÂ$ , yang dengan konvensi berarti ${\ displaystyle \ arcsin (\ alpha)}  ÂÂ$ , meskipun mungkin dianggap berarti ${\ displaystyle (\ sin (\ alpha)) ^ {- 1}}  ÂÂ$ , sejak ${\ displaystyle \ sin ^ {n} \ alpha}  ÂÂ$ berarti ${\ displaystyle (\ sin (\ alpha)) ^ {n}}  ÂÂ$ .

${\ displaystyle a/2b}  ÂÂ$ , yang boleh dibilang seharusnya berarti ${\ displaystyle (a/2) b}  ÂÂ$ tetapi biasanya dipahami sebagai ${\ displaystyle a/(2b)}  ÂÂ$ .

Notasi dalam optik kuantum dan mekanika kuantum

Adalah umum untuk mendefinisikan keadaan koheren dalam optik kuantum dengan ${\ displaystyle ~ | \ alpha \ rangle ~}  ÂÂ$ dan nyatakan dengan jumlah foton tetap dengan ${\ displaystyle ~ | n \ rangle ~}  ÂÂ$ . Kemudian, ada "aturan tidak tertulis": negara koheren jika ada lebih banyak karakter Yunani daripada karakter Latin dalam argumen, dan ${\ displaystyle ~ n ~}  ÂÂ$ status foton jika karakter Latin mendominasi. Ambiguitas menjadi lebih buruk, jika ${\ displaystyle ~ | x \ rangle ~}  ÂÂ$ digunakan untuk negara bagian dengan nilai koordinat tertentu, dan ${\ displaystyle ~ | p \ rangle ~}  ÂÂ$ berarti negara dengan nilai momentum tertentu, yang dapat digunakan dalam buku-buku tentang mekanika kuantum. Ambiguitas semacam itu dengan mudah mengarah pada kebingungan, terutama jika beberapa variabel adimensional yang dinormalisasi, variabel tanpa dimensi digunakan. Ekspresi ${\ displaystyle | 1 \ rangle}  ÂÂ$ dapat berarti sebuah negara dengan foton tunggal, atau keadaan koheren dengan amplitudo rata-rata sama dengan 1, atau negara dengan momentum sama dengan kesatuan, dan seterusnya. Pembaca seharusnya menebak dari konteksnya.

Istilah ambigu dalam fisika dan matematika

Physical numbers do not have notation; Their value (and sometimes even dimensions, as in the case of Einstein coefficients), depends on the notation system. Many terms are ambiguous. Any use of the ambiguous term must be preceded by a definition, suitable for a particular case. Just as Ludwig Wittgenstein states in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: "... Only in the context of a proposition has a name meaning."

A very confusing term is getting . For example, the phrase "system gain must be duplicated", without context, is almost non-existent This may mean that the ratio of the output voltage from the electrical circuit to the input voltage must be duplicated This could mean that the ratio of the output power from the electrical or optical circuit to the input power must be multiplied This could mean that the advantages of laser media must be multiplied, for example, doubling the upper laser level population in a quasi-level system (assuming the absorption is ignored from the ground state).

The term intensity is ambiguous when applied to light. This term may refer to radiation, the intensity of light, the intensity of the beam, or the light, depending on the background of the person using the term.

Also, confusion may be related to the use of percent of atoms as a measure of dopant concentration, or resolution of the imaging system, as the smallest size measure size that can still be resolved on the background of statistical noise. See also Accuracy and precision and speech.

Berry's paradox emerges as a result of systematic ambiguity in terms of terms such as "defined" or "can be called". This kind of requirement causes a vicious circle error. Other terms with this type of ambiguity are: satisfiable, true, false, function, property, class, relation, cardinal, and ordinal.

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Mathematical interpretation of ambiguity

In math and logic, ambiguity can be considered as a logical concept example of less-determining - for example, ${\ displaystyle X = Y}$ X is - while the opposite is self contradiction, also called inconsistency, the paradoxical, or oxymoron, or in the mathematical system which is inconsistent - such as ${\ displaystyle X = 2, X = 3}$ , which has no solution.

Logical ambiguity and self-contradiction are analogous to impossible visual ambiguities and objects, such as the Necker's cube and the impossible cube, or many of M. Escher's drawings.

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See also

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References

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External links

• Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "Ambiguity". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . < span>
• Ambiguity at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project
• Ambiguity in PhilPapers
• Ambiguous or Inconsistent/Incomplete Declarations of Statements
• Eliminate ambiguity when writing

Source of the article : Wikipedia