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University of Oxford
Department for Continuing Education
Assignment 1 for the online course:
Critical Reasoning: A Romp Through the
Foothills of Logic
June 2021 - August 2021
Student: Stefano Corsi

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Online course: Critical Reasoning
Assignment 1: Ambiguity
Generally, critical reasoning aims at detecting,
analysing, and evaluating arguments.1
Since
arguments are sets of well-connected declarative
sentences, which in turn are made up of words and
phrases,2
the meaning of every component in each
sentence must be as clear as possible for the critical
reasoner to get a plausible interpretation, as well
as a reasonable analysis and evaluation of the
argument.
From this perspective, critical reasoning is
threatened by ambiguity. If a word or phrase is
ambiguous – namely, it has more than one
meaning – then the sentence where the word or
phrase occurs can be differently interpreted.3
When
one or more sentences in an argument allow
multiple interpretations due to the ambiguity of
their components, then uncertainty or confusion
may arise from within reasoning. In what follows,
three of the most relevant types of ambiguity are
described, along with tips to neutralise them.4
The simplest and possibly most frequent kind
of ambiguity is lexical ambiguity, which refers to
the fact that a word can have many meanings. For
1
See Talbot [2014], pos. 122; The Open University [2008],
pp. 7-10. For a detailed historical and theoretical introduction
to critical thinking, see Hitchcock [2020].
2
See Talbot [2014], pos. 157.
3
Ibidem, pos. 612.
4
Other types of ambiguity can be detected, see for instance
Talbot [2014], poss. 660-688, and Sennet [2021], § 3.

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example, the sentence ‘Jonathan showed the count
to Mina’ admits different intepretations due to the
multiple meanings of the term ‘count’. What did
Jonathan show to his fiancée; a total obtained by
counting or a European nobleman? Words enjoying
several meanings are countless, but sometimes
dictionary and context may be sufficient to help
with these cases. Lexical ambiguities can be
disambiguated by making the word’s intended
meaning explicit.5
A second kind of ambiguity is structural
ambiguity, which depends on the different ways the
words in a sentence can be combined. For instance,
the sentence ‘Every superhero fights an
archenemy’ means that either there is an
archenemy such that every superhero fights him,
or every superhero is such that there is an
archenemy the superhero fights. Resolving this
ambiguity matters, not only for superheroes, but
also for critical reasoners, because it raises the
question: is there just one archenemy who is
fought by every superhero, or is it that every
superhero fights a different archenemy? Structural
ambiguities can be dissolved by rephrasing the
sentence in each way it can be understood.6
A third kind of ambiguity is that of cross
reference, which happens in a sentence when it is
unclear to which earlier word a later word refers.
5
For more on lexical ambiguity, see Talbot [2014], poss. 637-
647, and Sennet [2021], § 3.1.
6
For more on structural ambiguity, see Talbot [2014], poss.
625-637, and Sennet [2021], § 3.2, who treats this ambiguity
as a subset of syntactic ambiguity.

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An example may be ‘Laurel made Hardy angry
when he flattened his bowler’. Here the puzzling
words are ‘he’ and ‘his’ because they generate an
unclear internal reference. Does the sentence
mean that Laurel annoyed Hardy when Laurel
flattened Hardy’s hat or when Hardy flattened
Laurel’s hat? Or else might it be that Laurel
flattened his (Laurel’s) hat, or that Hardy flattened
his (Hardy’s) hat? Ambiguities of cross reference
can be dissipated by clarifying which previous word
in the sentence is being referred to by the later
word.7
In conclusion, ambiguity is a danger to the
clearness of arguments, hence disambiguation
plays a propedeutic role in the critical reasoner’s
work. Removing ambiguities for the sake of clarity
implies to preliminarily eliminate those obstacles
which may prevent the reasoner from providing an
accurate interpretation of arguments and hopefully
succeeding in critical reasoning.8
References
• Hitchcock, D. [2020], “Critical Thinking”, The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020
Ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-
thinking.
7
For more on ambiguity of cross reference, see Talbot
[2014], poss. 647-660, and Sennet [2021] § 3.2, who, if I
am not mistaken, categorises this ambiguity as a type of
syntactic ambiguity.
8
See Talbot [2014], pos. 694.

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• Sennet, A. [2021], “Ambiguity”, The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2021 Ed.),
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/e
ntries/ambiguity.
• Talbot, M. [2014], Critical Reasoning: A Romp
Through the Foothills of Logic for Complete
Beginners, Kindle version.
• The Open University [2008], Thinking Critically,
www.openuniversity.edu/sites/www.openuniver
sity.edu/files/brochures/Critical-thinking-Open-
University.pdf.