Question

The German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that all of the problems of philosophy are caused by confusions in language. Given our discussions on ambiguity and vagueness, what do you think he means? Include a brief discussion of Orwell's essay on language and euphemism. Do you have examples in your own life in which confusion of words led to confusion in an argument?

P.S this Philosophy subject. Thank you.

Answer 1

Vagueness refers to a lack of clarity in meaning, whereas ambiguous refers to there are more than one clear meaning, and the respondent became biased to choose which meaning was intended. As per Ludwig Wittgenstein, these type of vague and ambiguous words can make misinterpretations and eventually it makes difficult to decifer the ideas.

George Orwell's novel 'Politics and English Language' in 1984 explains about how politicians are using language to misinterpret the ideologies. He explains that the euphemism, propaganda, doublespeak were used to manipulate the actual concept. Euphemism is the use of a less offensive word to replace a word that reveals the actual content. According to him, politicians make a gap between one's real and one's declared aims by using euphemism. So eventually they are convincing the people by manipulating language.

In my personal life, once my friend said that I want to pick her and she is waiting in a bank in our city. I just confused whether she mentioned about the river bank in the city or financial office. Later she was claiming like she told me the correct location and I failed to understand it.