Each of the following arguments trades on an ambiguity. For each, locate the ambiguity by showing that one or more of the statements can be interpreted in different ways. 1. We shouldn’t hire Peter, because our company has a policy against hiring drug users, and I saw Peter take aspirin, which is a drug.
2. Man is the only rational animal, and no woman is a man, so women are not rational.
3. My doctor has been practicing medicine for thirty years, and practice makes perfect, so my doctor must be nearly perfect.
4. Our cereal is all natural, for there is obviously nothing supernatural about it.
5. Ice cream is never all natural, since it never appears in nature without human intervention.
6. I have a right to spend all my money on lottery tickets. Therefore, when I spend all my money on lottery tickets, I am doing the right thing.
7. You passed no one on the road; therefore, you walked faster than no one.
8. Everything must have some cause; therefore, something must be the cause of everything.
9. The apostles were twelve. Matthew was an apostle. Hence, Matthew was twelve. (attributed to Bertrand Russell)
10. If I have only one friend, then I cannot say that I have any number of friends. So one is not any number. (from Timothy Duggan)
11.“Our bread does have fiber, because it contains wood pulp.” (The Federal Trade Commission actually ordered the Continental Baking Company to indicate in their advertising that this is the kind of fiber in their Fresh Horizons bread.)
12.Anyone who tries to violate a law, even if the attempt fails, should be punished. People who try to fly are trying to violate the law of gravity. So they should be punished. (This argument is reported to have been used in an actual legal case during the nineteenth century, but compare Stephen Colbert, “Physics is the ultimate Big Government interference—universal laws meant to constrain us at every turn. . . . Hey, is it wrong that I sometimes want to act without having to deal with an equal and opposite reaction?”2)