chapter 3&4

Vague

a concept is __________ if we cannot say with certainty what it includes and what it excludes.

stimulative definitions

a defintion (of a word) that is specific to a particular context

wishful thinking

a fallacy that occurs when we forget that wanting something to be true is irrelevant to whether it is true

Grouping Ambiguity

a kind of semantic ambiguity in which it is unclear water a claim refers to a group of things take individually or collectively

disinterested parties

a person has no take in our belief or disbelief in a claim

interested party

a person who stands to gain from our believing his or her claim

rhetorical

a pseudo definition given to express our feelings or influence someone else's

ambitious pronoun references

a statement or phrase in which it is not clear to what or to whom a pronoun is supposed to refer.

syntactic ambiguity

an ambiguous claim whose ambiguity is due to the structure of the claim.

Semantic Ambiguity

an ambitious claim whose ambiguity is due to the ambiguity of a word or phrase in the claim.

expertise

an unusual knowledge or ability in a given subject most often due to specialized experience or education

definition by synonym

giving another word or phrase that means the same thing as the term being defined.

Ambiguous

having more than one meaning an __________claim is one that can be interpreted in more than one way and whose meaning is not made clear by the context.

the knee jerk reaction

in this type or essay writers record their first reaction to an issue without considering the issue in any depth or detail.

generality

lack of detail or specificity the more different kinds of X's to which the work for X's applies the more general that word is.

initial plausibility

one's bought assessment of how credible a claim seems

definition by example

pointing to, naming, or otherwise identifying one or more examples of the term be defined. Also known as ostensive.

analytics definitions

specifications of the features a thing must posses in order for the term being defined to apply to it

background information

the body of justified beliefs that consists of facts we learn from our own direct observations and facts we learn from others

lexical definitions

the meaning of a word that is given in the dictionary

emotive meaning

the positive or negative associations of an expression

the stream of consciousness ramble

this type of essay results when writers make no attempt to organize their thoughts and simply spew them out in the order in which they come to mind.

the windy preamble

writers of this type of essay avoid getting to the issue and instead go on at length with introductory remarks often about how important the issue is.