Question:
Ambiguities in Logic
This learning activity tests your ability to recognize ambiguities and their effects on arguments. One needs only to consider the following actual headlines to know that clarity of meaning is important if one wants to be both understood and taken seriously:
Kids Make Nutritious Snacks.
Stolen Painting Found by Tree.
Miners Refuse to Work After Death.
Old School Pillars Are Replaced by Alumni.
Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge.
No doubt, the writers of these headlines thought their meaning was clear and did not intend to be funny.
Please answer this part: Discuss whether this argument of the egoist depends on an ambiguity?
The ethical theory called "Psychological Egoism" maintains that people always act selfishly so as to seek their own satisfaction or good. Consider this argument:
Yes, we do things for others, but we get satisfaction out of doing them, and this satisfaction is our end for doing them. Doing things for others is only a means to this satisfaction. Hence, even in doing "altruistic" things for others, like taking them to see the ocean, we are seeking our own good. Discuss whether this argument of the egoist depends on an ambiguity?
Reference
Fun With Words. (n.d.). Ambiguous newspaper headlines. Retrieved February 27, 2009, from https://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html