The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

discussed elsewhere: let us now
proceed to speak of the arguments used in competitions and
contests.
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3
    First we must grasp the number of aims entertained by those who
argue as competitors and rivals to the death. These are five in
number, refutation, fallacy, paradox, solecism, and fifthly to
reduce the opponent in the discussion to babbling-i.e. to constrain
him to repeat himself a number of times: or it is to produce the
appearance of each of these things without the reality. For they
choose if possible plainly to refute the other party, or as the
second best to show that he is committing some fallacy, or as a
third best to lead him into paradox, or fourthly to reduce him to
solecism, i.e. to make the answerer, in consequence of the
argument, to use an ungrammatical expression; or, as a last resort,
to make him repeat himself.
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4
    There are two styles of refutation: for some depend on the
language used, while some are independent of language. Those ways
of producing the false appearance of an argument which depend on
language are six in number: they are ambiguity, amphiboly,
combination, division of words, accent, form of expression. Of this
we may assure ourselves both by induction, and by syllogistic proof
based on this-and it may be on other assumptions as well-that this
is the number of ways in which we might fall to mean the same thing
by the same names or expressions. Arguments such as the following
depend upon ambiguity. ‘Those learn who know: for it is those who
know their letters who learn the letters dictated to them’. For to
‘learn’ is ambiguous; it signifies both ‘to understand’ by the use
of knowledge, and also ‘to acquire knowledge’. Again, ‘Evils are
good: for what needs to be is good, and evils must needs be’. For
‘what needs to be’ has a double meaning: it means what is
inevitable, as often is the case with evils, too (for evil of some
kind is inevitable), while on the other hand we say of good things
as well that they ‘need to be’. Moreover, ‘The same man is both
seated and standing and he is both sick and in health: for it is he
who stood up who is standing, and he who is recovering who is in
health: but it is the seated man who stood up, and the sick man who
was recovering’. For ‘The sick man does so and so’, or ‘has so and
so done to him’ is not single in meaning: sometimes it means ‘the
man who is sick or is seated now’, sometimes ‘the man who was sick
formerly’. Of course, the man who was recovering was the sick man,
who really was sick at the time: but the man who is in health is
not sick at the same time: he is ‘the sick man’ in the sense not
that he is sick now, but that he was sick formerly. Examples such
as the following depend upon amphiboly: ‘I wish that you the enemy
may capture’. Also the thesis, ‘There must be knowledge of what one
knows’: for it is possible by this phrase to mean that knowledge
belongs to both the knower and the known. Also, ‘There must be
sight of what one sees: one sees the pillar: ergo the pillar has
sight’. Also, ‘What you profess to-be, that you profess to-be: you
profess a stone to-be: ergo you profess-to-be a stone’. Also,
‘Speaking of the silent is possible’: for ‘speaking of the silent’
also has a double meaning: it may mean that the speaker is silent
or that the things of which he speaks are so. There are three
varieties of these ambiguities and amphibolies: (1) When either the
expression or the name has strictly more than one meaning, e.g.
aetos and the ‘dog’; (2) when by custom we use them so; (3) when
words that have a simple sense taken alone have more than one
meaning in combination; e.g. ‘knowing letters’. For each word, both
‘knowing’ and ‘letters’, possibly has a single meaning: but both
together have more than one-either that the letters themselves have
knowledge or that someone else has it of them.
    Amphiboly and ambiguity, then, depend on these modes of speech.
Upon the combination of words there depend instances such as the
following: ‘A man can walk while sitting, and can write while not
writing’. For the meaning is not the same if one divides the words
and if one combines them in saying that ‘it is possible to
walk-while-sitting’ and write while not writing]. The same applies
to the latter phrase, too, if one combines the words