AMPHIBOLY (ἀμφιβολία, ambiguity).—A proposition of a doubtful or double sense. Aristotle distinguishes it from equivocatio, ὁμωνυμία, ambiguity in terms taken separately (The Sophistical Elenchi, ch. IV.; Organon, transl. Owen, II. 544; Opera, ed. Buhle, III. 528; Whately’s Logic, bk. III. sec. 10).
| The term is applied by Kant to the confounding of pure notions of the understanding with objects of experience, and attributing to the one characters and qualities which belong to the other (Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Analytic of Principles,—bk. II. ch. III. app., entitled, «Of the equivocal nature or Amphiboly of the conceptions of reflection from the substitution of the transcendental for the empirical use of the understanding»). |
