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19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 9. Ambiguity

[what double meanings show about language]

4 ideas
The ambiguity of words impedes the advancement of knowledge [Reid]
Derrida focuses on ambiguity, but talks of 'dissemination', not traditional multiple meanings [Derrida]
'Dissemination' is opposed to polysemia, since that is irreducible, because of multiple understandings [Derrida, by Glendinning]
Ambiguity is when different underlying truth-conditional structures have the same surface form [Harman]