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Simply put, the fallacy of equivocation involves mapping more than one concept to a single word, thereby causing ambiguity or confusion.

Is there a name for its opposite, where a single concept gets mapped to more than one word, causing confusion (albeit of a different kind)?

An example can often be seen in business planning meetings, especially high level ones: namely, arguments over the difference between "goals" and "objectives".

I've experienced a lot of those, and others like them, and I believe it has almost always been the case that the argument is over a distinction without a difference. In practice, the two words being argued over are essentially synonyms, but precisely because there are two words, the interlocutors assume, mistakenly, that there are two different underlying concepts at play and so the difference must be specified.

Does that error have a name?

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  • Different words for fully "the same" concept are called cognitive synonyms and they almost never occur in natural languages. In particular, "goals" (long term) and "objectives" (short term) are not cognitive synonyms. More typically, "distinction without a difference" involves a difference that one does not care about or considers moot in a given context. Arguments over it are then often negatively labeled "debates about words", but those are not exactly fallacious and may or may not have pragmatic utility in sharpening the discourse.
    – Conifold
    Commented Aug 12 at 22:42
  • Is it possible the term would be inverse of equivocation, rather than opposite? Hopefully that's not a distinction without a difference. :)
    – Peter Rankin
    Commented Aug 12 at 23:14
  • We have words like "disequilibrium" so we could just as well have "disequivocation." But that would be only one kind of opposite, so we might as well have also "inequivocation," "misequivocation," and so on. EDIT: there is also the word "redundant," like if we said something was green and verdant, the "green" would be redundant.
    – Kristian Berry
    Commented Aug 12 at 23:53
  • This is not quite the same, but you might google up the well-known case of Frege's morning star and evening star. It concerns how different terms or references to the same object can muddle truth values.
    – Nelson Alexander
    Commented Aug 13 at 18:20

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Well, you nailed it: distinction without a difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_without_a_difference#:~:text=A%20distinction%20without%20a%20difference,an%20argument%20prefers%20to%20avoid.

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  • Nnnyeah, I suppose. But I was hoping for something more...formal, or more explanatory. A pronouncement of "equivocation!" not only names that fallacy, but it also reveals something about its mechanism. By contrast, it feels like, "distinction without a difference!" does only the naming. But I'd never actually heard of "distinction without a difference" being classed as a fallacy until now, so maybe it's just I haven't seen it enough in that light. +1 nevertheless.
    – tkp
    Commented Aug 12 at 20:14
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Perhaps an example of complexity bias? I.e., the bias toward thinking that complex ideas are more likely to be right, simply because they are more complex?

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First, let's define some terms.

  1. A term used with different meanings is equivocal.
  2. A term used with the same meaning is univocal.
  3. A term used with different but related meanings is analogical.

The equivocation fallacy involves using the same term with two different meanings as if the same meaning were used throughout. Example:

  • No non-Man1 is Rational.
  • No Woman is a Man2.
  • Therefore, no Woman is Rational.

Man1 refers to the human species, while Man2 refers to the male sex, but the inference treats them as if they were both Man2. It's a fallacy involving the misuse of a term (Man) that can denote more than one thing, depending on context. This is why it is called an informal fallacy. Formally, the inference looks fine.

The corresponding counterpart you are asking for is something like the use of synonyms as if they meant something different.

I don't know that this has a name, and I don't know that it merits one. Let's consider an example to see why.

  • No non-Human is Rational.
  • Therefore, no Man is Rational.

This inference is effectively an enthymeme, because its validity presupposes a suppressed premise that relates Human to Man.

  • No non-Human is Rational.
  • Every Man is Human.
  • Therefore, no Man is Rational.

But as soon as you do that, the inference contains a contradiction. It is formally invalid. This is just a non sequitur.

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