In current usage, there are multiple and sometimes conflicting definitions for zeugma and syllepsis. This article categorizes these two figures of speech into four types, based on four definitions:

Type 1

Grammatical syllepsis (sometimes also called zeugma): where a single word is used in relation to two other parts of a sentence although the word grammatically or logically applies to only one.[2][4]

By definition, grammatical syllepsis will often be grammatically "incorrect" according to traditional grammatical rules. However, such solecisms are sometimes not errors but intentional constructions in which the rules of grammar are bent by necessity or for stylistic effect.

"He works his work, I mine" (Tennyson, "Ulysses").[4]

It is ungrammatical from a grammarian's viewpoint, because "works" does not grammatically agree with "I": the sentence "I works mine" would be ungrammatical. On the other hand, Tennyson's two sentences could be taken to deploy a different figure of speech, namely "ellipsis". The sentence would be taken to mean,

"He works his work, [and] I [work] mine."

Read in this way, the conjunction is not ungrammatical.

Sometimes the "error" is logical, rather than grammatical:

"They saw lots of thunder and lightning."[4]

Logically, they "saw" only the lightning.

Type 2

Zeugma (often also called syllepsis, or semantic syllepsis): a single word is used with two other parts of a sentence but must be understood differently in relation to each.[5][6][7][8] Example: "He took his hat and his leave." The type of figure is grammatically correct but creates its effect by seeming, at first hearing, to be incorrect by its exploiting multiple shades of meaning in a single word or phrase.

"Here Thou, great Anna! whom three Realms obey,

Dost sometimes Counsel take – and sometimes Tea." (Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock, Canto III)[9][10]

"Miss Bolo […] went straight home, in a flood of tears and a sedan-chair." (Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, Chapter 35)[11]

"She lowered her standards by raising her glass / Her courage, her eyes and his hopes…"When he asked 'What in heaven?' she made no reply, up her mind, and a dash for the door." (Flanders and Swann, "Have Some Madeira M'Dear")[4][12]

"They covered themselves with dust and glory." (Mark Twain)[4].

"He watches afternoon repeats and the food he eats." (Blur, 'Country House')

When the meaning of a verb varies for the nouns following it, there is a standard order for the nouns: the noun first takes the most prototypical or literal meaning of the verb and is followed by the noun or nouns taking the less prototypical or more figurative verb meanings.[13]

"The boy swallowed milk and kisses," as contrasted with "The boy swallowed kisses and milk".[13]

The opposite process, in which the first noun expresses a figurative meaning and the second a more literal meaning, tends to create a comic effect: “and she feeds me love and tenderness and macaroons.” (The Stampeders, “Sweet City Woman”)

Type 3

The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms offers a much broader definition for zeugma by defining it as any case of parallelism and ellipsis working together so that a single word governs two or more other parts of a sentence.[14]

Vicit pudorem libido timorem audacia rationem amentia. (Cicero, Pro Cluentio, VI.15)

"Lust conquered shame; audacity, fear; madness, reason."

The more usual way of phrasing this would be "Lust conquered shame, audacity conquered fear, and madness conquered reason." The sentence consists of three parallel clauses, called parallel because each has the same word order: subject, verb, object. The verb "conquered" is a common element in each clause. The zeugma is created by removing the second and third instances of "conquered". Removing words that still can be understood by the context of the remaining words is ellipsis.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. (Francis Bacon[15]).

The more usual way of phrasing this would be "Histories make men wise, poets make them witty, the mathematics make them subtle, natural philosophy makes them deep, moral [philosophy] makes them grave, and logic and rhetoric make them able to contend."

Zeugmas are defined in this sense in Samuel Johnson's 18th-century A Dictionary of the English Language.[16]

Type 4

A special case of semantic syllepsis occurs when a word or phrase is used both in its figurative and literal sense at the same time.[3] Then, it is not necessary for the governing phrase to relate to two other parts of the sentence. One example, from the song "What's My Name?", is: "Okay, there we go / Only thing we have on is the radio." Another example is in an advertisement for a transport company: "We go a long way for you." This type of syllepsis operates in a similar manner to a homonymic pun.

There are several other definitions of zeugma that encompass other ways in which one word in a sentence can relate to two or more others. Even a simple construction like "this is easy and comprehensible" has been called[3] a "zeugma without complication" because "is" governs both "easy" and "comprehensible".

Specialized figures have been defined to distinguish zeugmas with particular characteristics such as the following figures, which relate to the specific type and location of the governing word:

Diazeugma

A diazeugma[17] is a zeugma whose only subject governs multiple verbs. A diazeugma whose only subject begins the sentence and controls a series of verbs is a "disjunction" (disiunctio) in the Rhetorica ad Herennium.[18]

Populus Romanus Numantiam delevit Kartaginem sustulit Corinthum disiecit Fregellas evertit. (Anon. Rhetorica ad Herennium. IV. xxvii.[18])

The Roman people destroyed Numantia, razed Carthage, demolished Corinth, and overthrew Fregellae.

"We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." (Inaugural address of John F. Kennedy)

Hypozeugma

Hypozeugma[19] or "adjunctions" (adiunctio)[20] is used in a construction containing several phrases and occurs when the word or words on which all of the phrases depend are placed at the end.

Assure yourself that Damon to his Pythias, Pylades to his Orestes, Titus to his Gysippus, Theseus to his Pyrothus, Scipio to his Laelius, was never found more faithful than Euphues will be to his Philautus. (John Lyly, Euphues)[21]

Prozeugma

A prozeugma,[22] synezeugmenon, or praeiunctio is a zeugma whose governing word occurs in the first clause of the sentence.[21]

Vicit pudorem libido timorem audacia rationem amentia. (Cicero, Pro Cluentio, VI.15)

"Lust conquered shame; audacity, fear; madness, reason."

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. (Francis Bacon[15]).

Mesozeugma

A mesozeugma[23] is a zeugma whose governing word occurs in the middle of the sentence and governs clauses on either side. A mesozeugma whose common term is a verb is called "conjunction" (coniunctio) in the Roman Rhetorica ad Herennium.[18]

"What a shame is this, that neither hope of reward, nor feare of reproch could any thing move him, neither the persuasion of his friends, nor the love of his country. [sic]" (Henry Peacham)

Hypozeuxis is a rhetorical term for an expression or sentence where every clause has its own independent subject and predicate.[1] If the same words are repeated in each clause, it is also an example of anaphora.

"We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills." (Winston Churchill)

The opposite of hypozeuxis is hyperzeuxis, which may also be a form of zeugma or syllepsis.

A loaded question or complex question is a question that contains a controversial or unjustified assumption (e.g., a presumption of guilt).[1]

Aside from being an informal fallacy depending on usage, such questions may be used as a rhetorical tool: the question attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the questioner's agenda.[2] The traditional example is the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Whether the respondent answers yes or no, they will admit to having a wife and having beaten her at some time in the past. Thus, these facts are presupposed by the question, and in this case an entrapment, because it narrows the respondent to a single answer, and the fallacy of many questions has been committed.[2] The fallacy relies upon context for its effect: the fact that a question presupposes something does not in itself make the question fallacious. Only when some of these presuppositions are not necessarily agreed to by the person who is asked the question does the argument containing them become fallacious.[2] Hence, the same question may be loaded in one context, but not in the other. For example, the previous question would not be loaded if it were asked during a trial in which the defendant had already admitted to beating his wife.[2]

This fallacy should be distinguished from that of begging the question,[3] which offers a premise whose plausibility depends on the truth of the proposition asked about, and which is often an implicit restatement of the proposition.[4]

Madeleine Albright (U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.) fell into a trap of answering a loaded question (and later regretted not challenging it instead) on 60 Minutes on 12 May 1996. Lesley Stahl asked, regarding the effects of UN sanctions against Iraq, "We have heard that a half million children have (sic) died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Instead of questioning this unattributed death toll or how much of it could have been due to sanctions, Madeleine Albright said "I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it."[6] She later wrote of this response:

I must have been crazy; I should have answered the question by reframing it and pointing out the inherent flaws in the premise behind it…. As soon as I had spoken, I wished for the power to freeze time and take back those words. My reply had been a terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy, and wrong…. I had fallen into a trap and said something that I simply did not mean. That is no one's fault but my own.[7]

For another example, the 2009 referendum on corporal punishment in New Zealand asked: "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?" Murray Edridge, of Barnardos New Zealand, criticized the question as "loaded and ambiguous" and claimed "the question presupposes that smacking is a part of good parental correction".[8]

In a July, 2019, Democratic Party presidential primary debate, CNN's Jake Tapper asked Senator Elizabeth Warren, "Senator Sanders has said that people in the middle class will pay more in taxes to help pay for Medicare for All, though that will be offset by the elimination of insurance premiums and other costs. Are you also, quote, 'with Bernie' on Medicare for All when it comes to raising taxes on middle-class Americans to pay for it?"[9]

A false dilemma (or sometimes called false dichotomy) is a type of informal fallacy in which a statement falsely claims an "either/or" situation, when in fact there is at least one additional logically valid option.[1]

The false dilemma fallacy can also arise simply by accidental omission of additional options rather than by deliberate deception. For example, "Stacey spoke out against capitalism, therefore she must be a communist" (she may be neither capitalist nor communist, or a capitalist who disagrees with portions of capitalism). "Roger opposed an atheistic argument against Christianity, so he must be a Christian" (When it's assumed the opposition by itself means he's a Christian). Roger might be an atheist who disagrees with the logic of some particular argument against Christianity. Additionally, it can be the result of habitual tendency, whatever the cause, to view the world with limited sets of options.

Some philosophers and scholars believe that "unless a distinction can be made rigorous and precise it isn't really a distinction".[2] An exception is analytic philosopher John Searle, who called it an incorrect assumption that produces false dichotomies.[3] Searle insists that "it is a condition of the adequacy of a precise theory of an indeterminate phenomenon that it should precisely characterize that phenomenon as indeterminate; and a distinction is no less a distinction for allowing for a family of related, marginal, diverging cases."[3] Similarly, when two options are presented, they often are, although not always, two extreme points on some spectrum of possibilities; this may lend credence to the larger argument by giving the impression that the options are mutually exclusive, even though they need not be.[4] Furthermore, the options in false dichotomies typically are presented as being collectively exhaustive, in which case the fallacy may be overcome, or at least weakened, by considering other possibilities, or perhaps by considering a whole spectrum of possibilities, as in fuzzy logic.[5] This issue arises from real dichotomies in nature, the most prevalent example is the occurrence of an event. It either happened or it did not happen. This ontology sets a logical construct that cannot be reasonably applied to epistemology.

Polyptoton /ˌpɒlɪpˈtoʊtɒn/ is the stylistic scheme in which words derived from the same root are repeated (such as "strong" and "strength"). A related stylistic device is antanaclasis, in which the same word is repeated, but each time with a different sense. Another related term is figura etymologica.

In inflected languages polyptoton is the same word being repeated but appearing each time in a different case. (for example, "Iuppiter", "Iovis", "Iovi", "Iovem", "Iove" [in Latin being the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative forms of "Iuppiter" (the god Jupiter), respectively]).

The form is relatively common in Latin Christian poetry and prose in a construction called the superlative genitive, in phrases such as sanctum sanctorum ("holy of holies"), and found its way into languages such as Old English, which naturally preferred the prevalent alliteration that is part and parcel of polyptoton—in fact, polyptoton is "much more prevalent in Old English verse than in Latin verse." The specific superlative genitive in Old English, however, occurs only in Latinate Christian poems, not in secular poetry.[1]

It is also used in public speaking, and several examples can be found in Churchill's speeches.

G. K. Chesterton frequently employed this device to create paradox:

It is the same with all the powerful of to-day; it is the same, for instance, with the high-placed and high-paid official. Not only is the judge not judicial, but the arbiter is not even arbitrary.

— G.K. Chesterton, The Man on Top (1912)[2]

In combination with verbal active and passive voices, it points out the idea of a latent reciprocity:

Judge not, that ye be not judged

— Matthew 7:1[3]

An alternative way to use the device is to develop polyptoton over the course of an entire novel, which is done in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Shelley combines polyptoton with periphrastic naming, which is the technique of referring to someone using several indirect names. The creature in Frankenstein is referred to by many terms, such as "fiend", "devil", "being", and "ogre". However, the first term that Shelley uses in reference to the creature is "wretch". Throughout the novel, various forms of this are used, such as "wretchedly" and "wretchedness", which may be seen as polyptoton. According to Duyfhuizen, the gradual development of polyptoton in Frankenstein is significant because it symbolizes the intricacies of one's own identity.[4]

>>8508471

>Polyptoton

"The Greeks are strong, and skillful to their strength, Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant;" William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida I, i, 7-8

אַל־תַּטִּ֖פוּ יַטִּיפ֑וּן‎ "Preach ye not, they preach." Micah 2:6

"With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder." William Shakespeare Richard II II,i,37

"Not as a call to battle, though embattled we are." John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961.

"Thou art of blood, joy not to make things bleed." Sir Philip Sidney

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton

"Who shall watch the watchmen themselves (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)?" Juvenal

"Diamond me no diamonds, prize me no prizes…" Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Lancelot and Elaine

Brain in a vat

Brain in a vat is a thought experiment in philosophy which is premised upon the skeptical hypothesis that one could actually be a brain in a vat receiving electrical input identical to that which would be coming from the nervous system. Similar premises are found in Descartes's evil demon and dream argument. Philosopher Hilary Putnam argues that some versions of the thought experiment would be inconsistent due to semantic externalism. For a brain in a vat that had only ever experienced the simulated world, the statement "I'm not a brain in a vat" is true. The only possible brains and vats it could be referring to are simulated, and it is true that it is not a simulated brain in a simulated vat. By the same argument, saying "I'm a brain in a vat" would be false.[6]

Determinism

It has been argued, particularly by Christian apologists, that to call determinism a rational statement is doubly self-defeating.[7]

To count as rational, a belief must be freely chosen, which according to the determinist is impossible

Any kind of debate seems to be posited on the idea that the parties involved are trying to change each other's minds.

The argument does not succeed against the compatibilistic view, since in the latter there is no conflict between determinism and free will. Moreover, the argument fails if one denies either of the above or its implicit implications. That is, one could avoid the argument by maintaining that free will is not required for rationality or for trying to change one's mind. The latter is a sensible position insofar as one could be determined to try to persuade someone of something, and the listener could be determined to accept it. There is no internal contradiction in that view.

One can also consider a deterministic computer algorithm which is able to make a correct conclusion, such as a mathematical calculation or fingerprint identification. However, on some notions of "rationality", such programs are themselves not rational because they simply follow a certain deterministic pre-programmed path and nothing more. This does not apply if one takes on a position with regards to rationality analogous to compatibilism, namely, one could simply view rationality as the property of correctly executing the laws of logic, in which case there simply is no contradiction with determinism. The contradiction would arise if one defines "rationality" in a manner that is incompatibilist. Some argue that machines cannot "think", and if rationality is defined so that it requires human-like thought, this might pose a problem. But the view that machines cannot "think" in principle is rejected by most[citation needed] philosophers who accept a computational theory of mind.

Ethical egoism

It has been argued that extreme ethical egoism is self-defeating. Faced with a situation of limited resources, egoists would consume as much of the resource as they could, making the overall situation worse for everybody. Egoists may respond that if the situation becomes worse for everybody, that would include the egoist, so it is not, in fact, in his or her rational self-interest to take things to such extremes.[8] However, the (unregulated) tragedy of the commons and the (one off) prisoner's dilemma are cases in which, on the one hand, it is rational for an individual to seek to take as much as possible even though that makes things worse for everybody, and on the other hand, those cases are not self-refuting since that behaviour remains rational even though it is ultimately self-defeating, i.e. self-defeating does not imply self-refuting. Egoists might respond that a tragedy of the commons, however, assumes some degree of public land. That is, a commons forbidding homesteading requires regulation. Thus, an argument against the tragedy of the commons, in this belief system, is fundamentally an argument for private property rights and the system that recognizes both property rights and rational self-interest—capitalism.[9] More generally, egoists might say that an increasing respect for individual rights uniquely allows for increasing wealth creation and increasing usable resources despite a fixed amount of raw materials (e.g. the West pre-1776 versus post-1776, East versus West Germany, Hong Kong versus mainland China, North versus South Korea, etc.).[10]

Eliminative materialism

The philosopher Mary Midgley states that the idea that nothing exists except matter is also self-refuting because if it were true neither it, nor any other idea, would exist, and similarly that an argument to that effect would be self-refuting because it would deny its own existence.[11][page needed] Several other philosophers also argue that eliminative materialism is self-refuting.[12][page needed][13][14]

However, other forms of materialism may escape this kind of argument because, rather than eliminating the mental, they seek to identify it with, or reduce it to, the material.[15] For instance, identity theorists such as J. J. C. Smart, Ullin Place and E. G. Boring state that ideas exist materially as patterns of neural structure and activity.[16][17] Christian apologist J.P. Moreland states that such arguments are based on semantics.[18][page needed]

Epimenides paradox

The first notable self-refuting idea is the Epimenides paradox, a statement attributed to Epimenides, a Cretan philosopher, that "All Cretans are liars". This cannot be true if uttered by a Cretan.

A more common example is the self-refuting statement "I am lying" (because the first statement allows the possibility "some Cretans do not speak the truth", the speaker being one of them). The second statement has no third alternative—the speaker's statement is either true or false.

Evolutionary naturalism

Alvin Plantinga argues in his evolutionary argument against naturalism that the combination of naturalism and evolution is "in a certain interesting way self-defeating" because if it were true there would be insufficient grounds to believe that human cognitive faculties are reliable.[19][page needed] Consequently, if human cognitive abilities are unreliable, then any human construct, which by implication utilizes cognitive faculties, such as evolutionary theory, would be undermined. In this particular case, it is the confluence of evolutionary theory and naturalism that, according to the argument, undermine the reason for believing themselves to be true. Since Plantinga originally formulated the argument, a few theistic philosophers and Christian apologists have agreed.[20][citation needed][21][page needed] There has also been a considerable backlash of papers arguing that the argument is flawed in a number of ways, one of the more recent ones published in 2011 by Feng Ye[22] (see also the references in the Evolutionary argument against naturalism article).

Foundationalism

The philosopher Anthony Kenny argues that the idea, "common to theists like Aquinas and Descartes and to an atheist like Russell" that "Rational belief [is] either self-evident or based directly or indirectly on what is evident" (which he termed "foundationalism" following Plantinga) is self-refuting on the basis that this idea is itself neither self-evident nor based directly or indirectly on what is evident and that the same applies to other formulations of such foundationalism.[23] However, the self-evident impossibility of infinite regress can be offered as a justification for foundationalism.[24] Following the identification of problems with "naive foundationalism", the term is now often used to focus on incorrigible beliefs (modern foundationalism), or basic beliefs (reformed foundationalism).

Philosophical skepticism

Philosophical skeptics state that "nothing can be known".[25][dead link] This has caused some to ask if nothing can be known then can that statement itself be known, or is it self-refuting.[26] One very old response to this problem is academic skepticism:[27] an exception is made for the skeptic's own statement. This leads to further debate about consistency and special pleading. Another response is to accept that nothing can be known cannot itself be known, so that it is not known whether anything is knowable or not. This is Pyrrhonic skepticism. However, the issue can be pressed further. To state that nothing can be known is itself unknowable, is to state that it is a fact that nothing can be known is unknowable. This admits at least one form of knowledge, and the metaphysical proposition I can discern truth. It is therefore self-refuting; only justified through an infinite regress of not knowing knowledge claims and not knowing that one can know them ad infinitum.

Relativism

It is often stated that relativism about truth must be applied to itself.[28][29] The cruder form of the argument concludes that since the relativist is calling relativism an absolute truth, it leads to a contradiction. Relativists often rejoin that in fact relativism is only relatively true, leading to a subtler problem: the absolutist, the relativist's opponent, is perfectly entitled, by the relativist's own standards, to reject relativism. That is, the relativist's arguments can have no normative force over someone who has different basic beliefs.[30]

Solipsism

On the face of it, a statement of solipsism is — at least performatively — self-defeating, because a statement assumes another person to whom the statement is made. (That is to say, an unexpressed private belief in solipsism is not self-refuting). This, of course, assumes the solipsist would not communicate with a hallucination, even if just for self-amusement.

One response is that the solipsist's interlocutor is in fact a figment of their imagination, but since their interlocutor knows they are not, they are not going to be convinced.[31]

Verification and falsification principles

The statements "statements are meaningless unless they can be empirically verified" and "statements are meaningless unless they can be empirically falsified" have both been called self-refuting on the basis that they can neither be empirically verified nor falsified.[32] Similar arguments have been made for statements such as "no statements are true unless they can be shown empirically to be true", which was a problem for logical positivism.[33]

Wittgenstein's Tractatus

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is an unusual example of a self-refuting argument, in that Ludwig Wittgenstein explicitly admits to the issue at the end of the work:

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) (6.54)[page needed]

However, this idea can be solved in the sense that, even if the argument itself is self-refuting, the effects of the argument elicit understandings that go beyond the argument itself. Søren Kierkegaard describes it as such:

[The reader] can understand that the understanding is a revocation–the understanding with him as the sole reader is indeed the revocation of the book. He can understand that to write a book and to revoke it is not the same as refraining from writing it, that to write a book that does not demand to be important for anyone is still not the same as letting it be unwritten.

— Concluding Unscientific Postscript[page needed]