Going from cognitive theory to neural data to ACT‐R models, the authors relate brain activity in a lexical ambiguity priming task to brain processes that resolve ambiguity in word meanings. These detailed data were tested and found compatible to the results of an ACT‐R computational model of reinforcement learning (RL). The model confirms and extends the behavioral findings to provide a RL account of individual differences in lexical ambiguity resolution.

Traxler, Pickering, and Clifton found that ambiguous sentences are read faster than their unambiguous counterparts. This so-called ambiguity advantage has presented a major challenge to classical theories of human sentence comprehension because its most prominent explanation, in the form of the unrestricted race model, assumes that parsing is non-deterministic. Recently, Swets, Desmet, Clifton, and Ferreira have challenged the URM. They argue that readers strategically underspecify the representation of ambiguous sentences to save time, unless disambiguation is required by task demands. (...) When disambiguation is required, however, readers assign sentences full structure—and Swets et al. provide experimental evidence to this end. On the basis of their findings, they argue against the URM and in favor of a model of task-dependent sentence comprehension. We show through simulations that the Swets et al. data do not constitute evidence for task-dependent parsing because they can be explained by the URM. However, we provide decisive evidence from a German self-paced reading study consistent with Swets et al.'s general claim about task-dependent parsing. Specifically, we show that under certain conditions, ambiguous sentences can be read more slowly than their unambiguous counterparts, suggesting that the parser may create several parses, when required. Finally, we present the first quantitative model of task-driven disambiguation that subsumes the URM, and we show that it can explain both Swets et al.'s results and our findings. (shrink)

Language is central to the interactional nature of the social life within which it is situated. To react or respond in a particular situation, we must be able to recognize the social situation. Growing evidence has demonstrated the negative impact of perceived loneliness on late-life executive functions. Yet little is known about how social factors impact language processing for older people. The current study aims to fill this gap, first by assessing age-related changes in lexical processing during Chinese word reading, (...) second, by examining whether older adults’ individual differences, such as processing speed and verbal abilities, modulate meaning retrieval and, third, by investigating whether perceived loneliness can hinder word reading. The use of compound words in Chinese enables significant sublexical ambiguity, requiring varying executive load during word recognition: when a word’s constituent characters carry multiple meanings, readers must consider the meaning contributions of both constituent characters and use top-down word information to determine the most accurate meaning of the ambiguous character, a process termed “sublexical ambiguity resolution.” In this study, adults read real Chinese words and pseudowords, and they were asked to make lexical decisions. Older adults exhibited greater lexicality effects and similar sublexical ambiguity effects compared with young adults. Among older participants, processing speed could account for their ability to differentiate between words and pseudowords. In contrast, the level of perceived loneliness modulated the efficacy of sublexical ambiguity resolution: the participants with higher perceived loneliness displayed a greater sublexical ambiguity disadvantage effect. These results indicate that perceived loneliness may affect the use of contextual information in meaning retrieval during reading. The findings provide an important link between social connections and language processing. (shrink)

In this particularly well written volume Graeme Hirst presents a theoretically motivated foundation for semantic interpretation (conceptual analysis) by computer, and shows how this framework facilitates the resolution of both lexical and syntactic ambiguities.

Two eye-tracking experiments investigated how and when pointing gestures and location descriptions affect target identification. The experiments investigated the effect of gestures and referring expressions on the time course of fixations to the target, using videos of human gestures and human voice, and animated gestures and synthesized speech. Ambiguous, yet informative pointing gestures elicited attention and facilitated target identification, akin to verbal location descriptions. Moreover, target identification was superior when both pointing gestures and verbal location descriptions were used. These findings (...) suggest that gesture not only operates as a context to verbal descriptions, or that verbal descriptions operate as a context to gesture, but that they complement one another in reference resolution. (shrink)

When faced with an ambiguous pronoun, comprehenders use both multimodal cues and linguistic cues to identify the antecedent. While research has shown that gestures facilitate language comprehension, improve reference tracking, and influence the interpretation of ambiguous pronouns, literature on reference resolution suggests that a wide set of linguistic constraints influences the successful resolution of ambiguous pronouns and that linguistic cues are more powerful than some multimodal cues. To address the outstanding question of the importance of gesture as a (...) cue in reference resolution relative to cues in the speech signal, we have previously investigated the comprehension of contrastive gestures that indexed abstract referents – in this case expressions of personal preference – and found that such gestures did facilitate the resolution of ambiguous statements of preference. In this study, we extend this work to investigate whether the effect of gesture on resolution is diminished when the gesture indexes a statement that is less likely to be interpreted as the correct referent. Participants watched videos in which a speaker contrasted two ideas that were either neutral or moral acceptable). A gesture to the left or right side co-occurred with speech expressing each position. In gesture-disambiguating trials, an ambiguous phrase was accompanied by a gesture to one side or the other. In gesture non-disambiguating trials, no third gesture occurred with the ambiguous phrase. Participants were more likely to choose the idea accompanied by gesture as the stimulus speaker’s preference. We found no effect of scenario type. Regardless of whether the linguistic cue expressed a view that was morally charged or neutral, observers used gesture to understand the speaker’s opinion. This finding contributes to our understanding of the strength and range of cues, both linguistic and multimodal, that listeners use to resolve ambiguous references. (shrink)

The effect of contextual information on the resolution of ambiguity was investigated in a group of individuals awaiting dental treatment and a group of control individuals. Participants heard threat/neutral, neutral/neutral and positive/neutral homophones while being simultaneously presented with a context word that was consistent with one of the two meanings of the homophone. Participants then made a lexical decision task on a target word that was one of the two alternate spellings of the homophone. We found that the (...) dental group was more sensitive to context for all types of homophones, and there was no evidence for mood congruency. It also appeared that there might have been an element of mood regulation in the dental group, as they were slower to respond to the emotional targets overall. Our results show that sensitivity to context in state anxiety is a robust phenomenon and one that generalises to naturally occurring anxious moods. (shrink)

Despite overwhelming evidence suggesting that quantifier scope is a phenomenon that must be treated at the pragmatic level, most computational treatments of scope ambiguities have thus far been a collection of syntactically motivated preference rules. This might be in part due to the prevailing wisdom that a commonsense inferencing strategy would require the storage of and reasoning with a vast amount of background knowledge. In this paper we hope to demonstrate that the challenge in developing a commonsense inferencing strategy is (...) in the discovery of the relevant commonsense data and in a proper formulation of the inferencing strategy itself, and that a massive amount of background knowledge is not always required. In particular, we present a very effective procedure for resolving quantifier scope ambiguities at the pragmatic level using simple quantitative data that is readily available in most database environments. (shrink)

By manipulating the location of prosodic boundary and the semantic bias of the ambiguous “V+N1+de+N2” phrase, which is composed of one verb (V), one noun (N1), one functional word (de), and another noun (N2), this study investigated how prosodic boundary and the semantic bias affect the processing of temporary ambiguous sentences formed by the ambiguous phrase “V+N1+de+N2” through an eye movement experiment. We found the effect of prosodic boundary in the late processing stage and observed an interaction between prosodic boundary (...) and the semantic bias of ambiguous phrases as well. The participants required more time for fixation and more regressions occurred when the meaning of the ambiguous phrase guided by prosodic boundary was inconsistent with context, especially when the ambiguous phrase was biased to the narrative-object phrase. This result suggests that prosodic boundary affects the processing of temporal ambiguous sentences and is influenced by the semantic bias of the ambiguous phrase. These findings provide further evidence from Chinese that indicate that implicit prosody plays a general role in language comprehension. (shrink)

We present two eye-tracking experiments on the interpretation of sentences like “The tall girl is the only one that …,” which are ambiguous between the anaphoric and the exophoric interpretation. These interpretations differ in informativeness: in a positive context, the exophoric reading entails the anaphoric, while in a negative context the entailment pattern is reversed and the anaphoric reading is the strongest one. We tested whether adults rely on considerations about informativeness in solving the ambiguity. The results show that (...) participants interpreted one exophorically in both positive and negative contexts. Given these findings, we cast doubts on the idea that Informativeness plays a role in ambiguity resolution and proposes a Principle of Maximal Exploitation: When a context is provided, adults extend their domain of evaluation to include the whole scenario, independently from truth-conditional considerations about informativity and strength. (shrink)

In the past decade, cognitive biases and physiological arousal have each been proposed as mechanisms through which paediatric anxiety develops and is maintained over time. Preliminary studies have found associations between anxious interpretations of ambiguity, physiological arousal, and avoidance, supporting theories that link cognition, psychophysiology, and behaviour. However, little is known about the relationship between youths’ resolutions of ambiguity and physiological arousal during acute stress. Such information may have important clinical implications for use of verbal self-regulation strategies and (...) cognitive restructuring during treatments for paediatric anxiety. In this brief report, we present findings suggesting that anxious, but not typically developing, youth select avoidant goals via non-threatening resolution of ambiguity during a stressor, and that this resolution of ambiguity is accompanied by physiological reactivity. We propose future empirical research on the interplay between interpretation bias, psychophysiology, and child anxiety, as well as clinical implications. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the Atlas-Kempson Thesis that sentences of the form The A is not B are not ambiguous but rather semantically general (Quine), non-specific (Zwicky and Sadock), or vague (G. Lakoff). This observation refutes the 1970 Davidson-Harman hypothesis that underlying structures, as full semantic representations, are logical forms. It undermines the conception of semantical presupposition, removes a support for the existence of truth-value gaps for presuppositional sentences (the remaining arguments for which are viciously circular), and lifts (...) the Russell-Strawson dispute of 1950–1964 from stalemate to a formulation in which a resolution is possible for the first time. Suggestions of Davidson, Montague, Stalnaker, Kaplan and H. P. Grice are shown to be inadequate semantic descriptions of negative, presuppositional sentences. I briefly discuss the radical Pragmatics view of my 1975 publications and suggest that it too fails to do justice to the linguistic data. I speculate that Semantic Representations should be given the form (more or less) of computer programs, describable in Dana Scott's mathematical semantics for programming languages. (shrink)

In this article, ambiguity attitude is measured through the maximum price a decision maker is willing to pay to know the probability of an event. Two problems are examined in which the decision maker faces an act: in one case, buying information implies playing a lottery, while, in the other case, buying information gives also the option to avoid playing the lottery. In both decision settings, relying on the Choquet expected utility model, we study how the decision maker’s risk (...) and ambiguity attitudes affect the reservation price for ambiguity resolution. These effects are analyzed for different levels of ambiguity of the act. Operating instructions for the elicitation of the reservation price for ambiguity resolution in an experimental setting are provided at the end of the article. (shrink)

Ainslie offers an encompassing and compelling account of willpower, although his big-picture view comes occasionally at the cost of low resolution. We comment on ambiguity in the metacognitive and prospective mechanisms of resolve implicated in recursive self-prediction. We hope to show both the necessity and promise of specifying testable cognitive mechanisms of willpower.

This article looks at the way people determine the antecedent of a pronoun in sentence pairs, such as: Albert invited Ron to dinner. He spent hours cleaning the house. The experiment reported here is motivated by the idea that such judgments depend on reasoning about identity . Because the identity of an individual over time depends on the causal-historical path connecting the stages of the individual, the correct antecedent will also depend on causal connections. The experiment varied how likely it (...) is that the event of the first sentence would cause the event of the second for each of the two individuals . Decisions about the antecedent followed causal likelihood. A mathematical model of causal identity accounted for most of the key aspects of the data from the individual sentence pairs. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper investigates how pronouns were used by UK government speakers to allocate responsibility to themselves and others in all 92 daily televised COVID-19 briefings that were held between March and June 2020. We identified the referent for every use of the first-person plural pronoun (1PL) as ‘inclusive’, ‘exclusive’, or 'ambiguous' and analysed the transitivity patterns in which these pronouns act as Participants. We argue that the UK government uses the inherent ambiguity of this pronoun to strategically mitigate (...) their own responsibility for controlling the spread of the virus, while increasing the amount of responsibility to the general public. In doing so, we propose a transparent and replicable systematic method for identifying the referents of pronouns, which may be useful to other discourse analysts faced with the challenging task of pronoun resolution. (shrink)

We thank Sanneke de Haan for her thoughtful response. We agree with what she says and consider it as a further specification of our intentions. We particularly endorse the two main points she raises, that is, that dealing with self-illness ambiguity requires a relational perspective; and that relying on reflection solely is problematic since it plays an only modest role in the resolution of self-illness ambiguity. We discuss both points in reverse order.With respect to the role of (...) reflection, we have, as a matter of fact, been very explicit: “we should not overemphasize the importance of reflection”; and “self-ambiguity is more likely to be a diachronic process”, with a “back and forth between narrative... (shrink)

This article explores the links between the philosophies of Georges Canguilhem and Gilbert Simondon. It highlights their shared emphasis on the difficult character of human life, framing this difficulty in terms of an existential encounter with problems and their resolutions. It shows how the notion of ‘problem’ which grounds both of their thinking presupposes a neo-vitalist conception of life as purposive behaviour, extended to forms of collective, technical and symbolic activity. The consequences of this conception for Canguilhem's and Simondon's engagement (...) with questions of pedagogy, and the role of philosophical education in particular, are then examined. The article concludes by considering the ambiguous place of anxiety in their work and its significance for thinking about the conditions of knowledge and action. Following Canguilhem and Simondon, I argue for the importance of helping the human organism develop relatively autonomous interior and exterior milieus to cope with life's fundamental difficulty. (shrink)

This lecture argues for a theory of play that departs from the Freudian analysis of pleasure and pain that associates pleasure with the resolution of a psychic tension or anxiety rather than with play and its ambiguities. It advances the idea that poetry, the domain of the aesthetic, eroticism, as well as that of the sacred involve forms of play. Play is here conceptualized in its positive aspect as an experience beyond reflective consciousness or calculation and that relates instead (...) to the improbable, the fascinating, the risky and thus to the death instinct. To that extent, the decisive part of play concerns the role of the unconscious in its elaboration. It is from such a perspective that it proposes the identity of pleasure and play. (shrink)

A methodological model of origin and settlement of theory-choice situations (previously tried on the theories of Einstein and Lorentz in electrodynamics) is applied to modern Theory of Gravity. The process of origin and growth of empirically-equivalent relativistic theories of gravitation is theoretically reproduced. It is argued that all of them are proposed within the two rival research programmes – (1) metric (A. Einstein et al.) and (2) nonmetric (H. Poincare et al.). Each programme aims at elimination of the cross-contradiction between (...) the special theory of relativity and Newton’s theory of gravitation. New arguments in favor of Einstein’s programme are given. Nevertheless, this does not imply the necessity to rule out all the nonmetric theories, since Einstein’s and Poincare’s programmes are alternative only as different tools of the cross-contradiction elimination. In the other respects these programmes are complementary: description, explanation and prediction of gravitational experimental data entails the usage of the languages of nonmetric theories as well as of metric ones. The part of the present investigation elucidating the necessity of nonmetric theories is an implementation of the ideas of A.Z. Petrov, the founder of Kazan University Relativity Department. Late Alexei Zinovievich had frequently punctuated that the notion of Riemann space-time continuum common for all metric theories obfuscates all the gravitational notions considerably and hampers the analogies with other physical theories at hand. Since the ambiguity is a hallmark of all the general relativism notions, approach to their definitions “should be determined not by analogies and contingent facts, but by general considerations linked the physical measurements theory… No matter how far the events lie out of the frames of classical physical explanations, all the experimental data should be described by classical notions” (Petrov, 1965,pp. 59,66). Key words: Kip S. Thorne, A.P. Lightman, Stepin, theory of gravity . (shrink)

Does Keith Donnellan's referential/attributive distinction have ‘semantic significance’? Howard Wettstein has claimed (in several papers) that it does; Nathan Salmon has responded (in several papers) that it does not. Specifically, while Wettstein has claimed that definite descriptions, used referentially, function semantically as demonstratives, Salmon has responded to Wettstein's claims by defending a unitary Russellian account of such expressions, according to which they invariably function as quantifiers. This paper involves a critique of the debate between Wettstein and Salmon, and offers a (...) tentative resolution of that debate: one that favors Wettstein's ‘ambiguity’ account over the unitary Russellian account defended by Salmon. (shrink)

In this paper I introduce a formalism for natural language understandingbased on a computational implementation of Discourse RepresentationTheory. The formalism covers a wide variety of semantic phenomena(including scope and lexical ambiguities, anaphora and presupposition),is computationally attractive, and has a genuine inference component. Itcombines a well-established linguistic formalism (DRT) with advancedtechniques to deal with ambiguity (underspecification), and isinnovative in the use of first-order theorem proving techniques.The architecture of the formalism for natural language understandingthat I advocate consists of three levels of (...) processing:underspecification, resolution, andinference. Each of these levels has a distinct function andtherefore employs a different kind of semantic representation. Themappings between these different representations define the interfacesbetween the levels. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Violence Is Not an Evil”Ambiguity and Violence in Simone de Beauvoir’s Early Philosophical WritingsAnn V. MurphyThe recent translation and compilation of several of Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical essays from the 1940s shed new light on Beauvoir’s understanding of the relationship between ethics and violence. While these essays predate the publication of The Second Sex (1949) and do not concern themselves with the subject of feminism per se, Beauvoir’s (...) philosophy of violence as it is outlined in both “Pyrrhus and Cineas” (1944) and “An Eye for an Eye” (1948) speaks to one of the more thoroughgoing concerns in contemporary feminist philosophy; namely, the nature of the relation between corporeal vulnerability, violence, and ethics. Together with The Ethics of Ambiguity (1948), these early essays probe the difficulties in moving from an ontology in which violence appears to be inexorable to the terrain of ethical prescription. This essay urges recognition of the continuing relevance of Beauvoir’s philosophy in relation to the renaissance of interest in the theme of vulnerability in contemporary feminist theory. I argue that Beauvoir’s philosophy provides one of the most sophisticated accounts to date of the ethical problems posed by the experiential ambiguities of violence, and that her legacy in this regard is as important and redemptive as ever. More precisely, I read Beauvoir’s early conception of ambiguity as the philosophical predecessor to contemporary deconstructive accounts of corporeal vulnerability.Discourse on the body has governed the evolution of feminist philosophy. Recently, however, the nature of the body under investigation has changed. Whereas previously the critique of the nature/culture distinction dominated [End Page 29] feminist debates regarding the social construction of sex and gender, recent feminist work has consolidated around another conceptual pairing; namely, vulnerability and aggression. In reference to Beauvoir’s philosophical corpus, this recent development is interesting. Her magnum opus, The Second Sex, has attracted more attention because of its centrality in the debates over the social construction of sex and gender, a debate that has dominated feminist philosophy for the last several decades. Indeed, many laud this text for being ahead of its time with regard to the acknowledgement that “one is not born a woman,” but rather becomes one. This essay argues that Beauvoir’s early texts are similarly prescient with regard to the current preoccupation with the philosophical themes of violence and vulnerability. By tracing the development of Beauvoir’s idea of ambiguity, I argue that her conception of the body as the site of both aggression and vulnerability both anticipates and continues to productively address the problem of how one moves from a descriptive ontology to the terrain of ethics. This is a movement that Beauvoir arguably theorized more rigorously than either Maurice Merleau-Ponty or Jean-Paul Sartre, neither of whom published such sustained philosophical work on ethics in his lifetime.1I. Ambiguity in Beauvoir’s Early WorkIn The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir’s reflections on ethics come from a resolutely secular, existentialist perspective. Beauvoir—like her contemporaries in French existential phenomenology—understood human existence to be essentially marked by failure. Importantly, this failure is not vicious; rather, it is the consequence of the fact that human freedom can only ever be determined in scenes of constraint. Despite her resistance to the universal aspirations of Kant’s ethics, Beauvoir’s understanding of subjectivity as failure is consonant with the Kantian rendering of the ethical agent as a being for whom reason does not infallibly determine the will; indeed, an agent for whom reason is necessarily undone by certain inclinations and contingencies.2 For Kant, it made no sense to speak of the will unless one was referring to a being that had the capacity to act in accord with reason but did not infallibly manage to do so. Hence, ethics is an issue for us precisely to the degree that we are capable of failure. In this sense, ambiguity and failure mark the human condition and our distance from the divine. Only a being whose existence is marked by this inadequacy would ponder right and wrong, would debate the nature of ethical atrocity and recovery, and would anguish over the... (shrink)

This study investigates the influence of contrastive stress on the on-line interpretation of ambiguous spoken sentences containing the focus operator only. The pattern of phonological stress was manipulated so as to associate different linguistic expressions with the focus operator only and to invoke different interpretations. Sentences with marked and neutral stress were evaluated relative to visually presented scenes, which depicted a situation consistent with alternative interpretations. Using a head-mounted eye-movement recording system, we measured the processing difficulty associated with phonological stress (...) and subjects’ fixation duration on the various objects in the scenes. Not only was response accuracy superior on sentences with marked stress, as compared to ones with neutral stress, the pattern of fixations revealed earlier resolution of ambiguity in the marked stress condition. The findings suggest that the parser computes multiple interpretations of ambiguous sentences on-line, with marked stress assisting in the rapid resolution of semantic ambiguity. (shrink)

Since beliefs, interests, needs and values vary among individuals, potential for conflict or dispute exists in all areas of human endeavor, including a patient-physician relationship. Conflict- or dispute-resolution requires diligent and directed negotiation, which ideally is amicable, efficient, and sustainable, if the participants acknowledge the identity, individuality, and integrity of all parties involved. In this essay a concept ofprincipled negotiation is extrapolated to a patient-physician relationship and is exemplified by a case study. In addition, the validity of a concept (...) oftract two diplomacy is discussed, relevant from the perspective of strained or fractured primary relationships. (shrink)

Mushkil al-Qur’ān is a science of the Qur’ān in which the verses that are considered contradictory at first glance and what ways/methods are used in reconciling them. From the point of view of a commentator or even a believer, the ishkal (contradiction) cannot be attributed to the Qur’ān proper, and the supposed contradictions between verses do not appear in the Qur’ān but the mind of the subject. Therefore, in this science, it can be seen that both the recognition of contradictions (...) and the elimination of contradictions are related to the interpretive context of the tafsīr methodology. This science has emerged on a dynamic ground and has a characteristic feature that determines the interpreter’s ability to interpret. The aspect of the Mushkil al-Qur’ān that distinguishes it from other Qurʾānic Sciences relates to the practical dimension of the tafsīr rather than general determinations and statistical information about the Qur’ān. For this reason, the scope of the Mushkil al-Qur’ān may change depending on the time, culture, perspective of the commentator, knowledge, and school preferences. The fact that disciplines define the concept of mushkil in different ways, and the change in the scope of the subject in the independent works written in the early period and the Qurʾānic Sciences literature written after al-Zarkashī requires a terminological-chronological-methodological analysis of the nature and content of the Mushkil al-Qur’ān scholarship. With its pre-Zarkashī structure, Mushkil al-Qur’ān science differs from its structure that emerged in the later period, both in terms of its target audience and its content. If we look at the works of names such as Ibn Qutaybah, it becomes clear that this science is mandated to cater to the religionless. However, especially with the scope and methods in which it has been dealt with in the recent period, the Mushkil al-Qur’ān is based on the internal dynamics of the shari'a sciences. Therefore, it can be said that al-Zarkashī defined the science of Mushkil al-Qur’ān, which had a comprehensive content in the early period, with a different name and a narrowing of its content as a field fed by the internal dynamics of the tafsīr, and that this science acquired a unified form after al-Suyūṭī. This process brought about some changes in the subject matter and content of the science of the Mushkil al-Qur'ān. For the Mushkil al-Qur’ān, which in the early days had the purpose of answering the doubts and objections of the deniers of the Qur’ān, developed after al-Zarkashī into a field mainly concerned with removing the difficulties of understanding. Within this framework, the methods and classifications presented in this science with the structure defined by al-Zarkashī are the products of the effort to make sense of the Word of God. The systematization of this effort to make sense under the umbrella of shāri‘ sciences in a terminological and theoretical framework opens the science of Mushkil al-Qur'ān to the fields of kalam and fiqh/method. In the works written on Mushkil al-Qur’ān and in the literature on fiqh, the reasons for the contradictions between the verses and the ways to eliminate them are given. What these ways depend on the context in which the contradiction is dealt with. Those who treat the contradiction in a way that includes the ambiguities in the words while eliminating these ambiguities resort to other pieces of evidence such as narratives, style of expression/context, truth metaphor, reason, analogy, and custom. In case of an apparent contradiction, methods like cem‘ (gathering), preference, naskh, renunciation are used. Despite the differences in the school’s preferences as to which of these methods was used first in the classical period, there is almost a consensus as to the ways followed in eliminating contradictions between verses. In the modern period, some scholars claim that one of these methods, abrogation, is directly related to the Mushkil al-Qur’ān, and they explain that naskh is applied when the contradictions between the verses cannot be interpreted. This assertion, made in modern times, that naskh is a method that scholars resort to when they cannot remove the impression of contradictions between verses, is closely related to the definition, essence, and content of the Mushkil al-Qur’ān. In this context, it is crucial where the ways/methods used to follow the nature-content pendulum while eliminating the counterparts of the terms and the impressions of contradiction. This is because the acceptance of naskh as a contradiction solution stems from the fact that it is one of the ways to prove that there is no contradiction in the Qur’ān from the perspective of fiqh, and naskh means that two contradictory provisions were valid at different times. The contradiction arises when it is claimed that these two provisions are valid at the same time. (shrink)