[lit-ideas] Re: "Must We Mean What We Say?"
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:48:24 -0230
Quoting Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
snip
Interesting. I wouldn't threaten Sir Karl with a poker but I would offer the
following thoughts:
Putatively, the verificationist criterion of meaning is meaningless because it
itself is unproveable on its own terms. It thus contradicts its own
presciption. But isn't it odd that a meaningless maxim or prescription could
still bear sufficient meaning to be identified as self-contradictory? Think of
other self-contradictory maxims: 1) All persons shall be slaves. 2) All persons
shall buy bread but nobody will sell bread. These maxims don't appear
meaningless to me. They are sufficiently intelligible for us to see that nobody
could act on them. And the idea that nobody could act on a maxim is central to
universalizability as a criterion of moral permissibility/impermissibility.
Walter O.
MUN
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> 'God
> exists' and 'God does not exist' may neither be proveable but that hardly
> warrants saying they are both therefore meaningless - especially as, as Pop
> pointed out, such a criterion of meaning is itself unproveable and therefore
> accordg to itself meaningless.
>
> >("There are no
> > weapons of mass distruction". You cannot prove a negative.
>
> Yes you can if by 'prove' we mean 'test': 'there is no swan in the bathroom'
> is a claim that is proveable in the sense that if we look and find no swans
> we have proved it - just as much, or as little, as if we would have 'proved'
> there is a swan in the bathroom if we had found one. So 'restricted negative
> existential statements' are 'proveable' just as 'restricted existential
> statements' are proveable. They are logical symmetrical in this respect.
>
> The problem, as may be the case with WOMD, is that an 'unrestricted negative
> existential statement' is only assymetrically testable: it can be disproved
> by finding a counter-example; but no absence of a counter-example in a
> particular place can prove it - since such an absence would not 'prove'
> there
> was not a counter-example somewhere else.
>
> However, despite this logical assymetry, we can still regard the absence of
> a
> counter-example as a 'proof' of an 'unrestricted NES' where 'proof' is not
> used to mean 'logically proven' [or inductively proven] but 'has survived
> severe attempts to refute it by finding a counter-example'.
>
> Note: WOMD are not debated in terms of unrestricted NES - we are looking for
> them on earth, particularly in Iraq [a restricted area from a logical POV].
> So the example is doubly unfortunate - and a scorched earth search of all of
> that area would surely be accepted by most reasonable people as good
> evidence
> as to whether (or not) they existed [as per the swans in the bathroom].
>
> I then surveyed your next two points. I was about to pour scorn on the first
> when I ob'd this.
>
>
> > (3) I bet it takes you a long time to get to your classes.
> >
> > This is what Austin called a 'performative' thus neither true nor false.
>
> Then I op'd or inf'd that you were of course joking all along.
>
> Ooops.
>
>
> Donal
>
>
>
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