tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post5344732650834891273..comments2023-01-24T10:06:57.212-08:00Comments on (Blog&~Blog): A Reply To Same Objections Made During the Liar Paradox SeriesBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06702722560438833244noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-61569214907724835072010-09-04T00:04:49.787-07:002010-09-04T00:04:49.787-07:00Jason,
Skipping ahead to that last point as a pro...Jason,<br /><br />Skipping ahead to that last point as a promissory note for a more complete reply in the future:<br /><br />No, I would definitely not say that meaningless sentences are neither true nor false. I'd agree that someone would be making a mistake if they said of such sentences that they're true or if they said of them that they're false, but I'd argue that the mistake isn't a substantive mistake but a category mistake. I'd say meaningless-but-grammatically-declarative sentences--like questions, commands, sticks, stones, bits of burning candle wax and so on--simply aren't the sorts of things to which truth talk meaningfully applies. Like Carnap liked to point out, the negation of nonsense is nonsense. If the claim that some such sentence is true is meaningless, then the claim that it is not true is equally meaningless.<br /><br />There's a loose way of talking according to which we might say that a coffee cup is "neither true nor false", as a slightlyy confused way of saying that it would be a mistake to say that it was true or false, but of course, given (a) Bivalence, and (b) standard intersubstitutivity rules for "P is false" and "not-P" and for "P is true" and "P", we can derive an outright contradiction from the claim that a coffee cup--or a meaningless sentence--is *literally* neither true nor false. I think it's significant that no dialetheist has ever tried to argue for true contradictions that way, even though it would be a lot easier than messing around with paradoxes.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06702722560438833244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-88028402429745033562010-09-03T11:04:35.344-07:002010-09-03T11:04:35.344-07:00I hope my last comment wasn't treated as SPAM,...I hope my last comment wasn't treated as SPAM, too. In any case, one more point, or rather, question.<br /><br />Would you agree that meaningless sentences are neither true nor false?Jason Streitfeldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06950357341620206095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-42808733479713105832010-09-03T02:27:57.583-07:002010-09-03T02:27:57.583-07:00It might not be fair of me to comment again before...It might not be fair of me to comment again before you've had a chance to respond to all of my earlier points. But consider this:<br /><br />(1) Sentence (2) is true.<br />(2) Sentence (3) is true.<br />(3) Grass is green.<br /><br />What makes (2) true is the fact that (3) is true. But what makes (1) true is not simply the fact that (3) is true, but the fact that (3) is true and that (2) states that (3) is true.<br /><br />In my understanding, the meaning of (1) is not dependent on whether or not (3) is true (or even meaningful), but on whether or not we make sense of (1). And we can make sense of it, even if there were no coherent (3) to speak of.<br /><br />For example, I give you three pieces of paper. On one, I write<br /><br />(1) Sentence (2) is true.<br /><br />On the next, I write<br /><br />(2) Sentence (3) is true.<br /><br />On the next, I write<br /><br />(3) Sentence (1) is false.<br /><br />I give these to you sequentially. You understand the first piece of paper, in so far as you know you must find sentence (2) in order to determine it's truth value. Similarly with the second.<br /><br />When you get to the third piece of paper, you realize you have a problem. But you had previously understood the first two pieces of paper.<br /><br />We might distinguish between pragmatics and semantics here. Pragmatically, the sentences on the first two pieces of paper have meaning. You might say their semantic content is incomplete, or something like that. But it seems wrong to say that they have no meaning at all.Jason Streitfeldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06950357341620206095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-74952959117972137752010-09-02T22:44:11.099-07:002010-09-02T22:44:11.099-07:00Hey Jason,
Your previous comment ended up in the ...Hey Jason,<br /><br />Your previous comment ended up in the spam folder not the "awaiting moderation" one for some reason, but in any case, they're both up now. I'll try to reply in more depth sometime in the next day or two when I have a bit more time (I'mgetting ready to teach right now), but a few quick points as I skim through your comments:<br /><br />(1) I agree that meaningfulness vs. meaninglessnes varies with context. In fact, that's pretty central to my view, since I think that "this sentence is not true" is sometimes meaningful and sometimes not, depending on what sentence the "this" is supposed to refer to.<br /><br />(2) I ***don't**** think that sentences without referents are meaningless. Nor do I think that sentences with "is true" or "is false" in them are meaningless.<br /><br />I think, however, that such sentences are only *parasitically* meaningful. In other words, my view is that sentences with "is true" in them inherit their meaning from the meaning of the sentences to which they are attributing truth, and sentences with "is false" in them inherit their meaning from the meaning of the negation of the sentences to which they are attributing falsity. Thus, in the following series:<br /><br />(1) Sentence (2) is true.<br />(2) Sentence (3) is true.<br />(3) Sentence (4) is true.<br />(4) Grass is green.<br /><br />....all four sentences are meaningful, and in fact, I would argue, they all mean the same thing. The meaning of (1) is entirely inherited from the meaning of (2), the meaning of (2) is entirely inherited from the meaning of (3), and the meaning of (3) is entirely inherited from the meaning of (4).<br /><br />By contrast, if the series just went on forever, with each sentence attributing truth to the next sentence:<br /><br />(1) Sentence (2) is true.<br />(2) Sentence (3) is true.<br />(3) Sentence (4) is true.<br />(4) Sentence (5) is true.<br /><br />....and on forever like that, never reaching a 'true'-free sentence from which the rest of the sentences can derive their meaning, then all the sentences in that infinite list would, on my view, be meaningless.<br /><br />An obvious consequence of this is that "this sentence is true" is meaningless if the "this" is meant to refer to itself. This isn't a matter of any sort of ban on self-reference--after all "this sentence has seven words in it" is perfectly meaningful and clearly true--but a consequence of the general view that sentences that use the truth predicate (or truth operator) ultimately derive their meaning from the meaning of whatever 'true'-free sentence or sentences (i.e. sentences that do not use the truth predicate or operator) to which they (directly or indirectly) attribute truth.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06702722560438833244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-41379696647466663922010-09-02T03:17:49.098-07:002010-09-02T03:17:49.098-07:00I think my last comment is waiting for approval. ...I think my last comment is waiting for approval. In the meantime, here are a few more thoughts.<br /><br />First, I never meant to imply that only well-constructed sentences could be meaningful, though I concede that I did not express myself very well. The point I was trying to get at was that disquotation doesn't seem to work for cases where the subject of the truth predicate is not a well-constructed sentence. For example, the case of "what she says is true" is problematic, since there are plenty of cases where "what she says is true" does not mean "what she says." For example:<br /><br />Jennifer: I disagree with her.<br />Joan: Do you mean you disagree with her as a person, or that you disagree with what she says.<br />Jennifer: What she says.<br /><br />In this case (and countless others), "what she says" does not mean "what she says is true." Furthermore, "What she says is true" does not seem to mean, "'What she says' is true." The latter, in fact, is a very unusual thing to write, and I cannot imagine many good uses for it.<br /><br />Also, I don't think you quite got my point about "'Colorless green ideas sleep furiously' is true." I think that it is meaningful regardless of whether or not "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is meaningful. So my point was not that "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is meaningful just in case somebody believes it is meaningful. Rather, my point is that we can understand what a person means who says it is true, even if we don't believe that "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is meaningful. We might not understand the sentence which they claim is true, but we know what they mean when they claim it is true. They are not speaking nonsense.Jason Streitfeldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06950357341620206095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-784976983027176392010-09-01T04:26:16.862-07:002010-09-01T04:26:16.862-07:00I accept a number of your criticisms, but I'm ...I accept a number of your criticisms, but I'm not sure I've made my point as clearly as possible. My main concern is with your approach to meaning. <br /><br />You say "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is meaningless. My view is that whether or not that sentence is meaningful depends entirely on how it is being used. It is clearly not a standard sentence in the English language, so if it were to be used in our day and age, it would have to be taken metaphorically. I can imagine it being used to mean something like, "ideas which support the preservation of our ecosystem (green ideas) but which are strongly drawn in black-and-white terms (colorless) may exist in a society without playing an explicit role in the lives of its people (sleep) while causing tension and unrest in their psyches (furiously)."<br /><br />Of course, that reading is very poetic, and I have no doubt that the sentence has rarely, if ever, been used to mean that, or anything even remotely similar. In fact, I wager the sentence has mostly only been used as an example of a meaningless sentence. But the reason it can be used as an example of a meaningless sentence is this: Most people have no memory of that sentence ever being used, and it takes a good deal of poetic work to find a good use for it.<br /><br />I'm a contextualist about meaning. I'm not sure if you are or not, but your approach seems to be different. I thought you wanted to claim that sentences which only have "is true" or "is false" as their predicate cannot be meaningful. Yet, as I observed, this is not true. Sentences which have "is true" and "is false" can be meaningful, depending on the context.<br /><br />Is your position that sentences are meaningless if they lack a referent? That view doesn't seem attractive to me, because "The present king of France is bald" seems meaningful, but lacks a referent. Also, "logically impossible entities do not exist" seems meaningful to me.<br /><br />In any case, "This sentence is false" does have a referent, even when it is being used to refer to itself. <br /><br />I think your argument is that it is meaningless (when self-referential) because it ultimately only refers to a truth-attributing sentence. Your claim is that truth-attributions can only be applied to sentences which ultimately refer to something other than truth-attributing sentences. But what is the argument for this position? Why should anyone accept it?Jason Streitfeldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06950357341620206095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-70310884089405174182010-08-23T18:52:52.182-07:002010-08-23T18:52:52.182-07:00I did. Corrected. Thanks.
(I also cleaned up the ...I did. Corrected. Thanks.<br /><br />(I also cleaned up the appalling sentence construction there.)Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06702722560438833244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-80676002039100312010-08-23T15:48:52.022-07:002010-08-23T15:48:52.022-07:00"In Part II, I argued against that competent ..."In Part II, I argued against that competent speakers are fallible on questions of meaningfulness"<br /><br />you meant infallible, right?Emil O. W. Kirkegaardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06373127088976173644noreply@blogger.com