Talk:Verifiability theory of meaning

I'm but an amature, but as I've been reading Gödel, Escher, Bach lately, the following occurred to me.

The contradiction in the theory of verifiability is resolvable if one recognizes the nature of the theory as a meta-theory: it's a statement about statements. It's true that it is meaningless without a context, but it doesn't just exist without context. It's not a statement by itself, it's a statement about statements. It's meaningfulness and verifiability can only be evaluated in the context of the statements it is applied to.

In a way, it's a long way of saying, "if I can't tell the difference, who cares?" The sentance doesn't mean anything by itself, but placed in the context of another statement, it does. "This food is spoiled and poisonous." I can tell the difference, and I care. "Dogs can't tell it's not bacon." I don't know what dogs think, and I don't care.

For the theory to be totally meaningless, all its applications would have to be meaningless too. That is, if the theory is M, then for all statements s, M(s) would have to be unverifiable. Evaluating the theory in terms of itself is meaningless because it's either M(M) or M(M(M(M(M(...))))).

Is there anything wrong with what I'm saying here, or should I add it to the text (rewritten in a less familiar style)?


 * Well, yes and no. What you are saying is correct in a sense, as the logical positivists themselves said that the v.p. was a recommendation for the use of words, and not an axiomatic statement (the obvious answer to this is "Well then - I politely decline to employ your recommendation in my use of words..."). This makes it a metaphysical claim about the fundamentals of reality - and thus a faliure on its own terms.


 * Does this help? --Shikasta 21:52, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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This stuff on Kant is all wrong. He said that there were three types of judgement: 1 analytic a priori 2 synthetic a priori 3 synthetic a posteriori The article states that Kant saw mathematics as type 1, but he saw them as type 2 [along with statements like "every cause has an effect"]. It was Hume who said that there were only analytic/a priori and synthetic/a posteriori. Hume is much more assoicated with logical positivism than Kant, although Popper later pointed out that this was misguided.

This author is right, Kant certainly did not think mathematical truths were analytic, this is not a disputed question. Since the entire section was incorrect I deleted it, though it could be replaced by a section on Hume, who did sort of employ a proto-verification principle- Timothy J Scriven.

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This seems more like a defenition for the word 'meaning' than a theory. i.e.:If I was going to discuss a metaphysical issue and you told me it was meaningless, that then depends on what your definition of 'meaningless' is?

Verification vs. correspondence theory of truth
"The verifiability theory of meaning is also closely related to the correspondence theory of truth."

No, they come to opposite conclusions, unless one starts with the assumption that nothing can correspond to reality that isn't verifiable. For example, according to the correspondence theory, the statement "God exists" is true if (and only if) there really is some being out there that is God. The verifiability theory would simply say that the statement "God exists" is meaningless (hence, untrue?) since the existence of God cannot be proven.