I believe that's what he meant. He was hinting towards logical posivitism.



This I don't understand. You're basically saying here that facts are not true, since facts are what make up synthetic propositions. And so, you don't think anything we say about the world can be true.

I'm sure you can see the glaring issues of holding this sort of position, right?

But doesn't he agree that the sentence that ETs exist is true or false? How could he not?

I don't think that he said anything about facts, though. And isn't "true fact" a pleonasm? A redundancy? Must not all facts be true? Can there be a false fact?

Right. It seems he believes we do not have the capacity to discover facts about the world, as he believes no synthetic propositions can be true.

It seems to me that now you are left with explaining what it means to say that a proposition serves no function as a proposition. For example, it seems to me that one function as a proposition is to serve as either a premise or conclusion of an argument. But, you cannot mean that about the proposition that ETs exist. In what way does not that proposition not serve any function as a proposition? The positivists meant by calling a sentence meaningless that the sentence had no truth value, not that it could not be proven true, since a sentence may have truth value and not be provably true. Like the sentence, "ETs exist".

In what way does sound reasoning not imply that what we reason about soundly is not known to be true? Don't I know that Socrates is mortal if it follows from the premises I know to be true, and a valid argument? Or don't I know that Socrates is mortal because we have ample evidence that no man lives forever?

This I don't understand. You're basically saying here that facts are not true, since facts are what make up synthetic propositions. And so, you don't think anything we say about the world can be true.

I'm sure you can see the glaring issues of holding this sort of position, right?

But doesn't he agree that the sentence that ETs exist is true or false? How could he not?

I don't think that he said anything about facts, though. And isn't "true fact" a pleonasm? A redundancy? Must not all facts be true? Can there be a false fact?

How am I saying that facts are not true? I'm saying that logic doesn't equal knowledge for a synthetic proposition. Facts are only known to be facts if they have been verified.

Sound reasoning, or logic, doesn't imply that what we reason about is true if the premise is a synthetic proposition. You know that Socrates was mortal because Socrates is dead. The proposition that humans are mortal has been verified by empirical study.

The proposition that ET's exist serves no function as a proposition if it cannot be proven to be true or false. A proposition is a statement that holds truth value (meaning that it can be verified to be true or false). If someone says that something is true, and yet they cannot verify it, then that person is making a proposition that has no truth value. A proposition with no truth value isn't really a proposition at all.



Sound reasoning, or logic, doesn't imply that what we reason about is true if the premise is a synthetic proposition. You know that Socrates was mortal because Socrates is dead. The proposition that humans are mortal has been verified by empirical study.

Because facts make up synthetic propositions. And you have stated, "and so reason doesn't equate to knowledge or truth in my eyes when dealing with a synthetic proposition.", which I thought meant that you thought synthetic propositions cannot be true. Did I misunderstand you?

A synthetic proposition can still be true, even if we don't know it's true.

Yes. You misunderstood me.

I didn't state the contrary.

Yes. We can know that there are no round squares.

However, most people haven't thought about exactly what this means. It doesn't actually tell us anything about what exists or does not exist. It tells us that the phrase "married bachelor" doesn't refer to anything.

What is the difference between saying that there are no married bachelors, and that, the term, "married bachelor" does not refer to anything? The first is in what Rudolf Carnap called, "the material mode of speech", and the second in what he called, "the formal mode of speech". They both come to the same thing.

A term would have to refer to something before we could tell that it refers. But not before we could tell whether it refers.

Well, I might mean something different by refer than you do so let me clarify. While there are no unicorns, the term unicorn does refer to a concept, something of which we can conceive. In this case, there is a difference between saying unicorns don't exist and saying that the word "unicorn" doesn't refer to anything.

The word "unicorn" refers to a concept but that concept is not instantiated. The phrase "married bachelor" doesn't refer to a concept. Therefore, there is no concept to be instantiated. That's the difference.

But why to you say that "unicorn" refers to a concept? Because there are no unicorns?

Is the assumption this: that all words must refer, and if they do not refer to what they are supposed to refer to, then they have to refer to something else?

The word, "if" does not refer to anything, does it? Or do you think there are ifs it refers to? Or, the concept of if, perhaps?

No.



No, all words must refer to a concept if they are to mean anything.



Yes, the word "if" refers to the concept of if. Understanding how to use the word "if" in a sentence is understanding the concept of "if".

All words that have meaning refer to concepts. The words "married" and "bachelor", individually, have meaning because they each refer to concepts. However, taken together they exclude each other so as to refer to nothing at all.

You mean that the term "elephant" refers to the concept of elephant and not to elephants?

Well, I asked you about the word, "if". What is the concept of "if"?

And what is your evidence for the theory of meaning that words refer to concepts?

Let's suppose, as is true, that I don't have any concept of tensor calculus. I don't know what it is. However, suppose I say that tensor calculus is a branch of mathematics.

Suppose I tell a person who does not know much English that there are giraffes in a certain place along with other animals. He asks, "what are you referring to?" and I reply by pointing to a giraffe. Should I have pointed to my head instead? That is where the concept of giraffe is, after all.

And, to repeat an old question, if "elephant" refers to the concept of elephant (as you say) then what does "the concept of elephant" refer to? Also, the concept of elephant?

If the term, "unicorn" refers to a concept, then what do you think that the term, "the concept of unicorn" refers to? Also a concept? The term, "unicorn" fails to refer, but it it did refer, it would refer to an equine like animal, with one horn on its forehead, and which had magical powers. There is no such beast, so the term, 'unicorn' fails to refer. It is really not cricket to argue that since the word "X" fails to refer because there are no "Xs", that, nevertheless, it refers anyway because it refers to the concept of X. In the used car business, that kind of move is called, "bait and switch". And on the street corner, "Two Card Monte'".

Alright, let me see if this is your correct position:

If a synthetic proposition has not been verified to be true or false, it is a meaningless proposition. The proposition acquires meaning after verification.

Is this right?

Why would you think that unless we can verify a proposition, that it has no truth value. We cannot verify whether the number of stars in the universe is odd or even. Do you think that the statement that the number of stars in the universe is even is neither true nor false? What is the argument for saying that unless you can know what the truth value of a proposition is, it has no truth value, which is what you seem to be saying. At one time we did not know whether a ninth planet existed. Does that mean that the proposition "A ninth planet exists" had no truth value, or that it was meaningless? And that it acquired meaning, and a truth value only when we discovered Pluto?

Any statement that implies what is false is itself, false. A true statement cannot imply a false statement. Logic rule #1