display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
5181 | A sentence is factually significant to someone if they know how to verify its proposition [Ayer] |
Full Idea: A sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express. | |
From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: 'I can't verify it, but I know a bloke who can'? 'If only I could think of a way to verify x'? 'This is unverifiable, but it is the only remaining possibility'? 'X is unverifiable, but it would nice if it was true'? Etc. |
5184 | Factual propositions imply (in conjunction with a few other premises) possible experiences [Ayer] |
Full Idea: The mark of a genuinely factual proposition is that some experiential propositions can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises without being deducible from those premises alone. | |
From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: I.Berlin showed that any statement S could pass this test, because if you assert 'S' and 'If S then O', these two statements entail O, which could be some random observation. Verificationism kept meeting problems of this kind. |
5186 | Tautologies and empirical hypotheses form the entire class of significant propositions [Ayer] |
Full Idea: Tautologies and empirical hypotheses form the entire class of significant propositions. | |
From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: This appears to be false. Possibly the problem is that Ayer takes the whole proposition to be the unit of meaning, but actually meaninfulness only requires that we build up a claim about a possible world from semantic units. Blue bees live on square suns. |
23629 | The ambiguity of words impedes the advancement of knowledge [Reid] |
Full Idea: There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. | |
From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 1: Preliminary [1785], 1) | |
A reaction: He means that ambiguity leads to long pointless disagreements. |
11240 | The notion of analytic truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
Full Idea: The notion of analytic truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
A reaction: Cf. Idea 11239. |