In
a definite language, a word designates a concept. We get meaningless
words when a word loses its old meaning and does not acquire a new one or when a word is just introduced not having a meaning.
The meaning of a word is made up of two things: a fixed syntax for
that word and fixed conditions for verifying the truth or the
falsehood of the elementary sentence for that word. The elementary
sentence is the sentence that fixes the syntax for a word, or
specifies how that word is to be used in a sentence. For example, "X
is a stone" is the elementary sentence for stone, as it
indicates that nouns are stones. That 'stone' is the category of
word that applies to nouns. Once we have the elementary sentence, we
should be able to determine what other sentences are deducible from
that sentence.
Some
sentences of metaphysics are meaningless because they have meaningless
words in them. Others are meaningless because they are formed either
counter-syntactically or because they contain type confusion or type
errors. Contrast "I has and cheeseburger" with "Kobe is a right angle".
In the first sentence, words are arranged in a grammatically incorrect
way. The sentence is meaningless because it is counter-syntactically
formed. In the second sentence, the words are not in violation of the
official rules of grammar, but the kind of predicate applied to Kobe is
the wrong kind of predicate. Carnap thinks that in addition to word
categories like predicate, copula, etc., we need further sub-categories.
For example, there are some predicates that are appropriate to apply
to humans (e.g., a man, a basketball player, a rapist) and others that
are not (a right angle, a prime number, a breath of fresh air).
Perhaps uses of the second kind can have metaphorical associations, but that's just not scientific meaning, according to Carnap
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