Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Monday, April 28, 2014
Carnap: What is the Meaning of This?!?!
Carnap's target is metaphysics. The metaphysical is what is beyond or behind reality. For example, 'God' refers to a metaphysical concept because divinity is thought to be beyond reality or behind our empirical experience of the world. Carnap says that the sentences of metaphysics are not properly speaking claims. Rather, the pseudo-statements of metaphysics only appear to make claims. In other words, the sentences of metaphysics are meaningless (or nonsense).
Metaphysics is related to value theory because any normative theory about the way things should be or about the way things ought to be isn't making descriptive claims. Ethics and other normative theories of value (such as aesthetics--the study of what is beautiful) make claims about how things should be. Claims about the way things should be are thought to do logically distinct from claims about the way things are.
According to Carnap's logical, scientific approach to language, words and sentences only have meaning of those meanings can be intersubjectively verified in an empirical way. Sentences can fail to be meaningful if the words themselves lack meaning or if the words are arranged in a way that violates the ideal rules of grammar. For example, Carnap would say that the claim, "God is good." is meaningless because the words 'God' and 'good' do not have an empirical definition that can be observed and verified by other people. The sentence, "Caesar is and." is meaningless because the word order violates the rules of grammar. 'Caesar' is the subject, 'is' is a copula (coupling word) used to express a relation between a subject and predicate (a predicate is what is applied to the subject), but 'and' is not a predicate. 'And' is a conjunction (joining word). 'Caesar is a prime number' has a predicate ('prime number' applied to the subject ('Caesar'), but the predicate is the wrong class of predicate to apply to a person. Thus, the sentence is meaningless.
For the purposes of this class, we are most concerned with the distinction between normative claims and descriptive claims. According to Carnap, normative 'claims' are actually pseudo-statements that have no meaning and hence no truth value.
Metaphysics is related to value theory because any normative theory about the way things should be or about the way things ought to be isn't making descriptive claims. Ethics and other normative theories of value (such as aesthetics--the study of what is beautiful) make claims about how things should be. Claims about the way things should be are thought to do logically distinct from claims about the way things are.
According to Carnap's logical, scientific approach to language, words and sentences only have meaning of those meanings can be intersubjectively verified in an empirical way. Sentences can fail to be meaningful if the words themselves lack meaning or if the words are arranged in a way that violates the ideal rules of grammar. For example, Carnap would say that the claim, "God is good." is meaningless because the words 'God' and 'good' do not have an empirical definition that can be observed and verified by other people. The sentence, "Caesar is and." is meaningless because the word order violates the rules of grammar. 'Caesar' is the subject, 'is' is a copula (coupling word) used to express a relation between a subject and predicate (a predicate is what is applied to the subject), but 'and' is not a predicate. 'And' is a conjunction (joining word). 'Caesar is a prime number' has a predicate ('prime number' applied to the subject ('Caesar'), but the predicate is the wrong class of predicate to apply to a person. Thus, the sentence is meaningless.
For the purposes of this class, we are most concerned with the distinction between normative claims and descriptive claims. According to Carnap, normative 'claims' are actually pseudo-statements that have no meaning and hence no truth value.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)