A couple of problems - First, I don't understand why saying the statement "water is red and absolute spirit is perfect" is testable is a problem... water is not red so the statement is false. It doesn't tell us anything. Furthermore I thought the way it was constructed, certain subclauses couldn't be assigned logical values? Second, of course all our beliefs are interconnected! I suppose strict logical positivism fails here, BUT we DO need to justify every link in the web.
the discovery of non-euclidean geometry didn't disprove euclidean geometry; it's just a different kind of geometry. Non-euclidean geometry happens to be more useful for describing the universe, but this doesn't make euclidean geometry false. Re: Schrodinger's Cat, it seems to me to violate the principle of non-contradiction, if the cat is alive and dead at the same time.
Human knowledge is a continuing interaction of analytic and synthetic thought. Human experience (synthetic knowledge) inspires the development of logic/mathematical thought (analytic knowledge), and logic/mathematical thought improves our understanding of human experiences.
I've only recently subbed to your channel, but I'm mightily enjoying what I've seen so far. On a light note, it always (to me) sounds like Woody Allan explaining philosophy. Good work, in all seriousness!
@RyuDarragh According to Copenhagen, it's not that we don't KNOW what position the cat is in; the cat is simultaneously in BOTH positions. This is supported by both a ton of math and a fair bit of empirical experimentation. Copenhagen is not universally accepted, but it is the most popular interpretation of quantum mechanics and has been for decades now.
Silly example for the 5:00 mark: I go to Australia and drop a ball. I do not observe it fly away from the ground and conclude that gravity doesn't work the same everywhere. But really I've just implicitly tested the hypothesis "the gravitational force of the Earth is a vector pointing down relative to the northern hemisphere."
@FurieMan It seems to me that the thrust (if you will) of the Copenhagen interpretation is not so much that the universe cannot exist without an observer, but that an observer is not a spectral element separate from the universe. A scientific observer is a product and parcel of the universe that is being observed, and produces the requisite effects. That said, distinctions must of course be made.
@SisyphusRedeemed I appreciate that people such as Ayer later went against their initial views. I scrawled down some notes while I was watching the video which I can likely turn into a script for a video response if you'd like, though I've already made videos on the subject of logical positivism and positions related to them (analytical behaviourism, phenomenalism, emotivism etc). For the record, I have a lot of respect for Quine.
Very helpful. My professor is teaching this from a book right now, and regardless of whether or not Positivists were right or not, they did have some interesting ideas.
There are various forms of 'realism about numbers'. Platonism is probably the most famous. On this account it does come from 'nature', but that term should be broadly construed to include not just the physical world, but also the eternal forms that transcend the physical. There are also various forms of anti-realism, such as Hume's characterization of analytical truths as merely being 'relations of ideas.' It's a big topic, one not well suited for the YT comment sections.
Quine says that "All bachelors are unmarried" depends on the idea of 'synonymy' (since the truth of that claim hinges on the idea that 'bachelor' is synonymous with 'unmarried man.') So that kind of analytic statement depends on a notion of synonymy which is not clearly articulated. Is 'synonymy' to be understood analytically? If so, then it's circular (analyticity depends on synonymy, which depends on analyticity, which depends on...) Is it synthetic? If so then the distinction collapses.
Question for 10:00 in the video: Just because space is non-Euclidian does not suddenly mean analytically true things are not longer true. All it means is that the analytic structure of Euclidian geometry is an imperfect description of reality. I fail to see how this suddenly removes the analytic/synthetic distinction. It is like saying "all bachelors are unmarried men," and then using it to describe women. The statement itself is still true, even if you point it at the wrong reality.
@SisyphusRedeemed Synonymy/Identity can be understood as part of the basic logical infrastructure required for analysis. It is a basic concept, or reducible to ones, and a concept is neither analytic nor synthetic. But even at worse, there is only non-vicious regression. The bottom line is that if you accept logic there is no problem distinguishing between relations that are logically entailed by the concepts and relations which are not. And if you don't - you can't argue at all.
@FurieMan That's what I was saying... what causes the collapse? There is one specific interpretation called "consciousness causes collapse" but that is not the be-all and end-all of the Copenhagen interpretation. For me personally, the Copenhagen interpretation is a useful way to DO quantum mechanics, and work problems out by thinking about them. That gives us the correct result. We may NEVER be be able to reconcile it with our human brains & intuition - it may be impossible to do so.
@SisyphusRedeemed What really confuses me about that is that what if I were in the cat's place? In other words does the cat observe itself and cause a split in time lines or does it involve only human observation? If the cat does observe itself, does that mean that there is an individual time line for each observer? Thinking about that just roasts my brain, but it doesn't help I don't know much about quantum mechanics.
Nice job. Where are the rest of videos you told you were going to make? In the end of "Two Statues" video you said you are going to upload some videos about The problem of induction, The problem of confirmation, Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend.
As a professional philosophy it died long ago. But among the semi educated masses it is doing well. Much like flat earth: academy rejected but still parades around among a crowd of morons
@RyuDarragh Unfortunately, it isn't about proving it a useful test. It is about showing a contradiction in the Verifiable Theory of Meaning. The whole point of the positivist perspective is that those statements don't even AMOUNT to truth or falsity, when it clearly can as in this case.
@mish2930 I don't know of any books on the failure of common sense in general, but several books on how it fails in particular areas. In ethics, for example, a good book is "Stumbling on Happiness" by Harvard Psychologist Dan Gilbert. He shows how bad we are at predicting what will make us happy (and why, and what we can do about it.) Also good is "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely. Neither of these are strictly philosophy books, but they have a lot of philosophical implications.
Excellent lecture! But, I have a problem. I find myself drawn to empiricism. I recognize there are analytic propositions, like in mathematics, that are true by definition. But the definitions themselves have to be rooted in SOMETHING. If they're subjective, then I can write a proof for 1+1=3, which is logically sound according to how I've re-defined terms. Therefore, definitions have to be objective. So, if not from humans, and not from nature, from where do these objective definitions come?
I'm trying really hard to understand Quine's objections. I read his essay as well as some summaries of it, and I still have a hard time buying his critiques. Part of this is because his critiques are so painfully obtuse, but also because so much of them just seem to fail to understand what language is doing when we say that "all bachelors are unmarried." It's just an encapsulation of ideas, and his objections do not seem to undermine this at all.
@SisyphusRdeemed I'm failing to see where empiricism went wrong. If empiricism is used to test the analytic it's the analytic that has the problem right? You talk about the limitations of empiricism and not to get over confident but it seems to be what destroyed logical positivism in your video. Is it that empiricism can't prove itself? Am I using an incorrect or at least different definition of empiricism? I aimed this at the SisyphusRedeamed but any help would be appreciated.
@AntiCitizenX So how should we classify unmarried transgendered individuals? If they are genetically men is that what counts? Physiologically men? Psychologically men? Socially men? This is actually an excellent example of the point: what we (in the West at least) have long thought to be an immutable analytically binary category (men/women) turns out to be socially constructed. When the binary breaks down, so does the analytic/synthetic distinciton.
@SisyphusRedeemed Thanks. I'll look it up. I'm trying really hard here to learn stuff. I feel like just being a proponent of science seems to put me in the logical positivist camp but your argument appears to be that I shouldn't be. I'm just trying to figure out why before and if I change my outlook. Once again, thanks I appreciate the spring board to help me research.
@Worldslargestipod I'm generally familiar with von Mises, but I can't say I remember that particular argument. On it's face, though, it certainly sounds like a position he would hold, but I can't comment on how it relates to Quine's position. Sorry I can't be of more help.
@SisyphusRedeemed If those things (except for mathematical completeness) were taken as analytical statements then I'll agree that that's wrong, but that's an argument against how the distinction was used and not the distinction itself. I'm just going to read the two dogmas and see what he's exactly arguing, but do you know what Quine thought about math and whether he considered that analytic?
@lIThorIl "I suppose strict logical positivism fails here, BUT we DO need to justify every link in the web." Sure we need to justify our beliefs, but it's not just 'strict' LP that fails once we grant holism. The analytic/synthetic distinction was a core assumption of LP; once we grant holism, that distinction collapses and so does LP.
@lIThorIl "n the previous part you said" For the most part, I'm keeping my opinions to myself in this series. That was a rare moment of me editorializing. So if it seems like I'm contradicting myself, it's probably because I'm talking about the common view on the issue, not my opinion.
@padawanskeptic Quine's "Two Dogmas" really was the final nail. He showed that LP relied on two premises (the analytic/synthetic distinction, and reductionism about meaning), neither of which can be justified in empirical terms. en[dot]wikipedia[dot]org/wiki/Two_Dogmas_of_Empiricism
@secularisrael I'm not trying to say Quine is right here, I'm just telling you what he said. While the reactions to his paper were wide and varied, and you're certainly not the only one to reject these parts of his argument, I do think it is more respectable than you're giving it credit for. One way or the other, he is given credit as delivering (at least one of) the most important critiques of positivism, and many give him credit for killing it.
I very much agree with the sentiment you finish with. Anyone who claims to have a theory that explains everything is immediately suspect. I've always wondered if Gödel's incompleteness theorem applies to more than just natural numbers. Would that not be a sad state to leave philosophy in?
@army103 It may get more right than it gets wrong, but it put all its eggs in one basket, so really if it gets ANYTHING wrong it doesn't work. Many of their ideas have been salvaged in some format by future thinkers, but LP as such is dead.
Hi SisyphuRedeemed.......Thanks for posting these teachings of yours. I thought that Logical Positivism ultimately was correct up to a point?? Doesn't even Quantum Physics (born out of L.P.) describe the nature of solids as being energetic movement not "solidity?" I'd appreciate your insights.
@lIThorIl "I don't understand...the statement is false." Because according to LP, "absolute spirit is perfect" isn't false, it's meaningless. Why should a meaningless statement become both meaningful and false, simply because you conjoin it with another meaningful and false statement? "certain subclauses couldn't be assigned logical values" Exactly. If "absolute spirit..." has no truth value, it shouldn't be testable. But it is, when conjoined with a testable clause.
@ThatGuyWithHippyHair ...testing, then how can we really call any lines "parallel" at all? Suppose that, keeping in mind our current definition of prime numbers, we discover an example of a "prime number" that has more than two integer factors. How can this number even be called a prime number in the first place? It seems like the same situation with parallel lines to me. Science has not falsified the definition of parallel lines; it has only found a counterexample to a synthetic propositi
@mortemdei That's my understanding of the science. I may be mistaken (it's certainly happened before) but I've looked into it a fair bit, read books, talked to physicists, and the message seems pretty clear. But don't take my word for it, go check it out yourself.
@FurieMan "It is meant to be a thought experiment to critique the copenhagen interpirtation of quantum mechanics" That was what Irwin Schrodinger intended it as when he proposed it, but the scientific community turned it around on him and said, 'yeah that may seem absurd, but it's actually what happens!' "The copenhagen interpitation has since fallen out of favor." No, it hasn't. It's not universally accepted, but it is still the dominate interpretation of quantum mechanics.
@ScepticalAgnostic Well, even the positivists themselves eventually recognized that the program wasn't going to work. Even if the objections can be dealt with it's pretty clear they can't be done so very easily.
How does this refute the ideas that knowledge is reduced to either what is logically demonstrated or empirically verified? Did you introduce a third option? What was it?
Tensoren 1988 Ok, so logical positivism states that things are only meaningful if it's analytically or empirically verifiable. And this is not necessarily true because even if something is demonstrated empirically, it can still be shown to be false based on new knowledge? Is that the idea we're getting at with the video?
ozzy9691 Yes. For example a statement of the form All A are B. You can never verify this with a finite set of observations. But universal laws of this form are very common in science, so it would be undesirable to declare such laws meaningless.
@@ozzy9691 take (for example) abstract art, abstract art to a logical postivist is an enigma because they have rejected philosophy and art since both are unscientific, Logical Positivism is an way of thinking where the person remains willfully incomplete and unable to achieve self actualization because they reject the notion that anything illogical can have meaning or value.
Well, the point isn't that each individual claim is falsifiable, but that the conjunction is falsifiable. Whereas, you would think that any meaningless portion of a claim would make the whole claim unfalsifiable, that turns out to not be possible. So, it's not a nonsense distinction. It actually shows that falsifiability is not sufficient to determine the meaningfulness of a claim.
Thank you for this series. I'm happy that you'll continue it. I have a problem with your exaples of analytic statements being overturned by experience however. I think the example about Euclidean geometry was always synthetic because it says "these rules of geometry are true for the real universe" which is a statement about how the world is, and therefore a statement that is true or false depending on how the world is. Do you have any other examples or do you know where I could find any?
Hey, thanks a lot for responding. Theists claim to be able to prove the existence of god using logic alone, but I find their definitions are based are on subjective opinions in the guise of "metaphysics". I am under the impression facts are derived through data collection, and once we have definitions based facts, only then can we investigate the metaphysical. Positivism was killed by falsificationism, but all knowledge/facts/definitions are ultimately based on empirical evidence, correct?
@SisyphusRedeemed That analytic truths don't describe the world is a Positivist truth you yourself quoted. As for the cat, as a q. physicist - QM obeys the LoEM just fine, thank you. Logic cannot fail, but it's application to the world can - and for that you don't need QM. "Adding" two clouds to make one cloud doesn't undermine "1+1=2". The cat doesn't limit the LoEM for the same reason.
Hey Sisyphus, I have a question. I noticed that Quine's article on Positivism seems markedly similar to the point made by Ludvig Von Mises in Human Action, [except in a more narrow scope] Which claims that logical positivism can't explain economics because there is no way to hold every factor as true Maybe I'm misunderstanding things...
Isn't the statement "The universe is Euclidean" not analytic but synthetic since it can be tested? Maybe the analytic statement that was revised was "all geometries are Euclidean"? I think I'll concede that Schrodinger's cat revises the analytic statement "At a specified instant, a cat must either be alive or dead." I just wanted to comment, because when I tried to formulate the exact statement that was being revised it kept seeming synthetic.
@SisyphusRedeemed "So how should we classify unmarried transgendered individuals?" Can't we just arbitrarily pick anything we want? That was the whole point of an analytic statement, right? It is true by the mere virtue of definition. Whether or not it effectively describes reality is a completely separate issue. It is like saying "all tribbles hate Klingons." Just because neither thing exists is no reason to deny the truth of the statement, no? Or do positivists disagree?
@TheHeather1985 I've read the core essay/chapter, but not the whole book. I cover the Sokal hoax in my phil science class. As for post-modernism, it get a bad name because some people take it way too far, but there are legitimate points and criticisms that come from post-modernism that are worth thinking about seriously.
Well, I suppose you could just say there's three possible labels for claims: 'true','false', and 'meaningless', and the 'meaningless' claim would then trump the truth of the first claim in the conjunction. But the question becomes, what's the test for meaningfulness? It can't be falsifiability, because that would give us different answers for the individual claim, and the conjunctive claim as a whole. And it can't be verifiability, because it suffers the same problem with disjunctions.
@AntiCitizenX Positivists would disagree. They would classify such statements as 'not even wrong,' because they are unverifiable. That is, they're neither true nor false, they're meaningless. Unless, of course, you simply define these things that way, in which case they are analytic truths. But herein lies the problem: what qualifies as an analytic truth? The bachelors claim is usually an example, but this MIGHT end up being an empirical truth, depending on what definition we pick.
@michalchik @insidetrip101 1) It may give a true conclusion, but if you do that you are throwing soundness out the window. Congratulations, knowledge is now impossible. 2) It doesn't matter either way. Whether it yields a true OR false conclusion you are judging the second premise as true or false; EXACTLY what the logical positivists said you couldn't do. No matter the conclusion, you have attached the "verification" on to something else.
@RyuDarragh It seems you aren't understanding propositional logic. While the truth value of A has no bearing on B being true or false the statement A+B IS dependent on the truth value of A, if only because if A is false then the whole statement is false. (For an "and" statement to be false only one proposition needs to be false, where as both need to be for an "or" statement) Since you can prove the statement false, you have "falsified" the theory. Which is a type of verification.
These seem like rather petty attacks on LP to me. Regarding the A-S distinction, isn't an analytic proposition just a definition? If that is the case, then the proposition "parallel lines never cross" can't really be called an analytic proposition, since there are other characteristics that are definitive of parallel lines; e.g. they have infinitely many perpendiculars, the distance between them at any two points is the same, etc. If those definitive truths about parallels are "falsified" by
@mish2930 "it just seems like common sense would tell you" Problem is the positivists couldn't rely on common sense. They wanted to rely on only empirical observation and logic. "is it so important in philosophy to have universal princibles?" Some are okay with universal principles, but the positivists wanted them. Once we start making exceptions we have to (a) know what governs the exceptions (common sense won't do) and (b) recognize those exceptions may cause havoc with our system.
@mrbluesky323 "The idea that a space could be non-euclidean was discovered analytically, not empirically." But the idea that THIS space is non-euclidean was discovered empirically.
@michalchik Correct, but a false premise GARAUNTEES a false conclusion. Therefore, if you test one premise, and it is false then it doesn't matter if the other is TRUE OR NOT. This is the part where you sneak in the premise of the "meaningless" statement. Remember, the issue isn't if the second statement is true or not. It is if the statement can even be said to be true or false. By including it as part of a premise, you just did that.
I don't see how "alive" and "dead" can be states that have any meaning in quantum mechanics(qm). I know very little of qm but it strikes me that the particles the cat is ultimately made of can be in a superposition of states but the cat cannot. In anycase, the "aliveness" or "deadness" of the cat pertains to how the chemical components of the cat interact with one another and has nothing to do with the "states" of the subatomic particles that the chemicals are made of...
no, you can't verify "water is blue and the absolute spirit is perfect", that would only work if the first conjunct is false but if it's true you cannot verify the statement
The verifiability principle entails that a statement is verifiable if we can derive at least one observation statement from it. So confirming that "water is blue" implies that the whole statement is meaningful. Now we might attempt to make it more stringent but that will only undermine how science is actually practiced. When we test a hypothesis, we are also testing a whole bunch of other auxiliary hypotheses and implicit premises which may not be apparent where the fault lies when we encounter a deviant observation. Afterall wouldn't it be irrational for scientists to give up their theories simply because of a few anomalies?
Nice video. At first I was a bit sad that logical positivism died, but then I recalled a quote from Eugene Gendlin, which starts out "What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse." It went out gracefully, unlike Marxism and Randism.
(cont.) Third, in the previous part you said how the problem of internal world/external world has been resolved, and yet here you are talking about what is "really real" as though that's a problem! Saying "electrons are just a pattern of our experiences" is partially true... electrons form a basis of the framework which describes my experiences. No way to distinguish that from "really real" electrons... in fact the only distinction is the first way giving undesirable connotations.
8:45 oh, you promise us? then OK, that's some strong evidence. If photons were travelling along parallel lines but then changed their paths because of a black hole, then they are no longer travelling along parallel lines! It's not parallel lines crossing, it's trajectories ceasing to be parallel. Is it that hard to see?
I think that the point was that the logical positivist claim all meaningless claims are unfalsifiable. That's how you know it's meaningless: it can't be proven false. But the claim 'Water is blue and Absolute spirit is perfect' can be falsified. Namely, by showing that water isn't blue. So, while we want to say that meaningless is sort of contagious, and infects any statement that has meaningless parts, we can't so long as our interpretation of meaninglessness is unfalsifiability
@certaintythrudoubt Check out my recent video 'The Kalam Cosmological fallacy' and/or my earlier video 'Schrodinger's Cat TAG'S Logical Absolutes (In The Nuts)'. Both talk about how things which were once taken as analytically true came to be revised after they conflicted with the empirical world.
I would not say that all meaningless claims are unfalsifiable, but rather than all unfalsifiable claims are meaningless. But this is Falsificationism, not the Verificationism that is mentioned in the video.
@FurieMan "Why can't the cat observe itself?" Yeah, this speaks to the poor choice of example, not a conceptual problem with Copenhagen. Just take the cat out and say that the vial holding the poison is in a superposition (smashed and not smashed), if that really bugs you. "And what is it about us humans observing something that makes a wave function collapse. Magic?" That's a huge field of research in quantum mechanics. As to your other questions you're making an argument from incredulity.
@FurieMan "it places a wierd emphesis on minds having to be involved." This is maybe the LEAST weird thing about quantum mechanics. According to Copenhagen, the very laws of logic are being violated. That's MUCH weirder. But you're right that it is a concern, worth thinking about. But you can't prove Copenhagen wrong just by saying 'it seems weird.' It is weird. No one denies that. That doesn't mean it's false.
@secularisrael "Eucledean geometry is still right" It's logically consistent, but it doesn't describe the universe we actually live in. "Sch. cat doesn't undermine logic" Not as a whole, but it does limit it rather drastically. It shows that the (at least some of) the 'laws' of logic only apply in a circumscribed context.
[2/2] And I don't see the problem with electrons. If we can see the sky without making a distinction between internal and external worlds, so can we observe electrons without problems. The only difference is the equipment.
I believe numbers are imaginary, human created abstract tools, inspired by our observation that we can divide reality in arbitrary quantities. How would you classify me? I'm certain they are not real, but to say they are just fictions does not have all that appeal to me. Can you make a quick diagnose of my mental illness, please?
@SecularNumanist "you cant use induction to strengthen induction either." I'm not sure that statement itself is going to help. It sounds like a tu quo que fallacy. You'd need to articulate it more if you want it to help.
ozzy9691 Not only spacetime is curved in General Relativity, also space itself. The curvature of space causes tidal forces, the curvature of time causes objects to fall.
Tensoren 1988 I'm aware that space is curved, but the point still stands that the mathematical concepts in geometry take place on a concept called a plane, which is independent from the actual shape of the universe.
ozzy9691 If space is curved so are the planes within this space. If you use geometry in physics you have to use geometry which describes the actual space we inhabit. This geometry is non-euclean. The angles of a triangle (a form on a plane) in a gravitational field does not add up to 180 degrees.
Geometry does not need to necessarily describe the real world. There can be a concept which is internally consistent that doesn't coincide with reality. A geometrical concept known as a "plane" doesn't exist in our universe but we still have equations that describe concepts that would hypothetically fit that model. Traditional geometry isnt "wrong" because we've discovered that our universe differs from its concepts. It's just different
ozzy9691 But this would geometry render meaningless under the criteria of logical positivism, because in this case geometry is neither analytic nor empirical.
youre trying to separate the macroscopic world from what it is composed of. Although they seem to behave in different ways that is just statistical. There are very unlikely events that QM predicts. We would never observe them (it is still possible, but we normally wouldnt). However, that doesnt mean the system became entirelly deterministic, only approximately. to solve the cat problem I ask wheather the cat counts as an observer.
@certaintythrudoubt The analytic/synthetic distinction is one of the dogmas. He argues that it's sloppy and there's no interesting way to hold to it. So I think what he's say is it can be analytic, but it can also be synthetic, depending.
Well we have three claims here, essentially, not just two. we have 'x', and 'y', and 'x^y'. All of which are subject to testing and falsification. So, by falsifying x, we falsify x^y even though it has a meaningless claim in it. No one is claiming that y is ever falsified, because it's meaningless. However x^y, also seems meaningless because it contains y, and yet it can be falsified. So falsification doesn't prove meaning.
@insidetrip101 Actually your truth table is missing essential parts, falsehoods can also lead to truths. For example 1) All cats are dogs 2) All dogs die by assassination 3) President Lincoln was a cat Therefore 4) President Lincoln died from assassination. So Falsehoods in a correct syllogism leads to a truth. What can not happen is truths in a correct syllogism leading to a falsehood. This has an important implication. True conclusions do not show your premises to be correct,
Yeah, maybe I have everything back-asswards. I always took Falsificationism to mean that meaninglessness is defined by unfalsifiability; that they're equivalent, essentially. It would make sense if meaninglessness was a bigger category than unfalsifiability. I'm just trying to think of some meaningless claim that is falsifiable, and I can't. Maybe I suffer from a lack of imagination, but can you think of any?
So how precisely do we test and see that "All bachelors are unmaried" isn't true, again? Nah, Eucledean geometry is still right, Sch. cat doesn't undermine logic, and the synthetic/analytic distinction holds just fine. But the verifiability theory of meaning is self-contradicting and wrong, and hence so is positivism.
A couple of problems -
First, I don't understand why saying the statement "water is red and absolute spirit is perfect" is testable is a problem... water is not red so the statement is false. It doesn't tell us anything. Furthermore I thought the way it was constructed, certain subclauses couldn't be assigned logical values?
Second, of course all our beliefs are interconnected! I suppose strict logical positivism fails here, BUT we DO need to justify every link in the web.
@abjectreality Well, Woody Allan was a philosophy major.
Glad you're enjoying it, thanks for saying so.
@SisyphusRedeemed Fair enough. I never understood why this article was so highly regarded, but you're right - as an historical point.
the discovery of non-euclidean geometry didn't disprove euclidean geometry; it's just a different kind of geometry. Non-euclidean geometry happens to be more useful for describing the universe, but this doesn't make euclidean geometry false. Re: Schrodinger's Cat, it seems to me to violate the principle of non-contradiction, if the cat is alive and dead at the same time.
Human knowledge is a continuing interaction of analytic and synthetic thought. Human experience (synthetic knowledge) inspires the development of logic/mathematical thought (analytic knowledge), and logic/mathematical thought improves our understanding of human experiences.
I've only recently subbed to your channel, but I'm mightily enjoying what I've seen so far. On a light note, it always (to me) sounds like Woody Allan explaining philosophy.
Good work, in all seriousness!
@RyuDarragh According to Copenhagen, it's not that we don't KNOW what position the cat is in; the cat is simultaneously in BOTH positions. This is supported by both a ton of math and a fair bit of empirical experimentation. Copenhagen is not universally accepted, but it is the most popular interpretation of quantum mechanics and has been for decades now.
Silly example for the 5:00 mark: I go to Australia and drop a ball. I do not observe it fly away from the ground and conclude that gravity doesn't work the same everywhere. But really I've just implicitly tested the hypothesis "the gravitational force of the Earth is a vector pointing down relative to the northern hemisphere."
@thesparitan I'm teaching the course again this semester, so I'll be updating it as I go along.
@FurieMan
It seems to me that the thrust (if you will) of the Copenhagen interpretation is not so much that the universe cannot exist without an observer, but that an observer is not a spectral element separate from the universe. A scientific observer is a product and parcel of the universe that is being observed, and produces the requisite effects.
That said, distinctions must of course be made.
@SisyphusRedeemed
I appreciate that people such as Ayer later went against their initial views. I scrawled down some notes while I was watching the video which I can likely turn into a script for a video response if you'd like, though I've already made videos on the subject of logical positivism and positions related to them (analytical behaviourism, phenomenalism, emotivism etc).
For the record, I have a lot of respect for Quine.
Very helpful. My professor is teaching this from a book right now, and regardless of whether or not Positivists were right or not, they did have some interesting ideas.
There are various forms of 'realism about numbers'. Platonism is probably the most famous. On this account it does come from 'nature', but that term should be broadly construed to include not just the physical world, but also the eternal forms that transcend the physical. There are also various forms of anti-realism, such as Hume's characterization of analytical truths as merely being 'relations of ideas.'
It's a big topic, one not well suited for the YT comment sections.
Quine says that "All bachelors are unmarried" depends on the idea of 'synonymy' (since the truth of that claim hinges on the idea that 'bachelor' is synonymous with 'unmarried man.') So that kind of analytic statement depends on a notion of synonymy which is not clearly articulated. Is 'synonymy' to be understood analytically? If so, then it's circular (analyticity depends on synonymy, which depends on analyticity, which depends on...) Is it synthetic? If so then the distinction collapses.
"All centres are centers"
Is this, according to Quinn, a logical analyticity or a synonym analyticity?
Are you going to contiue posting videos for this series? It would be very interesting to hear your views on Kuhn and Feyerabend.
Question for 10:00 in the video:
Just because space is non-Euclidian does not suddenly mean analytically true things are not longer true. All it means is that the analytic structure of Euclidian geometry is an imperfect description of reality. I fail to see how this suddenly removes the analytic/synthetic distinction. It is like saying "all bachelors are unmarried men," and then using it to describe women. The statement itself is still true, even if you point it at the wrong reality.
@SisyphusRedeemed Synonymy/Identity can be understood as part of the basic logical infrastructure required for analysis. It is a basic concept, or reducible to ones, and a concept is neither analytic nor synthetic. But even at worse, there is only non-vicious regression. The bottom line is that if you accept logic there is no problem distinguishing between relations that are logically entailed by the concepts and relations which are not. And if you don't - you can't argue at all.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Much appreciated. I'm going to take this and build upon it. I am on a quest to learn a lot more about Philosophy.
@FurieMan That's what I was saying... what causes the collapse? There is one specific interpretation called "consciousness causes collapse" but that is not the be-all and end-all of the Copenhagen interpretation.
For me personally, the Copenhagen interpretation is a useful way to DO quantum mechanics, and work problems out by thinking about them. That gives us the correct result. We may NEVER be be able to reconcile it with our human brains & intuition - it may be impossible to do so.
@SisyphusRedeemed
What really confuses me about that is that what if I were in the cat's place? In other words does the cat observe itself and cause a split in time lines or does it involve only human observation? If the cat does observe itself, does that mean that there is an individual time line for each observer? Thinking about that just roasts my brain, but it doesn't help I don't know much about quantum mechanics.
@insidetrip101 You're certainly not the only one. It's a major position in the philosophy of science.
Nice job. Where are the rest of videos you told you were going to make? In the end of "Two Statues" video you said you are going to upload some videos about The problem of induction, The problem of confirmation, Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend.
Having watched the video and read the comments it strikes me that Logical Positivism is doing rather well.
As a professional philosophy it died long ago. But among the semi educated masses it is doing well. Much like flat earth: academy rejected but still parades around among a crowd of morons
@@themanformerlyknownascomme777 yikes that much of a parallel?
@@jacklu1611 very much so
@RyuDarragh
Unfortunately, it isn't about proving it a useful test. It is about showing a contradiction in the Verifiable Theory of Meaning. The whole point of the positivist perspective is that those statements don't even AMOUNT to truth or falsity, when it clearly can as in this case.
@mish2930 I don't know of any books on the failure of common sense in general, but several books on how it fails in particular areas. In ethics, for example, a good book is "Stumbling on Happiness" by Harvard Psychologist Dan Gilbert. He shows how bad we are at predicting what will make us happy (and why, and what we can do about it.) Also good is "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely. Neither of these are strictly philosophy books, but they have a lot of philosophical implications.
@MJRockX I'm glad you're liking it. I'm working on some other things at the moment, but rest assured, I will be getting back to it.
Excellent lecture! But, I have a problem. I find myself drawn to empiricism. I recognize there are analytic propositions, like in mathematics, that are true by definition. But the definitions themselves have to be rooted in SOMETHING. If they're subjective, then I can write a proof for 1+1=3, which is logically sound according to how I've re-defined terms. Therefore, definitions have to be objective. So, if not from humans, and not from nature, from where do these objective definitions come?
@socrates856 Thanks for saying so. Glad you enjoyed.
I'm trying really hard to understand Quine's objections. I read his essay as well as some summaries of it, and I still have a hard time buying his critiques. Part of this is because his critiques are so painfully obtuse, but also because so much of them just seem to fail to understand what language is doing when we say that "all bachelors are unmarried." It's just an encapsulation of ideas, and his objections do not seem to undermine this at all.
I'm listening to him and thought of your videos, then lo and behold I see your comment.
Like your work btw
@SisyphusRdeemed I'm failing to see where empiricism went wrong. If empiricism is used to test the analytic it's the analytic that has the problem right? You talk about the limitations of empiricism and not to get over confident but it seems to be what destroyed logical positivism in your video. Is it that empiricism can't prove itself? Am I using an incorrect or at least different definition of empiricism? I aimed this at the SisyphusRedeamed but any help would be appreciated.
@AntiCitizenX So how should we classify unmarried transgendered individuals? If they are genetically men is that what counts? Physiologically men? Psychologically men? Socially men? This is actually an excellent example of the point: what we (in the West at least) have long thought to be an immutable analytically binary category (men/women) turns out to be socially constructed. When the binary breaks down, so does the analytic/synthetic distinciton.
@SisyphusRedeemed Thanks. I'll look it up. I'm trying really hard here to learn stuff. I feel like just being a proponent of science seems to put me in the logical positivist camp but your argument appears to be that I shouldn't be. I'm just trying to figure out why before and if I change my outlook. Once again, thanks I appreciate the spring board to help me research.
@Worldslargestipod I'm generally familiar with von Mises, but I can't say I remember that particular argument. On it's face, though, it certainly sounds like a position he would hold, but I can't comment on how it relates to Quine's position. Sorry I can't be of more help.
@SisyphusRedeemed If those things (except for mathematical completeness) were taken as analytical statements then I'll agree that that's wrong, but that's an argument against how the distinction was used and not the distinction itself.
I'm just going to read the two dogmas and see what he's exactly arguing, but do you know what Quine thought about math and whether he considered that analytic?
@lIThorIl "I suppose strict logical positivism fails here, BUT we DO need to justify every link in the web."
Sure we need to justify our beliefs, but it's not just 'strict' LP that fails once we grant holism. The analytic/synthetic distinction was a core assumption of LP; once we grant holism, that distinction collapses and so does LP.
@SisyphusRedeemed
By the way, I really enjoy your videos, and I appreciate you taking the time to address my questions.
The MOST ACTUALLY USEFUL statement EVER made by a philosopher, - " You want fries with that ??? "
@antimagik corp I was just trying for funny and mocking, but I'll take profound every day and twice on Sunday.
@lIThorIl "n the previous part you said"
For the most part, I'm keeping my opinions to myself in this series. That was a rare moment of me editorializing. So if it seems like I'm contradicting myself, it's probably because I'm talking about the common view on the issue, not my opinion.
@padawanskeptic Quine's "Two Dogmas" really was the final nail. He showed that LP relied on two premises (the analytic/synthetic distinction, and reductionism about meaning), neither of which can be justified in empirical terms.
en[dot]wikipedia[dot]org/wiki/Two_Dogmas_of_Empiricism
@secularisrael I'm not trying to say Quine is right here, I'm just telling you what he said. While the reactions to his paper were wide and varied, and you're certainly not the only one to reject these parts of his argument, I do think it is more respectable than you're giving it credit for. One way or the other, he is given credit as delivering (at least one of) the most important critiques of positivism, and many give him credit for killing it.
I very much agree with the sentiment you finish with. Anyone who claims to have a theory that explains everything is immediately suspect. I've always wondered if Gödel's incompleteness theorem applies to more than just natural numbers. Would that not be a sad state to leave philosophy in?
@SecularNumanist But statements can be joined together using logical operators, no? Otherwise how could we get truthful, meaningful statements?
Is there a video wherein you have explained the second Dogma of reductionism and meaning by Quine?
Awesome. part 4-4?
Is the many worlds interpretation a way of reconciling quantum mechanics with the law of non contradiction?
@army103 It may get more right than it gets wrong, but it put all its eggs in one basket, so really if it gets ANYTHING wrong it doesn't work. Many of their ideas have been salvaged in some format by future thinkers, but LP as such is dead.
Hi SisyphuRedeemed.......Thanks for posting these teachings of yours.
I thought that Logical Positivism ultimately was correct up to a point?? Doesn't even Quantum Physics (born out of L.P.) describe the nature of solids as being energetic movement not "solidity?"
I'd appreciate your insights.
Thanks a lot, very helpful. Could you please discuss quine's second dogma as well? I'm having problems grasping it
@lIThorIl "I don't understand...the statement is false."
Because according to LP, "absolute spirit is perfect" isn't false, it's meaningless. Why should a meaningless statement become both meaningful and false, simply because you conjoin it with another meaningful and false statement?
"certain subclauses couldn't be assigned logical values"
Exactly. If "absolute spirit..." has no truth value, it shouldn't be testable. But it is, when conjoined with a testable clause.
You clarified in your response to APaleDot. And they responded aptly.
@ThatGuyWithHippyHair
...testing, then how can we really call any lines "parallel" at all? Suppose that, keeping in mind our current definition of prime numbers, we discover an example of a "prime number" that has more than two integer factors. How can this number even be called a prime number in the first place? It seems like the same situation with parallel lines to me. Science has not falsified the definition of parallel lines; it has only found a counterexample to a synthetic propositi
Nice series.. we ever going to see the rest?
@mortemdei That's my understanding of the science. I may be mistaken (it's certainly happened before) but I've looked into it a fair bit, read books, talked to physicists, and the message seems pretty clear. But don't take my word for it, go check it out yourself.
@FurieMan "It is meant to be a thought experiment to critique the copenhagen interpirtation of quantum mechanics"
That was what Irwin Schrodinger intended it as when he proposed it, but the scientific community turned it around on him and said, 'yeah that may seem absurd, but it's actually what happens!'
"The copenhagen interpitation has since fallen out of favor."
No, it hasn't. It's not universally accepted, but it is still the dominate interpretation of quantum mechanics.
@ScepticalAgnostic Well, even the positivists themselves eventually recognized that the program wasn't going to work. Even if the objections can be dealt with it's pretty clear they can't be done so very easily.
How does this refute the ideas that knowledge is reduced to either what is logically demonstrated or empirically verified? Did you introduce a third option? What was it?
ozzy9691 The video does not refute this. It refutes the claim that a statement needs to be analytical or empirically verifiable to be meaningful.
Tensoren 1988 Ok, so logical positivism states that things are only meaningful if it's analytically or empirically verifiable. And this is not necessarily true because even if something is demonstrated empirically, it can still be shown to be false based on new knowledge? Is that the idea we're getting at with the video?
ozzy9691 Yes. For example a statement of the form All A are B. You can never verify this with a finite set of observations. But universal laws of this form are very common in science, so it would be undesirable to declare such laws meaningless.
Ok, thanks so much, that really helped me out a lot
@@ozzy9691 take (for example) abstract art, abstract art to a logical postivist is an enigma because they have rejected philosophy and art since both are unscientific, Logical Positivism is an way of thinking where the person remains willfully incomplete and unable to achieve self actualization because they reject the notion that anything illogical can have meaning or value.
Well, the point isn't that each individual claim is falsifiable, but that the conjunction is falsifiable. Whereas, you would think that any meaningless portion of a claim would make the whole claim unfalsifiable, that turns out to not be possible.
So, it's not a nonsense distinction. It actually shows that falsifiability is not sufficient to determine the meaningfulness of a claim.
Thank you for this series. I'm happy that you'll continue it.
I have a problem with your exaples of analytic statements being overturned by experience however. I think the example about Euclidean geometry was always synthetic because it says "these rules of geometry are true for the real universe" which is a statement about how the world is, and therefore a statement that is true or false depending on how the world is.
Do you have any other examples or do you know where I could find any?
Hey, thanks a lot for responding. Theists claim to be able to prove the existence of god using logic alone, but I find their definitions are based are on subjective opinions in the guise of "metaphysics". I am under the impression facts are derived through data collection, and once we have definitions based facts, only then can we investigate the metaphysical. Positivism was killed by falsificationism, but all knowledge/facts/definitions are ultimately based on empirical evidence, correct?
@SisyphusRedeemed That analytic truths don't describe the world is a Positivist truth you yourself quoted. As for the cat, as a q. physicist - QM obeys the LoEM just fine, thank you. Logic cannot fail, but it's application to the world can - and for that you don't need QM. "Adding" two clouds to make one cloud doesn't undermine "1+1=2". The cat doesn't limit the LoEM for the same reason.
Hey Sisyphus, I have a question. I noticed that Quine's article on Positivism seems markedly similar to the point made by Ludvig Von Mises in Human Action, [except in a more narrow scope] Which claims that logical positivism can't explain economics because there is no way to hold every factor as true
Maybe I'm misunderstanding things...
Isn't the statement "The universe is Euclidean" not analytic but synthetic since it can be tested? Maybe the analytic statement that was revised was "all geometries are Euclidean"? I think I'll concede that Schrodinger's cat revises the analytic statement "At a specified instant, a cat must either be alive or dead."
I just wanted to comment, because when I tried to formulate the exact statement that was being revised it kept seeming synthetic.
@SisyphusRedeemed
"So how should we classify unmarried transgendered individuals?"
Can't we just arbitrarily pick anything we want? That was the whole point of an analytic statement, right? It is true by the mere virtue of definition. Whether or not it effectively describes reality is a completely separate issue. It is like saying "all tribbles hate Klingons." Just because neither thing exists is no reason to deny the truth of the statement, no? Or do positivists disagree?
@TheHeather1985 I've read the core essay/chapter, but not the whole book. I cover the Sokal hoax in my phil science class. As for post-modernism, it get a bad name because some people take it way too far, but there are legitimate points and criticisms that come from post-modernism that are worth thinking about seriously.
@RyuDarragh That's not what's being said. If A is false then A & B is false regardless of what B is.
Well, I suppose you could just say there's three possible labels for claims: 'true','false', and 'meaningless', and the 'meaningless' claim would then trump the truth of the first claim in the conjunction.
But the question becomes, what's the test for meaningfulness?
It can't be falsifiability, because that would give us different answers for the individual claim, and the conjunctive claim as a whole.
And it can't be verifiability, because it suffers the same problem with disjunctions.
@AntiCitizenX Positivists would disagree. They would classify such statements as 'not even wrong,' because they are unverifiable. That is, they're neither true nor false, they're meaningless. Unless, of course, you simply define these things that way, in which case they are analytic truths. But herein lies the problem: what qualifies as an analytic truth? The bachelors claim is usually an example, but this MIGHT end up being an empirical truth, depending on what definition we pick.
@michalchik
@insidetrip101
1) It may give a true conclusion, but if you do that you are throwing soundness out the window. Congratulations, knowledge is now impossible.
2) It doesn't matter either way. Whether it yields a true OR false conclusion you are judging the second premise as true or false; EXACTLY what the logical positivists said you couldn't do. No matter the conclusion, you have attached the "verification" on to something else.
@RyuDarragh
It seems you aren't understanding propositional logic. While the truth value of A has no bearing on B being true or false the statement A+B IS dependent on the truth value of A, if only because if A is false then the whole statement is false. (For an "and" statement to be false only one proposition needs to be false, where as both need to be for an "or" statement)
Since you can prove the statement false, you have "falsified" the theory. Which is a type of verification.
These seem like rather petty attacks on LP to me. Regarding the A-S distinction, isn't an analytic proposition just a definition? If that is the case, then the proposition "parallel lines never cross" can't really be called an analytic proposition, since there are other characteristics that are definitive of parallel lines; e.g. they have infinitely many perpendiculars, the distance between them at any two points is the same, etc. If those definitive truths about parallels are "falsified" by
@mish2930 "it just seems like common sense would tell you"
Problem is the positivists couldn't rely on common sense. They wanted to rely on only empirical observation and logic.
"is it so important in philosophy to have universal princibles?"
Some are okay with universal principles, but the positivists wanted them. Once we start making exceptions we have to (a) know what governs the exceptions (common sense won't do) and (b) recognize those exceptions may cause havoc with our system.
@mrbluesky323 "The idea that a space could be non-euclidean was discovered analytically, not empirically."
But the idea that THIS space is non-euclidean was discovered empirically.
@michalchik
Correct, but a false premise GARAUNTEES a false conclusion. Therefore, if you test one premise, and it is false then it doesn't matter if the other is TRUE OR NOT. This is the part where you sneak in the premise of the "meaningless" statement.
Remember, the issue isn't if the second statement is true or not. It is if the statement can even be said to be true or false. By including it as part of a premise, you just did that.
Thanks for this series. Very interesting. Looking forward to more
I don't see how "alive" and "dead" can be states that have any meaning in quantum mechanics(qm). I know very little of qm but it strikes me that the particles the cat is ultimately made of can be in a superposition of states but the cat cannot. In anycase, the "aliveness" or "deadness" of the cat pertains to how the chemical components of the cat interact with one another and has nothing to do with the "states" of the subatomic particles that the chemicals are made of...
no, you can't verify "water is blue and the absolute spirit is perfect", that would only work if the first conjunct is false but if it's true you cannot verify the statement
The verifiability principle entails that a statement is verifiable if we can derive at least one observation statement from it. So confirming that "water is blue" implies that the whole statement is meaningful. Now we might attempt to make it more stringent but that will only undermine how science is actually practiced. When we test a hypothesis, we are also testing a whole bunch of other auxiliary hypotheses and implicit premises which may not be apparent where the fault lies when we encounter a deviant observation. Afterall wouldn't it be irrational for scientists to give up their theories simply because of a few anomalies?
@gamesbok Not amongst professional philosophers of science, it isn't.
Nice video. At first I was a bit sad that logical positivism died, but then I recalled a quote from Eugene Gendlin, which starts out "What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn't make it worse." It went out gracefully, unlike Marxism and Randism.
(cont.)
Third, in the previous part you said how the problem of internal world/external world has been resolved, and yet here you are talking about what is "really real" as though that's a problem! Saying "electrons are just a pattern of our experiences" is partially true... electrons form a basis of the framework which describes my experiences. No way to distinguish that from "really real" electrons... in fact the only distinction is the first way giving undesirable connotations.
8:45 oh, you promise us? then OK, that's some strong evidence.
If photons were travelling along parallel lines but then changed their paths because of a black hole, then they are no longer travelling along parallel lines! It's not parallel lines crossing, it's trajectories ceasing to be parallel. Is it that hard to see?
I think that the point was that the logical positivist claim all meaningless claims are unfalsifiable. That's how you know it's meaningless: it can't be proven false.
But the claim 'Water is blue and Absolute spirit is perfect' can be falsified. Namely, by showing that water isn't blue.
So, while we want to say that meaningless is sort of contagious, and infects any statement that has meaningless parts, we can't so long as our interpretation of meaninglessness is unfalsifiability
@certaintythrudoubt Check out my recent video 'The Kalam Cosmological fallacy' and/or my earlier video 'Schrodinger's Cat TAG'S Logical Absolutes (In The Nuts)'. Both talk about how things which were once taken as analytically true came to be revised after they conflicted with the empirical world.
Where the next lecture :'[
I would not say that all meaningless claims are unfalsifiable, but rather than all unfalsifiable claims are meaningless. But this is Falsificationism, not the Verificationism that is mentioned in the video.
@legodesi Indeed they do. I consider that a plus.
@FurieMan "Why can't the cat observe itself?"
Yeah, this speaks to the poor choice of example, not a conceptual problem with Copenhagen. Just take the cat out and say that the vial holding the poison is in a superposition (smashed and not smashed), if that really bugs you.
"And what is it about us humans observing something that makes a wave function collapse. Magic?"
That's a huge field of research in quantum mechanics. As to your other questions you're making an argument from incredulity.
@beriukay Very well put. I like the quote.
@FurieMan "it places a wierd emphesis on minds having to be involved."
This is maybe the LEAST weird thing about quantum mechanics. According to Copenhagen, the very laws of logic are being violated. That's MUCH weirder. But you're right that it is a concern, worth thinking about. But you can't prove Copenhagen wrong just by saying 'it seems weird.' It is weird. No one denies that. That doesn't mean it's false.
@secularisrael "Eucledean geometry is still right"
It's logically consistent, but it doesn't describe the universe we actually live in.
"Sch. cat doesn't undermine logic"
Not as a whole, but it does limit it rather drastically. It shows that the (at least some of) the 'laws' of logic only apply in a circumscribed context.
[2/2]
And I don't see the problem with electrons. If we can see the sky without making a distinction between internal and external worlds, so can we observe electrons without problems. The only difference is the equipment.
I believe numbers are imaginary, human created abstract tools, inspired by our observation that we can divide reality in arbitrary quantities. How would you classify me? I'm certain they are not real, but to say they are just fictions does not have all that appeal to me. Can you make a quick diagnose of my mental illness, please?
@SecularNumanist "you cant use induction to strengthen induction either."
I'm not sure that statement itself is going to help. It sounds like a tu quo que fallacy. You'd need to articulate it more if you want it to help.
How has euclydian geometry been revised? Was the whole implication in the first place that it took place on a plane and not in spacetime?
ozzy9691 Not only spacetime is curved in General Relativity, also space itself. The curvature of space causes tidal forces, the curvature of time causes objects to fall.
Tensoren 1988 I'm aware that space is curved, but the point still stands that the mathematical concepts in geometry take place on a concept called a plane, which is independent from the actual shape of the universe.
ozzy9691 If space is curved so are the planes within this space. If you use geometry in physics you have to use geometry which describes the actual space we inhabit. This geometry is non-euclean. The angles of a triangle (a form on a plane) in a gravitational field does not add up to 180 degrees.
Geometry does not need to necessarily describe the real world. There can be a concept which is internally consistent that doesn't coincide with reality. A geometrical concept known as a "plane" doesn't exist in our universe but we still have equations that describe concepts that would hypothetically fit that model. Traditional geometry isnt "wrong" because we've discovered that our universe differs from its concepts. It's just different
ozzy9691 But this would geometry render meaningless under the criteria of logical positivism, because in this case geometry is neither analytic nor empirical.
youre trying to separate the macroscopic world from what it is composed of. Although they seem to behave in different ways that is just statistical. There are very unlikely events that QM predicts. We would never observe them (it is still possible, but we normally wouldnt). However, that doesnt mean the system became entirelly deterministic, only approximately.
to solve the cat problem I ask wheather the cat counts as an observer.
@certaintythrudoubt The analytic/synthetic distinction is one of the dogmas. He argues that it's sloppy and there's no interesting way to hold to it. So I think what he's say is it can be analytic, but it can also be synthetic, depending.
Well we have three claims here, essentially, not just two. we have 'x', and 'y', and 'x^y'. All of which are subject to testing and falsification.
So, by falsifying x, we falsify x^y even though it has a meaningless claim in it.
No one is claiming that y is ever falsified, because it's meaningless.
However x^y, also seems meaningless because it contains y, and yet it can be falsified. So falsification doesn't prove meaning.
Thanks for your really clear explanations.
@insidetrip101 Actually your truth table is missing essential parts, falsehoods can also lead to truths. For example
1) All cats are dogs
2) All dogs die by assassination
3) President Lincoln was a cat
Therefore
4) President Lincoln died from assassination.
So Falsehoods in a correct syllogism leads to a truth.
What can not happen is truths in a correct syllogism leading to a falsehood.
This has an important implication. True conclusions do not show your premises to be correct,
Yeah, maybe I have everything back-asswards.
I always took Falsificationism to mean that meaninglessness is defined by unfalsifiability; that they're equivalent, essentially. It would make sense if meaninglessness was a bigger category than unfalsifiability.
I'm just trying to think of some meaningless claim that is falsifiable, and I can't. Maybe I suffer from a lack of imagination, but can you think of any?
So how precisely do we test and see that "All bachelors are unmaried" isn't true, again? Nah, Eucledean geometry is still right, Sch. cat doesn't undermine logic, and the synthetic/analytic distinction holds just fine. But the verifiability theory of meaning is self-contradicting and wrong, and hence so is positivism.