School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

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Meaningless statements

Srzednicki, Jan T. J ( 195-?)

My first interest was in the logical status of statements, "nothing can be red and blue all over, at the same time"; "An object cannot be in two places at once", and such like. These statements appear to me to have a specific 'unpidgeonholed' Iogical status. I wanted then to investigate their logical character. However, in whichever direction I turned, I met the irritating logico-positistic all purpose argument: 'This sentence is, strictly speaking, meaningless, and therefore does not even merit discussion'. However irritating such argument is, and however unplausible is the very existence of such general all-purpose knock-down answer to almost everything, it has to be answered, and whatever plausibility it possesses must be, perhaps implicitly, accounted for, in such at answer. I was driven, by these considerations, into serious investigation of the question, "What do we say, when we say, that a statement is meaningless?" Subsequently I found that this inquiry will have to fill out my present work. This then, is the subject of the thesis.