Bertrand Russell uses the statement “The present king of France is bald” as an indication that some statements, although seeming to make sense, really are meaningless. The above statement is meaningless, he says, because it’s truth value cannot be determined (without an actual king, the statement is neither true nor false).
What I want to know is why is this example not taken as a indication that some statements, although conveying something meaningful, simply have no truth value. That is, a statement can be devoid of truth value yet still be meaningful. Why is that so hard to fathom?
I agree. It’s like Aesop’s Fables; animals, humans, objects, and deities cannot communicate to each other, so they must not be true. But what message do they convey, even if they are fictional?
I haven’t read any of the material you are talking about so I’m sure I’m way off… But the first thing that came to my mind is that he might mean the statement is LOGICALLY meaningless. In relation to use in logic and argumentation, the sentence is devoid of all meaning. The statement may say something that you understand (thus have meaning) but this is a different use of meaning I think. Same with the gods example given above. They may have said something that you understand (thus having meaning), they are logically meaningless. It seems like two different uses of the word meaning to me.
Any reasoning which lacks truth value I consider an artistic expression. Philosophy of Art can disseminate art and postulate some meaning from it. But I think Bertrand Russel is correct in that it should remain outside the bounds of philosophy until it can be brought back in through dissemination. Lacking truth value, it has potential meaning as any information does. It’s just not “kinetic” meaning (to parallel potential and kinetic energy). Like the difference between a song and a thesis. A song probably has some meaningful reasoning to it. But it’s also likely flawed reasoning by whim. In the form of a song, it shouldn’t be adopted and turned into dogma, only its reasoning can be disseminated into a thesis. If it’s not disseminated, it should be ignored by philosophy. Otherwise, where do we draw the line between what is and isn’t philosophy?
In most systems of logic, all expressible sentences will have truth values. “The King of France is bald” would be false if you agree that that statement implies that there exists a King of France.
But on the other hand, “Any current King of France is bald” would be TRUE, because there is no present king of France. This is easily logically derivable, in the same way that “All Unicorns have purple polka-dots” is provable, if you agree that no unicorns exist.
These statements don’t seem to be examples of statements that have meaning but no truth value; quite the contrary, they seem to be statements that have truth values but no (technically, very little) meaning.
I guess it depends. For my part, I would say that this exercise both illustrates the function of logic, but also - arguably more importantly - demonstrates the varying levels of usefulness and applicability of arbitrary logical statements.
This brings to mind something touched by Russell and also Wittengenstein: statements like “The good is more identical than the beautiful”, which, while it follows all the laws of english grammar, is meaningless. Of course, in its general meaninglessness, one can ascribe meaning to it, but that is not the same. Simply because a sentence can be phrased, one should not assume that it is worth considering. Many philosophical questions end up, upon closer inspection, being nonsense, or more often, so poorly phrased so as to not admit an accurate and in-depth analysis.
Yes - specifically, they apply to statements of inquiry whose answers would be such declarative statements.
The original sentence Wittgenstein considered was the question “Is the Good more or less identical than the beautiful?” The question implies two possible answers: the good is either more identical, or less identical, than the beautiful. Since neither answer has meaning, the question itself can be said to be meaningless.
For comparison, as a matter of statement of inquiry, would the following lend itself to meaningful or meaningless answers, purely as a matter of logic:
“Can God create a rock so large that he cannot lift it?”
I fully agree that statements whose truth value cannot be determined are more or less useless to philosophy, but I still don’t see the relevance of that to the question of their meaning.
I think Russell tried to argue something similar, actually. But I think it was Strawson who knocked that argument down by saying that statements like “The present king of France is bald” don’t convey that there is a present kind of France directly, they just presuppose it. That is, whereas Russell thought you could replace this statement with “There is a present kind of France, and he is bald,” Strawson didn’t think so. The presupposition that there is a present kind of France is, so to speak, supposed “outside” this statement.
I’m inclined to agree with Strawson. If the statement “The present king of France is bald” were expandable into “There is a present kind of France” and “He is bald,” then this would say something about what I intend to convey when I express it. It would say that I want you to know two things: 1) that there is a present kind of France, and 2) that he is bald. These are two completely different packets of information. For the statement “The present kind of France is bald” to be expandable into 1) and 2), I would have to intend for both 1) and 2) to be communicated. But in saying simply “The present kind of France is bald,” I only mean to communicating 2) (however mistaken I would be in assume there is a king of France). I have no intention of informing you that there is a present kind of France. I just assume that you already know, or believe, that from the start.
Yeah, great question. So (presupposing God to be omnipotent) the classic analysis goes, if he can create the rock, he can’t lift it - thus, not omnipotent. If he can’t create the rock, also not omnipotent. Either hypothesis (true or false) leads to a contradiction; thus, the statement can’t have a coherent truth value with the given premises. This indicates that the premises must be faulty, i.e. God must not be omnipotent.
So in short, it’s an example of a sentence having meaning yet no truth value - not of a sentence that doesn’t have meaning.
Gib:
I think you’re dancing around a more precise analysis. If you say “The present king of france is bald”, you almost certainly either mean “There is a king in france and he is bald”, OR, “if there is a king in france, he is bald”. The first sentence is false, and the second is true. There is no “correct” interpretation of what you said, but the two most likely possibilities can be formulated precisely, and have precise truth values as a consequence.
Apparently, I am misunderstanding something then in the context of the exercise. I agree the premise is lacking truth value, but in my understanding, the premise is so flawed as to make a sentence without meaning also …
Unless the “meaning” is simply a matter of absurdity/coherence?
Yes, I apologize for the ambiguity. When I said “Can God make a rock…” has meaning, I meant only in the sense that, if the sentence doesn’t have a truth value, it follows that God cannot be omnipotent. Thus it has meaning in that abstract way - but not in a concrete logical way.
Does that make sense? Did I answer your objection?
“For all cases, there is something that is the king of france and is bald.”
This assumes that
“Ex ↔ E(Kx&Bx)”
There exists a thing that is the king of france and is bald.
But in fact
~(Ex ↔ (Kx&Bx))
There is no case that there exists something that is the king of france and is bald
If there doesn’t exist such a case, there cannot be any identity for such a case.
So the first mentioned statement is false, because it needs to assume the existence of the king of france before identifying characteristics of the king of france.
If I understand your argument correctly, gib, the identity of something needs to assume its existence. By wrongly assuming its existence, the answer is False rather than indeterminate or meaningless.
If this is so, I agree that Bertrand Russel doesn’t really have reason to say that it’s meaningless. It’s simply false.