Examples of sentences that are (or make) statements:
"Socrates is a man."
"A triangle has three sides."
"Madrid is the capital of Spain."
Examples of sentences that are not (or do not make) statements:
"Who are you?"
"Run!"
"Greenness perambulates."
"I had one grunch but the eggplant over there."
"The King of France is wise."
"Broccoli tastes good."
"Pegasus exists."
-Wikipedia
I believe that the last 3 of "non-statements" are incorrect.
I believe they are statements.
"Pegasus exists." might be false but it does make a statement.
>>7843329
"Pegasus exists" should be a statement.
>trusting wikipedia
You need to remember that by 'statement' the anals (analytic philosophers) mean something entirely different than one would expect ordinarily. By 'statement' most of them mean a declarative sentence that has a definite truth-value (belonging to {T, F} or {1, 1/2, 0} or whatever). In this light, "Pegasus exists" bears neither of the truth-values because "Pegasus" is a non-denoting proper name, and so the sentence as a whole does not qualify as a statement.
But there is however a family of logics termed 'free' (as in 'free logic') that embraces non-denoting terms of that kind.
>>7843329
In the time it took to post this you could've just corrected the wiki.
>>7843329
imperative, interrogative, declarative and exclamatory
>>7843329
Look up the existential fallacy. This problem is as old as Aristotle.
philosophy is gay
>The King of France is wise.
I believe it was Russell who explained that, while this sentence fails to refer, it does have a meaning, which can be obtained by description.
The statement would be something like 'There's an x that has the property K and the property W. And for all y, if K(y) then y is identical to x.
Dunno if I got my point accross. It's hard to do formal logic in English and without the appropiate symbols
>>7846207
So is it a logical statement or not?
>>7846221
Yes. And the statement would be false, since such x with the property K (being the king of France) does not exist.
You can formalize the statement as (1)
(1)∃x[K(x) ^ ∀y[K(y) → y=x] ^ W(x)]
(2) ~∃x[K(x)]
Conclusion: (1) is false
>>7846258
Then why memekipedia is wrong?
Once in a while a zero is generated by the research of values even if the numeration of unknowns begins at one.
>>7846261
Russell's view is not universally accepted.
According to Frege, a sentence without a referent cannot form a statement.
>>7846290
But you agree with Russell right??
>>7846293
Sentences without referents are a challenge for Fregean theory, since you cannot say that "The King of France is wise." is nonsense in the same way "I had one grunch but the eggplant over there." is. Both of us can understand (1) but can make no sense out of (2). And acording to Frege, both would be meaningless, which seems counterintuitive.
To me, it's strange to think that (1) has no truth value. So yeah I think I agree with Russell but I am not familiar enough with contemporary defenders of Frege to have a strong opinion on it.
>>7846333
>both would be meaningless, which seems counterintuitive.
Surely one sentence can be more meaningless than the other? There have to be degrees of nonsense
>>7847210
It could be, but the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate it to the satisfaction of many. I.e. give a logico-mathematical criterion or criteria that could determine some nonsensical sentence S_1 to be less, more, or equal in its nonsense than some other nonsensical sentence S_2.
>>7847210
But if neither (1) or (2) make any statements, there's no information to be gotten from any of them. Which makes them equally senseless.
>>7847210
>There have to be degrees of nonsense
Don't you mean degrees of sense? Degrees of nonsense is nonsense, basically.
>>7847233
>>7847303
>>7847308
>"Greenness perambulates."
>"I had one grunch but the eggplant over there."
I would not consider the first sentence as nonsensical as the second, so there have to be varying degrees of nonsense. I can't give a "logico-matematical criterion" for it, because I think it should be explained according to grammar rules
>>7847320
Your "grammar rules" are stipulated logico-mathematically, though. Have you read any theoretical linguistics at all?
Nevertheless, you may "think" whatever you wish, but if you can't justify it "according to grammar rules" then your idea of nonsensical sentences having "varying degrees of nonsense" is unwarranted.
>>7847336
Chill, I know fuck all about logic and even less about linguistics. I was just interested in the thread and asking earnest questions for clarification.
>>7847351
At least now you have an incentive to learn all the mathematics you need to warrant your intuition that nonsensical sentences are of varying degrees.
The intuition is good (I can roughly see how one could formalize it set-theoretically), but you need to develop it.
>>7847392
stop trying to debate people
he's not talking about what you're talking about
and in your eagerness to say something you've already conflated at least three or four different ways of talking about language that i'm not even going to bother to untangle. just stop.
>>7847436
The guy had an intuition about something. I get it. I remarked that for it to be a warranted intuition he should formalize it. I recommended that he does so. We're both talking about the same thing. End of story.
Now shut the hell up.
>>7847469
are you saying anyone who talks about varying degrees should formalize it? kill yourself you pathetic piece of shit.
