Re: Godel cant tell us what makes a mathematical statement true

On Aug 14, 8:55 am, Nam Nguyen <namducngu...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Imho, by *convenience*, we tend to treat a true statement as meaningful,
while a false one meaningless. For example, "The Sun rises in the East"
is true and meaningful, while "The Sun rises in the West" is false *and*
meaningless!

I don't consider false statements to be meaningless. And I hardly
doubt there is a consensus (especially among philosophers and
mathematicians) that false statements are meaningless. Indeed, certain
philosophers and mathematicians are clear that false statements DO
have meaning.

But from FOL's point of view, if we care about "meaning"
at all for a formula, then *all* of these:

"President Kennedy was assassinated", "President Kennedy is alive", etc....

are *meaningful*. Whether any of them is true, or false, will be a
matter of interpretation, or assignment, w.r.t. to a binary (truth) value..

But the statements:

"President Kennedy was 'done-in'", "It's not true somebody 'did him in'",....

are meaningless, and can't be assigned to a truth value, until we know
exactly what the syntactical language/grammar roles would 'done-in' and
'did him in' play! Imho.

I don't especially disagree with that. But I don't see reason to
accept your opinion that generally people take falsehoods to be
meaningless.

MoeBlee
.

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