Short Answer Questions (for submission)

1. Explain the verifiability criterion of meaning.
2. What is the difference between practical, in principle, strong and weak verifiability?
3. Describe three concerns about modern (logical) empiricism.

For Further Discussion

• Meaningless expression generator. Play around with the meaningless expression generator in the lecture notes. Can you find any statements that are meaningful? What (if anything) do such generators tell us about the nature of language?
• Meaningless Expressions? The following sentences have a similar grammatical form.

  1.	Colorless green ideas	sleep	on	furious feelings
  2.	The Jabberwock	came whiffling	through	the tulgey wood
  3.	The Nothing	is	prior to	the Not and the Negation
  4.	This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets	could only proceed	from	the counsel and dominion of an intelligent being.
  5.	A human from Earth	could not prosper	in	the Andromeda galaxy, 2.5 million light years away.
  6.	All of our sense experiences	are created	by	a deceptive demon.
  7.	Reality	is nothing more	than	a collection of ideas in your mind.

  • Forget about the verifiability criterion of meaning for a moment. Which of them (if any) do you think are meaningless?
  • Now, which of them would be deemed meaningless by the verifiability criterion?
  • If there are any cases where you deem a statement to be meaningful but the verifiability criterion does not, can you say why? Surely not all expressions are — so, what does it take?
• Objections to Empiricism. Remind yourself of the objections to modern empiricism.
  • The verifiability criterion seems meaningful, but then again we may just have been tricked. Is it a logical truth or verifiable? How should an empiricist respond to this concern?
  • Quine criticised modern empiricism by arguing that a single sentence can never be verified, but only a "web" of sentences. What exactly does that mean?
  • Is Quine's critique a true problem for modern empiricism, or can it be account for by a slight adjustment of the view?