Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
----- Original Message ----- From: "andy butler" <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk> >>> "Already it transpires that rigid adherence to serial systems is not >>> exclusively considered to be a pre-requisite for good composition. " >>> >>> hmmm.............true or false? >> >> That's easy...neither, if you follow and use the gist of my original >> response as a starting point (that's the premise for my response). The >> gist is that some statements are neither true nor false, because they >> aren't statements in the factual sense, only appear to be by syntax. > > There's no logic here. > what are you saying? > That because some sentences are neither true or false you can blandly > apply that to any sentence? There is no blandly applying anything here, but there is a methodology and entire system behind the application. To reiterate the view, which is not my own unique view, but was set forth by a group of linguistic, analytic, and philosophers of science in the 50s, some statements, not all, are regarded as pseudo statements, meaning that they are neither true nor false. In other words, they are not the type of sentences that can be analyzed as true or false. Just because we use our language syntax to construct a sentence, doesn't imply that is meaningful, nor that it has the ability to be true or false. According to the view, statements of this sort, which are literally meaningless, typically come out of the disciplines of ethics, metaphysics, and aesthetics. It is impossible to do the view justice here on the list, and it takes a fair amount of reading to understand the full thrust of the argument. I would start by reading A.J. Ayer's "Language, Truth and Logic", or Hans Reichenbach's "The Rise of Scientific Philosophy", all easy reads. But the main point is the application is not "blandly" applied, nor does it assume that simply constructing a sentence entitles it to have the property of truth or falsehood. > As the opposite of that sentence is disproved by counter example, then it > has to be true. :-) Just because we can "construct" or contrive a sentence that appears as if it were a legitimate statement about the world, and then contradict it with a negative, doesn't imply that the statement is literally meaningful, meaning that it actually expresses a fact about the world. And it doesn't imply truth or falsehood either. If you are talking pure symbolic logic, like: 1. If p, then q 2. p 3. Therefore: q (derived by modus ponens) ....then we abstractly assign truth values to "p" so that we can conclude q...but these statements are ENTIRELY different than statements about the word around us, such as the nature and value of art - coming back to our original topic. The truth of a statement in logic is assigned, where as the true or falsehood of a statement about the world about us is derived by analyzing the statement, and determine whether the terms of the statement are meaningful and express a factual state of affairs. If we discover that the terms (subject, attribute) are pseudo-terms and don't denote anything in the real world, then the whole statement becomes a pseudo-statement, that is, unable to be either true or false. Your original statement: 1) "Already it transpires that rigid adherence to serial systems is not exclusively considered to be a pre-requisite for good composition. " This is a complex statement. Let's say we simply it to: 2) "Rigid adherence to serial systems is not exclusively considered to be a pre-requisite for good composition." And then simply that to: 3) "Rigid adherence to serial systems is not a pre-requisite for good composition". This is the core statement. If what you mean by "considered' in version 2 is that people believe or state that rigid adherence to serial system is not a pre-requisite for good composition, then I suppose you could verify this by just asking people, provided you didn't ask them to describe when they mean by "good". Though I'm not sure how you can show this is universally true or false...it seems that the opinion would vary. But, it does, "at first glance" suggest that the statement can be either true or false (theoretically). However, if you further analyze the statement to the third version above, and scrutinize the term "good", using the system of philosophy I referred to above as the starting point (this is important, because it is my whole axiom for discussion here), then that system suggests that "good composition" is a literally meaningless phrase, which means that when a person uses that phrase to express their belief that rigid adherence to serial systems is not exclusively considered to be a pre-requisite for good composition, that expression is also literally meaningless. It take one bad apple to ruin the whole barrel in other words. This is why according to this philosophy I am alluding to, not only are statements of value meaningless without translation into emotive expressions, but the whole question that give rise to them are meaningless. So, "Is there such a thing as good art" or "What is beauty?", or "What are the criteria for a good composition?" become empty, unless those "good" terms are defined in a non-evaluative manner...which can, and has been done. The pragmatists did it (good means useful). The ethical emotivists did it (good is generate positive emotions). Many of us on this list do it and actually prefer it that way because it is more direct, emotive, and does leave this nebulous thing called Good floating around in the air. So, to summarize the main point. One bad apple ruins the whole barrel. :) If you find a term in a sentence that is meaningless, meaning that you can't connect it to anything "real" (empirical, introspective, etc), then the whole sentence is rendered meaningless (i.e., is neither true nor false), unless we rid ourselves of the bad apple and replace it with a more description term or set of terms. Kris Not only that, you provided a suitable counter > example yourself. > That's logic. > >> But you are free to use a different set of premises to support a >> different concusion....but then you wouldn't disputing my logic at that >> point, just my initial assumptions. > > I'm disputing your conclusions. > So far you neither justified "aesthetic non-cognitivity", nor >demonstrated > that it applied to composition. > >> >> We are probably talking about diffrerent definitions of "objectivity" >> here. I am using the more formal and philosophical concept. > > http://www.iep.utm.edu/o/objectiv.htm > > Don't think so, that looks ok to me. > >> Kris >> >> > andy > >