Re: THIS STATEMENT HAS NO PROOF IN ANY SYSTEM = true or false?

tchow_at_lsa.umich.edu
Date: 01/18/05 

Date: 18 Jan 2005 16:06:08 GMT

In article <351hjtF4ii8kjU1@news.dfncis.de>,
Mitch Harris <harrisq@tcs.inf.tu-dresden.de> wrote:
>Not at all strange psychologically, or to force technical meaning on
>this, modally.
>
>Back to the sqrt(2) example, what is the mathematical meaning of its
>irrationality, -if one erases from our knowledge, its proof and/or
>truth value-? We can surely use it hypothetically (it is well-formed).
>I feel stuck in the "proof says it all"/"formality" vein, and I am
>looking for some meaning outside of that point of view.

I guess this all comes down to the fact that I have no clue at all about
what you mean by "meaning." Your use of the term differs so far from
anything I've ever seen, either in commonsense discourse or in philosophical
writing, that I can't even guess what you mean by it. In particular, I
don't understand what "psychologically" means, or what proof or truth
has to do with meaning.

Suppose I'm learning French and someone says, "Il pleut" and I ask,
"What does that mean?" The answer I want is that "Il pleut" means
"It's raining." Once I know this, I know the meaning of "Il pleut."
It is entirely irrelevant whether in fact it is raining, or whether
I have any evidence that it is raining. Even if I have no way of
telling whether or not it's in fact raining, this will not impede my
ability to learn the meaning of "Il pleut." Nor will I need to rewrite
my phrasebook once I find out that in fact it *is* raining. 

-- 
Tim Chow       tchow-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu
The range of our projectiles---even ... the artillery---however great, will
never exceed four of those miles of which as many thousand separate us from
the center of the earth.  ---Galileo, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences

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