===== By J. L. S.
Ayer was playing with "The Nothing nothings" early enough.
He writes:
"This formulation of the verification principle fails."
"Take some experiential proposition… “O”
i. The pillar box is red.
, and any “nonsensical” statement “N”
ii. The nothing nothings.
"Then, since the observation statement “O” can be deduced from “N”, together with “if N then O”, but not from “if N then O” on its own, “N” counts as
factually meaningful
according to this formulation of the verification principle."
"Thus, if we take “N” to be “the Nothing nothings” and “O” to be “that pillar box is red”, we can establish that “the Nothing nothings” is factually significant."
But it ain't!
Grice was impressed by Ayer, and he didn't hide it!
Grice's example in "Causal theory of perception" as it happens is:
iii. The pillar box _seems_ red.
How much more phenomenalist can YOU get?
So, according to this initial interpretation of the Verification Principle sentences such as ‘the Nothing nothings’ are still factually
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---Ayer's example
ReplyDelete"The nothing nothings"
thus PRE-Dates Pap's 1959 tr., possibly done as commissioned by Ayer himself.
"The nothing nothings" comes from his long intro to the SECOND edition (1946) of his Language, truth and Logic, which was so influential in Oxford, and which Grice liked.
--- By the time, as Miller notes in his Phil. Lang., Ayer was using Observation statement as his new bit of terminology.
O'Connor apparently criticised this. I used to collect types of nonsense used by Oxford philosophers.
Saturday is in bed with Monday was a good one by Ryle.
O'Connor mentions "indisputable" nonsense like "The Absolute is lazy".
----- And an online source reads, wrongly, that the Carnapians are wanting to say that "He is a bit on the teavy side", "pirots karulize", "the nothing nothings" and "man's soul is immortal" are on the same plane! (to where?)