August
23, 2017 Wednesday
Bedtime
Story
Let
me introduce at this moment another Polish logician and philosopher who was
also a product of the great Lwow-Warsaw School.
Like
a true Pole, he was endowed with the classical tongue-twisting and
unpronounceable name of Tadeusz Kotarbiński.
Besides
coining the word reism that I will ignore completely, he developed what is
known as ‘the nihilistic approach to the theory of truth.’
This
notion subscribes to the idea that the word “true” solely by itself is
meaningless.
It
can only serve meaningful purpose if it comes in the following two packages:
(a)
“it is true that” and
(b)
“it is not true that”
These
two phrases then are to be treated as one single word with no so-to-speak
organic parts.
They
have been devised in such a manner than they can be removed from a sentence.
Just
so that you know what I mean, let me show you with an example.
It
is true that all countries have their own army.
This
can be simplified as:
All
countries have their own army.
Here
is another example.
It
is not true that all men love mathematics.
This
can be simplified to:
Not
all men love mathematics.
This
renders the word “true” meaningless.
The
most important thing is that it has lost its validity as a predicate in a
sentence.
Now
let us analyze what advantage this approach has provided us with.
Let
us once again consider the sentence [G] constructed by Tarski.
[G]
The sentence printed in red on page 65 of the June 1969 issue of the Scientific
American is false.
From
the novel “nihilistic” point of view, the sentence loses its meaning and hence
the paradox that it is capable of generating is taken care of right at its
root.
Yet,
even though it solves one problem it raises another.
At
places where the use of the term “true” is very reasonable and valid, even
those get affected and that leads to unwanted collateral damage.
Tarski
gives the following hypothetical example to understand the unwanted consequence
of this nihilistic approach.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Advertisements
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
No comments:
Post a Comment