Idle Talk 07 04 13 The meaning of meaning

On this week’s show we ask, what is the meaning of meaning?  To answer this we also had to tackle questions such as “what makes a statement meaningful?” and “what is it something to be meaningful?”. “From where do statements derive truth value or meaning. For example we all know what the statement “the cat sat on the mat” means but how exactly do we know? we concentrate on AJ Ayre’s solution to this problem, the verification principle. We also be discuss whether or not the names of fictional characters, like Harry Potter (sorry he’s not real, deal with it!) are meaningful. Such characters do not exist in real life, yet still we understand sentences about them. To help us with this issue we where be joined by Daisy Dixon, a philosophy and art under graduate from the University of Reading.