第10章 「ヴィトゲンシュタインの衝撃」 n.3 - 争点は検証可能性?直観主義者も形式主義者も『プリンキピア・マテマティカ(数学原理)』の学説を外側から攻撃しており、彼らの攻撃を撃退することは大して困難とは思われなかった。ウィトゲンシュタイン及びウィトゲンシュタイン学派からの批評は別の問題であった。それは内側からの攻撃であり、全ての点において尊重に値した(検討の価値があった)。 |
Chapter 10 The Impact of Wittgenstein, n.3The issue is much more general than it appears in the above mathematical examples. The issue is: ‘Is there any sense in saying that a proposition is either true or false when there is no way of deciding the alternative?' or, to put the matter in a different form, ‘Should “true" be identified with “verifiable"?' I do not think we can make such an identification unless we commit ourselves to gross and gratuitous paradoxes. Take such a proposition as the following: 'It snowed on Manhattan Island on the 1st January in the year 1 A. D.'. There is no conceivable method by which we can discover whether this proposition is true or false, but it seems preposterous to maintain that it is neither. I will not now pursue this matter further, as I discussed it in detail in Chapters XX and XXI of the Inquiry into Meaning and Truth to which I shall return in a later chapter. Meantime, I shall assume that the Intuitionists' theory is to be rejected.Both the Intuitionists and the Formalists attacked the doctrines of Principia Mathematica from without, and it did not seem very difficult to repel their attacks. It was another matter with the criticisms of Wittgenstein and his school, which were attacks from within and deserving of all respect. |