Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!aipna!rjc
From: rjc@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Fun with the semantics of paradox
Message-ID: <479@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 20 Jan 89 06:11:55 GMT
References: <1883@buengc.BU.EDU> <2996@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <905@ubu.warwick.UUCP>
Reply-To: rjc@uk.ac.ed.aipna (Richard Caley)
Organization: Dept. of AI, Edinburgh, UK
Lines: 19
Dragon: Kalessin

In article <905@ubu.warwick.UUCP> mirk@uk.ac.warwick.cs (Mike Taylor) writes:

>Am I right in thinking that an ambiguous sentence is one that can
>consistently be either true or false and that an undecidable one
>cannot be either?  What, then is a meaningless sentence?  Surely
>either an ambiguous sentence or an inconsistent one is meaningless?
>Or do people simply mean not well-formed?

A classic example of a meaningless sentence is

	"The current king of France is bald."

( Frege, I believe ) which is neither true nor false, since there is no
king of France currently.
-- 
	rjc@uk.ac.ed.aipna	AKA	rjc%uk.ac.ed.aipna@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk

	    "Give me a beer and money sandwich: hold the bread"
			- Waldo 'DR' Dobbs