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How do we judge whether or not language is meaningful? How should we?

Can we speak/write meaningfully about God?

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'God' is by definition, according to theists, transcendent. What is meant by 'transcendence'? Beyond our everyday experience? Beyond empirical experience? Beyond all experience? Beyond ordinary language? 

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There are various views about what makes language meaningful...

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Verificationism: propositions are only meaningful if they are true by definition or can be shown to correspond to our experience (i.e. empirically testable), at least in principle.

Is this definition true by definition? Can it be shown to correspond to our experience (i.e. is it empirically testable)?

The early Wittgenstein said, at the end of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, that this definition worked as a sort of tool which we can use to assess the meaning of other propositions. 

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However, many, including Wittgenstein himself later, thought that verificationism does not really work. Some, however, still wanted to uphold correspondence theory. Popper argued that the scientific method was not about verifying things. Rather, it is about building theories which are able to be falsified: science is about trying to disprove existing theories. Flew was inspired by this and argued that the approach could be applied to all language: only propositions which can be shown to not correspond to our experience should be considered to be meaningful. 

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Let's take an example: 

'I will continue to exist in some form after my bodily death.'

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Can it be verified? Yes, in principle: I would have to have some sort of experience after my bodily death; this would verify the sentence. Therefore, the sentence is a proposition, according to the verification principle. 

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Can it be falsified? Being in a position to falsify it would, by necessity, verify it and thus not falsify it. Therefore, the sentence is not a proposition, according to the falsification principle. But then, is any sentence about the future a proposition? Yes, if there are good reasons to think that you, or someone, will be able to falsify it/them.

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A different approach to language is offered by the later Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations, inspired by a coherence theory of truth: propositions are meaningful if they cohere, or fit, with other propositions in the specific 'language game' being played, and the context of that game, something Wittgenstein called, a 'form of life': 'I will continue to exist in some form after my bodily death.' is meaningful if it makes sense within the language game of a form of life. 

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