Logic and Meaning

PHIL110_Logic and Meaning

Logic:

2. Because intense heat is nothing else but a particular kind of painful sensation; and pain cannot exist but in a perceiving being; it follows that no intense heat can really exist in an unperceiving corporeal substance. (George Berkeley, Three Dialogues)

In this argument, both promises are true but the conclusion is false. As the result, the argument is not valid and not sound. The first and second premises together state that only perceiving being senses pain if the intense heat happens, but they do not say whether intense heat can exist in an unperceiving corporeal substance. Which means the intense heat may or may not exist in the unperceiving corporeal substance. The only thing we are sure based on the premises is that pain does not exist in the unperceiving corporeal substance even if the intense heat exists.

Meaning:

5. Art is the production of something beautiful.

The definition is defective. First of all, the art is the "production" of something beautiful, but whose "production" it is. If the art is not human made, then anything in the universe that is beautiful can be defined as art. In this case, the God can be art, the river of stars can be art, the earth can be art, the nature scene can art and human itself can be art also. What I want to say is that the art can be defined as something beautiful but the beautiful things are not all the art. Second, if art is the production of something beautiful, then there will be no art at all. Since the definition of art is built under people's taste and appreciation, something beautiful in one's eyes can be something ugly in others'. Who supposes to be the "right" person to judge which thing is beautiful?