Dr. J. Budziszewski

That's absurd.

We don't, you know, sensations.

can't really be given materialistic explanations.

All these kinds of things are so difficult that there are even some materialists now who call themselves eliminative materialists, which means that all these things that materialism can't explain, they eliminate them from consideration.

They say those don't exist or they're illusions.

Well, it's a little different.

Positivism

uh logical positivism logical imperative let's take an example of it let's take moral statements the usual line among these guys was what i'm sorry for so many isms it was called emotivism that if um that that um if i say murder is wrong that actually does not mean anything

Um, it would, if it could be true or if it could be false, if it had a truth value, then it would mean something.

Well, how do you know it doesn't have a truth value?

Because only things that, uh, that are reports of sense experience, the table is hurting my knuckles.

The, uh, our sound reproduction quality, our voices are very loud.

Only, only sensory experience and, um,

And the result of definitions, like what they claimed was going on in mathematics, everything is just circular.

It's just tautological.

Right.

Only those things are meaningful.

If you can confirm it by reference to either definitions or sensory experience, then...

it is meaningful and has a truth value.

If it's not, you can't.