Dr. J. Budziszewski

So people would say, so you're saying that there's no God?

And they would say, no, we're not saying there's no God.

We're saying the statement there is a God has no meaning.

The statement there is not a God has no meaning.

The statement murder is wrong has no meaning.

The statement murder is right has no meaning.

Well, then what are you doing when you say that murder is wrong?

What you're saying is I don't like murder and I don't want you to like it either.

And if you say,

The problem there is that if they say, why don't you want me to like, why do you want me to dislike murder too?

answer has to be because it's wrong it's not it's not just that i don't want you to because i don't want you to and so you know the whole enterprise falls apart verificationism as this is called it doesn't have a truth value unless you can verify it either by reference to to to definitions or or sense experience falls apart because that criterion itself can't be verified by sense experience or by yeah yes

incoherency is the big thing i i think we should teach students more about this they know about inconsistency they know you can't say this is a mug this is not a mug okay but what if i say uh matt i want you to don't speak a word of english yes or what if i say matt i want you to understand

Nobody who says that this is not a mug can be understood.

You know, that's incoherency.

And inconsistency is just one of the simpler kinds.

But we meet this all the time.

a physical reaction yeah he had a physical reaction i've seen these self-referential events of that statement i've i've seen uh stunned reactions before but never a physical one like that he didn't fall over but he did step back as if he was like he had someone just smacked him in the face oh that's great yeah i i remember an occasion i was speaking with uh with somebody i don't even remember what we were talking about it might have been god might have been right or wrong it might have something else

And he said something incoherent.

And I don't remember the incoherency either.

But I said, do you realize that you've just said something incoherent?