Abstract

In this lecture Evans studies one of the basic presuppositions of empiricism: the central doctrine of the theory of meaning of propositions, with special reference to the cleavage between verbal definition—the defining of words by reference to other words—and ostensive definition—the defining of a word by "pointing" to its object. The author shows that ostensive definition is wholly inadequate to the task of defining such words as nouns and adjectives—one can point only to their instances in the world and not to what the noun or adjective actually refers. Thus with the breakdown of this distinction in definition goes the weakening of the division between mathematical and empirical sentences which together were believed to exhaust all possible meaningful expressions.—P. J. M.