A meaningless statement posits nothing of substance with which one could agree or disagree. In the context of logical arguments, the inclusion of a meaningless statement in the premises will undermine the validity of the argument since that premise can neither be true nor false.
There are many classes of meaningless statement:
- A statement may be considered meaningless if it asserts that two categories are disjoint without proposing a criterion to distinguish between them. For example, the claim, "I wouldn't know how pornography differs from erotica" is a distinction without a difference.
- A statement may be meaningless if its terms are undefined, or if it contains unbound variables. For instance, the sentence "All X have Y" is meaningless unless the terms X and Y are defined (or bound).
- A grammatically correct sentence may be meaningless if it ascribes properties to particulars which admit of no such properties. For example, the famous sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" cannot be taken literally.
- An ungrammatical sentence admits of no meaning. For instance, the string of words "deities Olympus Greek reside The. upon" offers no information regarding the Greek deities, or their whereabouts.
- Lewis Carrol's poem Jabberwocky is a famous example of the nonsensical as literature.
Famous quotes containing the words meaningless and/or statement:
“Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“He has the common feeling of his profession. He enjoys a statement twice as much if it appears in fine print, and anything that turns up in a footnote ... takes on the character of divine revelation.”
—Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)