So from mathematical logic we know that if you take a simple statement you can have a formal statement equivalent to it[0]. For example, 'not all frogs are gree

So from mathematical logic we know that if you take a simple statement you can have a formal statement equivalent to it[0]. For example, 'not all frogs are green', or 'quadrupeds are four-legged animals'. For the logical form there is a mathematical procedure that let's you verify its meaning (reduction in lambda-calculus, or equivalently a proof tree). However, these statements are not very interesting![1] So what are 'interesting statements'? That would be something that has some deeper meaning, philosophical ideas (let's call them 'general ideas'). If we wanted to use the same approach, we would need to encode all the necessary concepts through predicates or compose them in logic functions or formula fragments. Of course, to arrive at a concept such as 'philosophy' the endeavor would be enormous. Even if you managed to do it, would your encoding be recognized as 'philosophy' by everyone else? Instead, we communicate with these general statements that requires that you reduce them to simpler statement that actually mean something. Let's take 'the early bird gets the worm'. You need to take some examples to think 'what does it mean in this situation'? You can try to falsify and work with it like a hypothesis. You get some understanding from that process and not from the statement itself. Can it be called the meaning of the statement? Not really, because there is no way to associate to a simple mathematical process, it depends on each individual's mental process. And given that, how can you be sure of what exactly is the idea that you're communicating? If you understand these general ideas, and that you cannot communicate them except to people that already understood them, these statements are meaningless in a certain sense [2]. You can say that "but we communicate about these things all the time". But how well? There's a an anecdote due to Lucian about two people talking to each others without really understanding anything, so he went to them and asked "doesn't it seem to you that one is trying to milk a billygoat and the other is handing him a colander?". [0] you just need to provide a precise definition for all terms and associate a predicate for each property of interest. It's a slog to do but it's something that is done, for example in engineering when you need some safety properties. [1] That was identified as the inanity of mathematics; you can only prove tautologies. In a way what you can salvage from this procedure is that some statements are meaningful, whereas some are not (e.g. Russel's paradox) [2] A concept that helps is Quine's "indeterminacy of translation"