Verificationism

Classification

Position level

specific

Domains

Philosophy of Language

Overview

Verificationism holds that a sentence which is not true or false by definition alone has meaning only if observation could in principle settle its truth conclusively; if no possible observation could, the sentence says nothing that could be true or false. This is the strong criterion of the early Vienna Circle. It sorts sentences into meaningful and meaningless without saying what a meaningful sentence means or what facts give it that meaning.

The requirement disqualifies universal laws, which no finite set of observations can establish, and it was soon weakened, by Ayer into weak verifiability and by Carnap into the Confirmability Criterion, which is the rival answer on this question.

Position on

• Meaningful and Meaningless Statements

Held by traditions

• Logical Positivism

  Question scope: Meaningful and Meaningless Statements

Rival positions

• Confirmability Criterion

  Question scope: Meaningful and Meaningless Statements

References

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Theories of Meaning
• Friedrich Waismann, 'Logische Analyse des Wahrscheinlichkeitsbegriffs', Erkenntnis 1 (1930), p. 229 (a statement without a possible verification has no meaning, because the meaning of a statement is the method of its verification)
• Carl G. Hempel, 'Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning', Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4 (1950), on the requirement of complete verifiability in principle and why it was abandoned