A theory of meaningfulness sets the conditions under which a sentence counts as cognitively significant. It does not say what a meaningful sentence means or what facts give it that meaning. Verificationism answers this narrower question by making cognitive significance depend on analyticity or possible empirical verification.
Philosophy of Language
Cognitive Meaningfulness
What makes a sentence cognitively meaningful rather than meaningless?
Positions
- Confirmability Criterion
A sentence is cognitively meaningful if observation could confirm or disconfirm it to some degree, even though no finite body of observation could conclusively verify it.
- Verificationism
A sentence is cognitively meaningful if and only if it is analytic or empirically verifiable.
Held by Logical Positivism
Methods used to investigate this question
- Formalization
Formalization translates claims, arguments, or theories into an explicit logical or mathematical representation so that their structure can be tested with formal tools.
Discussion
Related questions
References
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Theories of Meaning
- Controlled domain vocabulary (docs/taxonomy.md)