Information about Verificationism
A verificationist is someone who adheres to the verification principle, a criterion for meaningfulness that requires a non-analytic, meaningful sentence to be either verifiable or falsifiable, though it was hotly disputed amongst verificationists whether this must be possible in practice or merely in principle. For example, a claim that the world came into existence a short time ago exactly as it is today (with misleading apparent traces of a longer past), would be judged meaningless by a verificationist because it is neither an analytic claim nor a verifiable claim.
This criterion for meaning, per the verificationists, also had the effect of revealing a number of philosophic debates as meaningless since, per the verificationists, many philosophic debates are over the truth of unverifiable sentences. Notoriously, verificationism is often used to rule out as meaningless religious, metaphysical, and ethical sentences. However, not all verificationists have found sentences of these types to be unverifiable. The classical pragmatists, for example, saw verificationism as a guide for doing good work in religion, metaphysics, and ethics.
All of the empiricists back to Locke could be treated as verificationists. The basic tenet of empiricism is that experience is our only source of knowledge and verificationism might be seen as simply a consequence of this tenet. Empiricists held that our ideas are either simple sense-perceptions or compilations and mixtures of these basic sense-perceptions. Reading this empiricist account, there does not seem to be any way for an idea to get into our heads without being connected to our perceptions and, thus, being connected to a means of verification. This leads empiricists like David Hume to reject philosophic positions about the existence of a God, a soul, or a self, since we are unable to point to the impression from which the idea of the thing is derived. Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding concludes with a rallying cry for the verificationist:
The empiricists did not directly put forth a criterion of meaningfulness, but one could be seen as equivalent to the empiricists' claim that ideas not connected to experience are "empty". It is worth noting, however, that verificationism need not be a position about meaning. It is simply the position that unverifiable sentences are defective in some way that is similar to how false sentences and meaningless sentences are defective. Empiricists could therefore be read as asserting that unverifiable sentences are defective not because they are meaningless, but because they contain terms standing for ideas/concepts that we cannot possibly possess. Or, the empiricist could be read as asserting the semantic position that unverifiable sentences are meaningless preciesly because they contain terms standing for ideas/concepts that we cannot possibly possess.
Auguste Comte put forth a semantic position not about the meaninglessness of unverifiable sentences, but rather about the pointlessness of considering them since they cannot be verified. This sort of rejection of unverifiable sentences as useless rather than meaningless would reoccur in the work of the classical pragmatists alongside their semantic verificationism. Comte was a rather extreme verificationist, rejecting everything we cannot have direct experience of. This included statements about the past, universal generalizations, as well as abstract objects like universals.
The verification principle is most associated with the logical positivist movement which had its roots in inter-war Vienna.
Despite pre-dating logical positivism, pragmatism had very little influence on the logical positivists and most attention paid to verificationism has been directed to the positivists. This is mostly because logical positivism, unlike pragmatism, held the possibility of dismissing whole disciplines like metaphysics, morality, and ethics. The pragmatists differed from the logical positivists in their hospitality to areas of knowledge that the positivists hoped their principle would undermine. The pragmatists did not want to rule out metaphysics, religion, or ethics with the verification principle; they wanted to provide a standard for conducting good metaphysics, religion, and ethics.
James coined the famous verificationist motto: "A difference that makes no difference is no difference".
It is commonly believed that Karl Popper rejected the requirement that meaningful sentences be verifiable, demanding instead that they be falsifiable. However, Popper later claimed that his demand for falsifiability was not meant as a theory of meaning, but rather as a methodological norm for the sciences. Often, and to Popper's dismay, he is grouped as together with the verificationists rather than as a critic of verificationism.
Verificationists need not be logical positivists. Willard Van Orman Quine is a famous example of a verificationist who does not accept logical positivism, on grounds of semantic holism. He suggests that, for theoretical sentences as opposed to observation sentences, meaning is "infected by theory". That theoretical sentences are reducible to observation sentences is one of the ‘dogmas of empiricism’ he rejects as incompatible with semantic holism.
Some interpretations of the Private Language argument see it as supporting verificationism. So for example, Misak claims that:
After the fall of logical positivism, verificationism and empiricism more generally lost many adherents. This trend was stopped and in large part reversed in 1980 with the publication of van Fraassen's The Scientific Image. Constructive empiricism states that scientific theories do not aim at truth, but to be empirically adequate and that their acceptance involves a belief only that they are empirically adequate. A theory is empirically adequate if and only if everything that it says about observable entities is "true" (or well-established). Constructive empiricism therefore rejects unverifiable positions not because they lack truth or meaning, but because they go beyond what is needed to be empirically adequate.
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The Vienna Circle (in German: der Wiener Kreis) was a group of philosophers who gathered around Moritz Schlick when he was called to the Vienna University in 1922, organized in a
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Pragmatism is a philosophic school that originated in the late nineteenth century with Charles Sanders Peirce, who first stated the pragmatic maxim.
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This criterion for meaning, per the verificationists, also had the effect of revealing a number of philosophic debates as meaningless since, per the verificationists, many philosophic debates are over the truth of unverifiable sentences. Notoriously, verificationism is often used to rule out as meaningless religious, metaphysical, and ethical sentences. However, not all verificationists have found sentences of these types to be unverifiable. The classical pragmatists, for example, saw verificationism as a guide for doing good work in religion, metaphysics, and ethics.
Early Verificationists
Empiricism
All of the empiricists back to Locke could be treated as verificationists. The basic tenet of empiricism is that experience is our only source of knowledge and verificationism might be seen as simply a consequence of this tenet. Empiricists held that our ideas are either simple sense-perceptions or compilations and mixtures of these basic sense-perceptions. Reading this empiricist account, there does not seem to be any way for an idea to get into our heads without being connected to our perceptions and, thus, being connected to a means of verification. This leads empiricists like David Hume to reject philosophic positions about the existence of a God, a soul, or a self, since we are unable to point to the impression from which the idea of the thing is derived. Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding concludes with a rallying cry for the verificationist:
When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.[1]'
The empiricists did not directly put forth a criterion of meaningfulness, but one could be seen as equivalent to the empiricists' claim that ideas not connected to experience are "empty". It is worth noting, however, that verificationism need not be a position about meaning. It is simply the position that unverifiable sentences are defective in some way that is similar to how false sentences and meaningless sentences are defective. Empiricists could therefore be read as asserting that unverifiable sentences are defective not because they are meaningless, but because they contain terms standing for ideas/concepts that we cannot possibly possess. Or, the empiricist could be read as asserting the semantic position that unverifiable sentences are meaningless preciesly because they contain terms standing for ideas/concepts that we cannot possibly possess.
Positivism
Auguste Comte put forth a semantic position not about the meaninglessness of unverifiable sentences, but rather about the pointlessness of considering them since they cannot be verified. This sort of rejection of unverifiable sentences as useless rather than meaningless would reoccur in the work of the classical pragmatists alongside their semantic verificationism. Comte was a rather extreme verificationist, rejecting everything we cannot have direct experience of. This included statements about the past, universal generalizations, as well as abstract objects like universals.
Logical Positivism
The verification principle is most associated with the logical positivist movement which had its roots in inter-war Vienna.
Pragmatism
Despite pre-dating logical positivism, pragmatism had very little influence on the logical positivists and most attention paid to verificationism has been directed to the positivists. This is mostly because logical positivism, unlike pragmatism, held the possibility of dismissing whole disciplines like metaphysics, morality, and ethics. The pragmatists differed from the logical positivists in their hospitality to areas of knowledge that the positivists hoped their principle would undermine. The pragmatists did not want to rule out metaphysics, religion, or ethics with the verification principle; they wanted to provide a standard for conducting good metaphysics, religion, and ethics.
James coined the famous verificationist motto: "A difference that makes no difference is no difference".
Falsificationism
It is commonly believed that Karl Popper rejected the requirement that meaningful sentences be verifiable, demanding instead that they be falsifiable. However, Popper later claimed that his demand for falsifiability was not meant as a theory of meaning, but rather as a methodological norm for the sciences. Often, and to Popper's dismay, he is grouped as together with the verificationists rather than as a critic of verificationism.
Post-Positivist Verificationists
Quine and the Dogmas of Empiricism (1951)
Verificationists need not be logical positivists. Willard Van Orman Quine is a famous example of a verificationist who does not accept logical positivism, on grounds of semantic holism. He suggests that, for theoretical sentences as opposed to observation sentences, meaning is "infected by theory". That theoretical sentences are reducible to observation sentences is one of the ‘dogmas of empiricism’ he rejects as incompatible with semantic holism.
Wittgenstein and the Private Language Argument (1953)
Some interpretations of the Private Language argument see it as supporting verificationism. So for example, Misak claims that:
To say that P is a sentence in a private language is to say that there does not have to be any public consequences if P is true [....] But then 'P seems right to me' will always be a sufficient condition for 'P is right'. There is nothing that would count as evidence for or against the private linguist's claim that she is using a term in the same way or that she is picking out the same property by the term. Nothing would count as evidence to an observer and nothing would count as evidence to the speaker herself. (Misak 1995, p.54; cf. pp.53-55, 133)Those closer to Wittgenstein disagree.
As we have seen, a crucial part is played in the private-language argument by Wittgenstein's advice 'Always get rid of the idea of the private object in this way: assume that it constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you.' This advice has a verificationist ring, and some philosophers have thought that the private-language argument depends, in the last analysis, on verificationist premises. But Wittgenstein's advice is not meant to be followed by the question 'How would you ever find out?' but by the question 'What possible difference would it make?' The private-language argument does indeed depend on premises carried forward from Wittgenstein's earlier philosophy; but they are not peculiar to the verificationist period of the 1930s but date back to the time of the picture theory of the proposition in the 1910s (Anthony Kenny, Wittgenstein, p. 195)
Bas van Fraassen and Constructive Empiricism (1980)
After the fall of logical positivism, verificationism and empiricism more generally lost many adherents. This trend was stopped and in large part reversed in 1980 with the publication of van Fraassen's The Scientific Image. Constructive empiricism states that scientific theories do not aim at truth, but to be empirically adequate and that their acceptance involves a belief only that they are empirically adequate. A theory is empirically adequate if and only if everything that it says about observable entities is "true" (or well-established). Constructive empiricism therefore rejects unverifiable positions not because they lack truth or meaning, but because they go beyond what is needed to be empirically adequate.
See also
| Early Verificationists | Pragmatists | Logical Positivists | Logical Atomists | Post-Positivist Verificationists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| George Berkeley (1685-1753) | C.S. Peirce (1839-1914) | Moritz Schlick | Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) | Later Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) |
| David Hume (1711-1776) | William James (1842-1910) | Rudolph Carnap | Early Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) | Michael Dummett (1925-Present) |
| Auguste Comte (1798-1857) | F.C.S. Schiller (1864-1937) | Otto Neurath | Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) | |
| Ernst Mach (1838-1916) | John Dewey (1859-1952) | A.J. Ayer | Bas van Fraassen (1941-Present) | |
| Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) | Hans Reichenbach | David Wiggins (1933-Present) | ||
| Carl Hempel | Christopher Peacocke (1950-Present) | |||
| Karl Popper (1902-1994) |
References
1. ^ Hume, D., Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals Reprinted from 1777 edition, Third Edition, L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), Clarendon Press, Oxford, Sect. XII, Part III, p.165.
- Misak, C.J. (1995) Verificationism.
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The analytic-synthetic distinction (or dichotomy) is a conceptual distinction, used primarily in philosophy to distinguish propositions into two types: analytic propositions and synthetic propositions.
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In linguistics, a sentence is a unit of language, characterized in most languages by the presence of a finite verb. For example, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
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Falsifiability (or refutability or testability) is the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment. That something is "falsifiable" does not mean it is false; rather, it means that it is capable of being
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religion is a set of common beliefs and practices generally held by a group of people, often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and mystic experience.
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Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science, traditionally including cosmology and ontology. It is also concerned with explaining the ultimate nature of being and the world.
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Ethics (via Latin ethica from the Ancient Greek ἠθική [φιλοσοφία]
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In philosophy generally, empiricism is a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas.
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In philosophy generally, empiricism is a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas.
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John Locke, (August 29, 1632 – October 28, 1704) was an English philosopher. Locke is considered the first of the British Empiricists, but is equally important to social contract theory.
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David Hume (April 26, 1711 – August 25, 1776)[1] was a Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian. He is considered one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment.
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God
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General approaches
Agnosticism Atheism
Deism Dystheism
Henotheism Ignosticism
Monism Monotheism
Natural theology Nontheism
Pandeism Panentheism
Pantheism Polytheism
Theism Theology
Transtheism
Specific conceptions
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The soul, according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the self-aware essence unique to a particular living being. In these traditions the soul is thought to incorporate the inner essence of each living being, and to be the true basis for sapience.
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Self is broadly defined as the essential qualities that make a person distinct from all others. The task in philosophy is defining what these qualities are, and there have been a number of different approaches.
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Positivism is a philosophy that states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific method.
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Generalization is an inference rule of predicate calculus which states that:
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- If is true (valid) then so is .
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The American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition, defines nominalism as "the doctrine holding that abstract concepts, general terms, or universals have no independent existence but exist only as names.
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Logical positivism grew from the discussions of Moritz Schlick's Vienna Circle and Hans Reichenbach's Berlin Circle in the 1920s and 1930s. The movement is known for its espousal of verificationism, its admiration for science and technical rigor, and its commitment to the
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Logical positivism grew from the discussions of Moritz Schlick's Vienna Circle and Hans Reichenbach's Berlin Circle in the 1920s and 1930s. The movement is known for its espousal of verificationism, its admiration for science and technical rigor, and its commitment to the
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- For the esoteric circle see Vienna Circle (esoteric)
The Vienna Circle (in German: der Wiener Kreis) was a group of philosophers who gathered around Moritz Schlick when he was called to the Vienna University in 1922, organized in a
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For non-technical usage, see .
Pragmatism is a philosophic school that originated in the late nineteenth century with Charles Sanders Peirce, who first stated the pragmatic maxim.
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Falsifiability (or refutability or testability) is the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment. That something is "falsifiable" does not mean it is false; rather, it means that it is capable of being
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Karl Raimund Popper, CH, FRS, FBA (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994) was an Austrian and British[1] philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics.
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W. V. O. Quine's paper Two Dogmas of Empiricism, published 1951, is one of the most celebrated papers of twentieth century philosophy in the analytic tradition. The paper is an attack on two central parts of the logical positivists' philosophy.
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Willard Van Orman Quine (June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000), usually cited as W.V. Quine or W.V.O. Quine but known to his friends as Van, was one of the most influential philosophers and logicians of the 20th century.
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Semantic holism is a doctrine in the philosophy of language to the effect that a certain part of language, be it a term or a complete sentence, can only be understood through its relations to a (previously understood) larger segment of language.
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The private language argument is a philosophical argument said to be found in Ludwig Wittgenstein's later work, especially in Philosophical Investigations. The argument was central to philosophical discussion at the end of the last century, and continues to arouse interest.
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Sir Anthony John Patrick Kenny FBA (born Liverpool, 16 March 1931) is an English philosopher whose interests lie in the philosophy of mind, ancient and scholastic philosophy, the philosophy of Wittgenstein and the philosophy of religion.
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In philosophy, constructive empiricism is a form of empiricism. Bas C. van Fraassen is nearly solely responsible for the initial development of constructive empiricism; its historically most important presentation appears in The Scientific Image (1980).
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