Abstract
As my title implies, I think the verifiability criterion is indeed a criterion of something. I do not intend, therefore, merely to commemorate it. On the other hand I am not sure that those who put it forward in its more liberal forms as a criterion of ‘factual significance’ or ‘literal meaningfulness’ were right in what they identified as the consequence of a sentence’s failing to satisfy it. What I want to argue for, in a somewhat reductionist spirit, is a resurrected version of the ‘weak’ verifiability criterion. My resurrected version will certainly appear more rarefied, in so far as it is independent of (and does not therefore require to be embodied in) empiricism. It will, I hope, also be purified of some of the mortal blemishes from which the criterion, as construed by members of the Vienna Circle, seems not to have recovered.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
And were so dismissed, respectively, by A. J. Ayer (see Language, Truth and Logic, 2nd ed. (Gollancz, 1946) pp. 128 ff.) and
Moritz Schlick (see his paper, ‘Positivism and Realism’, Pt 3, trans. D. Rynin, in Logical Positivism, ed. Ayer (Free Press of Glencoe, 1959) pp. 92 f.).
For example, in C. G. Hempel’s paper, ‘Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning’, Revue Internationale de Philosophic (1950).
F. P. Ramsey, in his posthumously published The Foundations of Mathematics (1931)
See Schlick’s paper, ‘Die Kausalität der gegenwärtigen Physik’, Naturwissenschaft, XI (1931).
See Schlick’s Gesammelte Aufsätze, p. 153 ff., relevant parts of which are quoted in translation by Waismann in his The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy (Macmillan, 1965) ch. XV.
See Logic and Knowledge, ed. R. C. Marsh (Allen & Unwin, 1956) p. 376.
Modern British Philisophy, ed. Bryan Magee (Secker & Warburg, 1971) p. 56.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1976 Royal Institute of Philosophy
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Brown, S. (1976). What is the Verifiability Criterion a Criterion of?. In: Vesey, G. (eds) Impressions of Empiricism. Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02804-7_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02804-7_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-02806-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-02804-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)