Verificationism

Verificationism, also known as the verification principle or the verifiability criterion of meaning, is the philosophical doctrine that only statements that are empirically verifiable (i.e. verifiable through the senses) are cognitively meaningful, or else they are truths of logic (tautologies). Verificationism, also known as the verification principle or the verifiability criterion of meaning, is the philosophical doctrine that only statements that are empirically verifiable (i.e. verifiable through the senses) are cognitively meaningful, or else they are truths of logic (tautologies). Verificationism thus rejects as cognitively 'meaningless' statements specific to entire fields such as metaphysics, theology, ethics and aesthetics. Such statements may be meaningful in influencing emotions or behavior, but not in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content. Verificationism was a central thesis of logical positivism, a movement in analytic philosophy that emerged in the 1920s by the efforts of a group of philosophers who sought to unify philosophy and science under a common naturalistic theory of knowledge. Although verificationist principles of a general sort—grounding scientific theory in some verifiable experience—are found retrospectively even with the American pragmatist C.S. Peirce and with the French conventionalist Pierre Duhem who fostered instrumentalism, the vigorous program termed verificationism was launched by the logical positivists who, emerging from Berlin Circle and Vienna Circle in the 1920s, sought epistemology whereby philosophical discourse would be, in their perception, as authoritative and meaningful as empirical science. Logical positivists garnered the verifiability criterion of cognitive meaningfulness from young Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of language posed in his 1921 book Tractatus, and, led by Bertrand Russell, sought to reformulate the analytic–synthetic distinction in a way that would reduce mathematics and logic to semantical conventions. This would be pivotal to verificationism, in that logic and mathematics would otherwise be classified as synthetic a priori knowledge and defined as 'meaningless' under verificationism. Seeking grounding in such empiricism as of David Hume, Auguste Comte, and Ernst Mach—along with the positivism of the latter two—they borrowed some perspectives from Immanuel Kant, and found the exemplar of science to be Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Logical positivists within the Vienna Circle recognized quickly that the verifiability criterion was too stringent. Notably, all universal generalizations are empirically unverifiable, such that, under verificationism, vast domains of science and reason, such as scientific hypothesis, would be rendered meaningless. Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Hans Hahn and Philipp Frank led a faction seeking to make the verifiability criterion more inclusive, beginning a movement they referred to as the 'liberalization of empiricism'. Moritz Schlick and Friedrich Waismann led a 'conservative wing' that maintained a strict verificationism. Whereas Schlick sought to reduce universal generalizations to frameworks of 'rules' from which verifiable statements can be derived, Hahn argued that the verifiability criterion should accede to less-than-conclusive verifiability. Among other ideas espoused by the liberalization movement were physicalism, over Mach's phenomenalism, coherentism over foundationalism, as well as pragmatism and fallibilism. In 1936, Carnap sought a switch from verification to confirmation. Carnap's confirmability criterion (confirmationism) would not require conclusive verification (thus accommodating for universal generalizations) but allow for partial testability to establish 'degrees of confirmation' on a probabilistic basis. Carnap never succeeded in formalizing his thesis despite employing abundant logical and mathematical tools for this purpose. In all of Carnap's formulations, a universal law's degree of confirmation is zero. That same year saw the publication of A. J. Ayer's work, Language, Truth and Logic, in which he proposed two types of verification: strong and weak. This system espoused conclusive verification, yet accommodated for probabilistic inclusion where verifiability is inconclusive. Ayer also distinguished between practical and theoretical verifiability. Under the latter, propositions that cannot be verified in practice would still be meaningful if they can be verified in principle.