Verification

Verification

1. Criticisms

   • Verificationism is self-defeating as it cannot itself be verified by empirical observation. Some positivists argue for another class of protocol statments (statements of method) in which the verification principle falls, though this undermines the initial belief that there were only two types of verifiable proposition
   • John Hick: religious claims can be verified eschatologically
   • Uses example of toys which stay in a toy cupboard whilst people are asleep and nobody is watching. These then get up and dance, returning to their cupboard without being seen. This is unverifiable but meaningful
     • Difficulty is that we can have an understanding of the meaning of individual words but the sentence as a whole may be meaningless
     • Another problem emerges: we can understand 'toy' and 'cupboard' but God is not a sense experience in any ordinary way
   • Surely God-talk can be empirically verified through the teleological argument, religious experiences, etc.?
   • Something can be meaningful but unverifiiable. For example, take Schrodinger's cat. It is a factually significant question to ask whether it is dead or alive, but it cannot be verified
   • Committed to a form of foundationalism, the view that there is a foundation from which we can assert what is and isn't meaningful. Verification principle can only be defended by assertion. Conditions for justification must either be analytic or synthetic and it becomes question-begging
   • It assumes that science alone which tell us about the world. However, poetry reveals to us aspects of the world it alone can express. music and art are revelatory. But these are rarely cognitive or verifiable scientific statements
   • Vincent Brummer: we make an error in treating religious statements like scientific ones. Just as the methods of scientific analysis are inappropriate for poetry, so too are they for religion. To assume science is the best way is not self-evidently true

2. A. J. Ayer

   • Principle of Verifiability
     • 'We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express'
       • Metaphysical, aesthetic, ethical and theological propositions are not verifiable and so all previous work is the 'production of nonsense'.
       • 'God-talk' is nonsense, since saying 'God exists' is like saying 'flabododo exists'. Atheists also talk nonsense, since they are effectively saying 'flobododo does not exist'
     • Verifiable in practice; statements that can be tested in reality
     • Verifiable in principle: could be verified given appropriate means. E.g., Ayer uses example of mountains on the far side of the moon. We would be able to verify this given the technology
     • Strong verification: A putative proposition can be conclusively established in experience This form of verification is impossible since our sense can be mistaken and this would mean historical statements and general conclusions about science are unverifiable
     • Weak verification: A putative proposition can be shown to be probable and can have conditions set for its verification.
     • Influenced by Hume and Wittgenstein
   • Emotivism
     • There are only two types of statement: analytic and synthetic. Ethical statements do not fit into either of these, and so are meaningless
     • There is no additional factual content. 'You were wrong to steal that money' is essentially saying 'you stole that money' in a disapproving way
     • Moral statements are just saying 'boo to this' and 'Hurrah to that' and that we prescribe this to others
     • Ethical statements cannot be verified
   • Language, Truth and Logic: Second Edition
     • Maintained that weak verification principle is too liberal since it allowed any statement whatsoever. Also rejects his initial distinction since strong verification refers to an empty class of statements.
     • Direct verification: a proposition verifiable by observation, or deducible from a set of observations
     • Indirect verification: a statement, taken in conjunction with other premises, must entail a directly verifiable statement. E.g., establishing the existence of black holes
     • Argued that there were certain basic statements, a statement which is the basic justification for further observation sentences. This is foundationalism

3. The Vienna Circle

   • Founded as a result of discussions between Otto Neurath (sociologist), Hans Hahn (mathematician) and Phillip Frank (physicist). Flourishing came in 1922 when Moritz Shlick assumed leadership. Circle were interested in new developments in logic from Frege, Russell, Whitehead and Wittgenstein
   • Based on a reaction to Hegelian philosophy. This argued that everything in the world ultimately formed part of a spiritual reality. Hegel view history as progressive and was the dominant theory in European thought
   • Logical positivists offered no worldview of their own and argued it was not the philosopher's business to say anything about the world or entertain Hegel's ideas. Information about the world should be provided by scientists
   • Logical positivists viewed their role as sorting various propositions into those worthy of investigation and those that are meaningless, no more than nonsense. They held that only analytic and synthetic propositions were meaningful

4. Rudolf Carnap

   • Rejected metaphysics as meaningless because the could be neither proved nor disproved by experience
   • Many philosophical problems are pseudo-problems, the outcome of a misuse of language
   • Argued that the primary purpose of philosophy is the logical analysis of statements. This should be done with artificial languages since these are unambiguous