Verificationism 411(synthetic or empirical) statement is given by its meth-od of verification. A sentence, as used on a givenoccasion to make a (synthetic or empirical) statement,

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VerificationismM Beaney, University of York, York, UK

2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Verificationism is the view that the meaning of aas meaning if and only if its truth or falsity can inrinciple be determined by experience. Verification-m was the central doctrine of logical positivismlso called logical empiricism), a movement that

riginated in the work of the Vienna circle in therly 1930s and received its classic statement in A. J.

yers Language, truth and logic (1936). Althoughbject to devastating criticism in the 1940s and

950s, the motivation behind verificationism hasntinued to influence philosophers ever since, most

otably, in the work of W. V. O. Quine and Michaelummett. Indeed, the basic positivist impulse toject anything that is not grounded in sensory expe-ence goes back at least to David Hume, and haseen a significant feature of the philosophical land-ape throughout the modern era. Humes famousords at the very end of his Enquiry concerninguman understanding are often taken as the definitiveatement of the underlying positivist view:

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or schoolmetaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain anyabstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No.Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerningmatter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to theflames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry andillusion.

The repudiation of metaphysics was characteristic oflogical positivism, too, and this was rooted in theViberg A (2001). The verbs of perception. In HaspelmathM, Konig E & Oesterreicher W (eds.) Language typologyand language universals: an international handbook.Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. 12941309.

Vossen P (ed.) (1999). EuroWordNet: a multlingualdatabase with lexical semantic networks for Europeanlanguages. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Relevant Websites

http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu The English version ofWordNet.

http://www.globalwordnet.org/ Information about Word-Nets for other languages.

http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~framenet/ The FrameNetdatabase.The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction

Central to logical positivism was the distinctionbetween analytic and synthetic statements corresponding to Humes distinction (implicit in thepassage just quoted) between relations of ideas andmatters of fact. According to the logical positivists, astatement is analytic if and only if its truth or falsity isdetermined solely by the meaning of its constituentterms. All bachelors are unmarried men, for exam-ple, was seen as true in virtue of the meaning of theterm bachelor. Analytic truths were regarded as bothnecessary and a priori. Their necessity was seen to liein their tautological nature, a view that the logicalpositivists took from Ludwig Wittgenstein. Since, ontheir account, analytic truths could be judged to betrue merely by knowing their meaning withoutneeding to consult the world in any way they werealso regarded as a priori truths.

A statement was seen as synthetic, on the otherhand, if it is not analytic, and synthetic truths were

In A. J. Ayers work, however, influenced by Russell

412 Verificationismand the British empiricists, observation statementswere construed as statements about sense data, andmaterial objects and indeed, other minds were seenas logical constructions out of them. The project oflogical construction was all the rage among analyticphilosophers in the early 1930s (see especiallyWisdom, 19311933), but it gradually became clearjust what difficulties it faced. (For a critique, see, e.g.,Urmson, 1962, ch. 10, and more recently, Soames,2003, I, ch. 7.) More fundamentally, the whole appealto sense data proved problematic, as the very idea ofsense data came under increasing fire in the years thatfollowed. (See especially Austin, 1962, and the essaysin section II of Swartz, 1965.)regarded as both contingent and a posteriori. It wasin explaining synthetic statements that the doctrine ofverificationism was formulated. According to thisdoctrine, the meaning of such a statement lies in itsmethod of verification. A statement is meaningful ifand only if its truth or falsity can in principle bedetermined by experience, that is, be derived insome specified way from the truth of one or moreobservation statements statements that record thedirect result of an observation. This characterizationimmediately raises two questions. What exactly is therelationship between the statement whose truth-valueis to be determined and the observation statements?And what exactly is an observation statement?

Observation Statements

Let us take the latter question first. There was muchdebate among the members of the Vienna circle in the1920s and 1930s about the foundations of empiricalknowledge and the correct form that observationstatements or protocol sentences, as they werecalled should take. In his Aufbau of 1928, influ-enced by Bertrand Russells appeal to sense data inOur knowledge of the external world (1914), RudolfCarnap sketched a reconstruction of our empiricalknowledge on a phenomenalistic base. But he alsooffered the possibility of a physicalistic reduction,reflecting his rejection of the idea that there isany privileged ontology. (Cf. Beaney, 2004: x 4.)Despite this, however, a physicalist language soonbecame seen as the preferred form in which theprotocol sentences were to be expressed, althoughdebate raged about the relations between the physicaland the psychological, and indeed, about the veryidea of a foundation. (See, e.g., Carnap, 1932/1933; Neurath, 1932/1933; Schlick, 1934; Ayer,1936/1937. For an excellent account of the debate,see Uebel, 1992.)Strong Verification and StrongFalsification

This might suggest that we should talk not of verifi-ability but of falsifiability (as Karl Popper was tourge). A statement S is strongly falsifiable, we mightthen say, if and only if there is some set of observationstatements which logically entail not-S. Saying thata statement is meaningful if and only if it is stronglyfalsifiable legitimizes universal generalizations, sinceit only takes one observation statement as a counter-example to falsify a universal generalization. How-ever, we are then faced with the correspondingproblem of existential statements, such as There isat least one A that is not a B (the contradictory of AllAs are B). Finding an A that is not a B may verify thisstatement, but no observation statement could falsifyit. Finding an A that is a B neither verifies nor falsifiesit. To falsify it we need to be sure that all As are B, butas we have just seen, this is not entailed by any set ofobservation statements that we may have made up tonow.

The obvious response to both these problems is to saythat a statement is meaningful if and only if it is eitherstrongly verifiable or strongly falsifiable. But this, too,faces problems. First, there are statements involvingmore complex or different kinds of quantification,Strong Verification

Problems arose, then, about the nature of observationstatements. But even if we leave these aside, and as-sume that there is a legitimate class of observationstatements, such as expressed by sentences of the formThe A in front of me is a B, there remains the questionof specifying the relationship between the syntheticstatement whose truth-value is to be determined andthe observation statements. The relationship was seenas one of verification. But what is it to verify a state-ment? A distinction came to be drawn between strongand weak verification. In the strong sense, a statementis verifiable if and only if, as Ayer put it, its truth couldbe conclusively established in experience (1946: 12).More precisely, the notion might be defined as follows:a statement S is strongly verifiable if and only if thereis some set of observation statements which logicallyentail S. The obvious problem with this, however, isthat universal generalizations cannot be strongly veri-fied, since no (finite) set of observation statements,A1 is B, A2 is B, . . . An is B, entails All As are B.Even if all the As that we have so far experienced havebeen B, there remains the possibility that the next Aweexperience will not be a B. Yet many universal general-izations are clearly meaningful, so we cannot acceptstrong verifiability as the criterion for meaningfulness.

Verificationism 413such as those expressed by sentences of the form Forevery A, there is a B to which it is R-related andMost As are B. Although many of these statementsare meaningful, they, too, are neither strongly verifi-able nor strongly falsifiable. Second, there are allsorts of statements that scientists make, positing theexistence of unobservable things such as electrons,charge, and gravity, whose truth-value cannot be sim-ply deduced from any set of observation statements.Rather, their justification lies in the explanationthat they offer of observable events. Talk of strongverification and falsification does not do justice to afundamental method of science inference to the bestexplanation (cf. Soames, 2003, I: 280282).

Weak Verification

The only answer is to retreat to a weaker notion ofverification. In the weak sense, a statement is verifi-able (and hence meaningful) if and only if, as Ayer putit, it is possible for experience to render it probable(1946: 12). Instead of seeing the important relation asdeducibility from observation statements to the state-ment to be verified, the focus now is on deducibilityfrom the statement to be verified to observation state-ments (which, if true, lend it empirical support).Ayers initial attempt at a definition may be formu-lated as follows: a synthetic statement S is weaklyverifiable (and hence meaningful) if and only if S,either by itself or in conjunction with certain otherpremises, logically entails some observation state-ment O that is not entailed by those other premisesalone. (Cf. Ayer, 1946: 15; Soames, 2003, I: 283.) Onthis definition universal generalizations, existentialstatements, more complex quantified statements, aswell as hypothesized scientific explanations of ob-servable events, all come out as meaningful, sinceobservation statements can be deduced from them.

However, as it stands, this definition has the resultthat all statements come out as meaningful. For con-sider taking the single additional premise, If S thenO. From S and If S then O, O clearly follows,without following from If S then O alone. So thenotion of verification formulated here is far too weak:the definition is satisfied by any statement whatever.In response, Ayer distinguished between direct andindirect verifiability, restricted what other premisesare allowed, and formulated a more complex defini-tion. (Cf. Ayer, 1946: 1518.) But this too has beenfound to generate similar problems, with suitablechoice of additional premises; and alternative formu-lations have also been found to be open to objections.(Cf. Church, 1949; Hempel, 1950; Soames, 2003, I:284291. But for a recent attempt at reformulation,see Wright, 1993, ch. 10.)The Influence of Verificationism

If an adequate notion of verification cannot be for-mulated, then it undermines its role in a critiqueof metaphysics. One of its purposes had been to dis-tinguish legitimate scientific statements from mean-ingless metaphysical statements exemplified for thelogical positivists in Heideggers famous remarkthat Nothingness itself nothings (Das Nichts selbstnichtet) (cf. Carnap, 1932: x 5; Friedman, 2000:ch. 2). But it might well be argued that claims aboutthe doctrine of verification itself are metaphysicalstatements whose status would be threatened if thedoctrine were actually correct. Nevertheless, preciseformulations aside, the general idea of verificationhas had enormous influence on subsequent philoso-phers. According to some, such as Carl Hempeland Quine, what was wrong was the focus on indi-vidual statements. Instead, they suggested, influencedby Pierre Duhem (1906), it is whole systems of state-ments that scientists seek to verify in their empiricalactivities. What has come to be called the Duhem-Quine thesis, that a scientific hypothesis cannot betested in isolation, indicates the shift that there hassince been from atomistic to holistic conceptions ofverification. In the case of Quine, this was famouslyaccompanied by rejection of the analytic/syntheticdistinction that lay at the basis of logical positivism(Quine, 1951). But this rejection was only intended topurge empiricism of untenable doctrines, not to repu-diate empiricism altogether. For Quine, philosophyand science are continuous, and even analytic state-ments are subject to revision in the light of empiricalresearch.

Other philosophers who were also broadly sympa-thetic to verificationism took different approaches. InDummetts work, for example, in which holism isrejected (cf. 1991: ch. 10), the concern has been todevelop a systematically articulated theory of mean-ing based on the notion of assertion-conditions ratherthan on the classical notion of truth-conditions.A verificationist rather than traditional conception oftruth lies at the heart of Dummetts project, and he hasseen in mathematical intuitionism the model for asemantics based on verificationist truth. Dummetthas been led to reformulate many traditional debates,such as those concerning our knowledge of the pastand future, in terms of the opposition between realismand antirealism, a reformulation clearly influenced bythe verificationism of the logical positivists. (See, forexample, Dummett, 1993, which starts by payinghomage to Ayer. Cf. also Wright, 1993: chs. 910.)Despite the flaws in its original articulation, then,verificationism remains an active thoughcontroversial force in contemporary philosophy.

See also: Analytic/Synthetic, Necessary/Contingent, and apriori/a posteriori; Empiricism; Holism, Semantic and Epi-stemic; Limits of Language; Meaning: Overview of Philo-

sophical Theories; Realism and Antirealism; Truth:

Theories of in Philosophy.

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is being referred to, and the possibility that the vari-eties referred to as vernacular will be undervaluedby both the speakers of the dominant language andspeakers of these language varieties themselves.

Within the field of sociolinguistics, there are atleast two distinct uses of this term. The first sense ofthis term in sociolinguistics is exemplified by Poplack(1993), which defines vernacular as the relatively

VerificationismIntroductionThe Analytic/Synthetic DistinctionObservation StatementsStrong VerificationStrong Verification and Strong FalsificationWeak VerificationThe Influence of VerificationismBibliography