This document discusses verificationism and positivism. Some key points: - Verificationism uses the verification principle as a criterion for meaningful statements - a statement is meaningful if it is potentially verifiable through experiences or observations. - Verificationism connects the meaning of statements to epistemology by linking meaning to what can be verified. However, not all language functions are determined by verifiability. - Analytic statements are true by definition of their terms, while synthetic statements are empirically verified. Verificationism has difficulty accounting for non-descriptive language uses. - Quine later launched an attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction, arguing that the whole of language and science determines meaning.

1. Verificationism-Positivism
Foundations of Language
Eliza Kitis
ekitis@enl.auth.gr
http://www.enl.auth.gr/staff/findex.htm

2. What does it mean?
1. Blaglet cosit gluglest.
(1) must make a difference in the future, in our
experiences, if meaningful. This will happen if
it’s true or false.
For something to be false, it must also be
potentially true. This means being meaningful.
So, t/f meaningful
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Eliza Kitis

3. Verification Principle
• The Verification Principle is used as a criterion
of meaningfulness.
• Verification condition: the set of possible
worlds (experiences) in which a sentence is t.
• Proper grammar and semantic structure won’t
make sentence meaningful.
• This excludes a great deal of psychotic speech
(thinking).
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Eliza Kitis

4. Verificational maxims
• Verification theory is an epistemic account of
meaning.
• Verification theory connects meaning to
epistemology.
• But there are some sentences (positivists
claimed) that are not empirically/epistemically
based and explained.
• If you’ve eaten it all up, you’ve eaten it all up.
• Bachelors are unmarried.
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Eliza Kitis

5. Analytic ≠ Synthetic
Analytic
• Distinction Leibniz: analytic: truths of reason,
synthetic: truths of fact. (Kant, Hume)
• Some sentences are true on account of their
meanings.
• They are not empirically predictable.
• They’re true whatever (in all possible worlds).
• They’re compositional, their truth dependent
on the compositionality of their constituents.
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Eliza Kitis

6. Analytic≠Synthetic
Synthetic
• All sentences that are empirical predictions.
• And can be true or false.
• They are determined by the verification condition
or the falsification condition.
– The White Tower is in Thessaloniki.
– It is snowing (now, here?)
• Non-analytic knowledge is based on experience.
• Synthetic sentences are ascertained by
observation.
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7. Problems
• This theory treats only descriptive statements.
• What about other functions in language?
– Asking, impering, joking, etc. All these functions
are not determined by the verification condition
(or falsification condition).
• Can it be extended to cover all these language
functions?
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8. Reply
• Meaning is restricted to empirical meaning.
• So, we talk of cognitive meaning, i.e., the
meaning of statements of facts.
• This type of account safeguards against
metaphysics (since it is based on good epistemicity).
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9. More problems
• It appears that for verifiability we first need to
know the meaning of words. How can I know
if ‘It’s raining now’ is t/f if I don’t know the
meaning of the word ‘rain’?
• Observation language is ultimately based on
experience of sense data.
• Sentence meaning can then be collapsed to
observational evidence.
• If linguistic meaning is anything it’s got to be a
function of evidential support
Eliza Kitis 9

10. Quine’s lethal attack on logical positivism
• Attacks analytic-synthetic distinction, ‘cos it
depends on meaning.
• But what is meaning?
• Surely, not the Fregean meaning of reference.
• “The unit of empirical significance is the
whole of science.” (Dogmas 345)
• Semantic holism
• The whole language may be the meaning-
affording context. (pdf in course documents)
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11. Grice & Strawson’s (1956) counterattack
1. My neighbour’s 3-yr-old child understands
Russell’s ‘Denoting’.
2. My neighbour’s 3-yr-old child is an adult.
(1) Can be proved in principle (a child prodigy?)
(2) Cannot be true in any possible world
Except if we understand ‘adult’ in a distinct ad hoc
way (e.g., as meaning ‘mature’). (pdf in course documents)
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