The purpose of philosophy is to perform a critique of knowledge in order to eliminate all nonsensical propositions that claim to be cognitive. The philosopher must be able to use the language both for the relationship: reality-language and the ratio of the signs as they are linked together. More specifically, the clarification of the language, especially that of science, has two aspects: one syntactic , the other semantic. The first aspect, recovering atomism of Russell and Wittgenstein, is the study of how the propositions are linked to each other in order to preserve the truth value of the simple propositions that compose them. The second aspect concerns the study of the relationship between language and the world. If even for the first appearance every word can be clarified by the meaning of another word (respecting the syntax rules of logic) is also true that you have to avoid a vicious circle where the words are defined to each other without having any connection with the world. Terms and judgments must represent something. If you can not bring a sentence to something sensible, or directly by analyzing its components, then that statement is meaningless. The metaphysician, according to Neurath, prevents just to find connections of its terms with the world and simply defines them in a consistent manner within a system that does not exist except in the imagination.
Among the operations performed to achieve the end of eliminating nonsensical propositions is verificationism.
Essentially it pronounces a statement, added to a scientific theory, which can not be verified, it is not necessarily false, but basically meaningless because not demonstrated at the empirical evidence of the facts. There could be multiple statements inherently logical for all the explanation / interpretation of a certain phenomenon, of which, however, in principle only one by definition is true.
Verificationism, therefore, has the aim to find a connection between utterances and experience, that is, sensations that give meaning to them .This connection is called just checking or verification.
In particular verificationism is a cornerstone of the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, which had just among its basic principles the norm of verification, whose basic thesis can be summarized as follows:
The propositions with sense are those that can be verified empirically.
Science through the scientific method is the cognitive activity par excellence, since the truth of its propositions is based on this verificationist criterion.
The propositions of metaphysics are meaningless as they are based on illusory and unverifiable concepts. The propositions of metaphysics, says Carnap, express at most feelings or needs.
The valid propositions are, as the English empiricist Hume had claimed, the analytical ones, which express relationships between ideas (like mathematical propositions), and propositions that express facts (such as the propositions of physics).
Math, as well as logic, does not express anything of the world, it should not be empirically verified, but must serve to concatenate propositions among themselves ,with those verifiable and with sense to give them the character of generality that the contingent propositions lack.
At its base there is the idea that a belief or a sentence that does not have a chance to be put in connection with experience is illegitimate and meaningless. Nonsense does not mean false, rather that its value of truth can not be decided and then such a sentence can have no claim to be cognitive or a foundation of a scientific theory. It defines any statement that may be assigned a truth value (in the classical logic, true or false). A proposition for which it is not possible to attribute this value is therefore a statement devoid of verifiability and so, for this kind of epistemology, not with any sense, to be eliminated as a mere opinion or metaphysical proposition.
The propositions with sense are those that can be verified empirically.
Science through the scientific method is the cognitive activity par excellence, since the truth of its propositions is based on this verificationist criterion.
Bertrand Russell is considered especially significant for the verificationist program of logical positivism due to his atomistic theory of the relationship between language and the world. The neo-positivist Ayer put Russell among the protagonists of English empiricism.
Russell taught that among the task of the philosopher there is precisely to show how to justify our beliefs, that is, when they are equipped with sense, and his answer begins with those elements that are considered undoubted by anyone that can be said verificationist: data of experience. Russell believes, as Berkeley and Hume, that there is epistemological certainty only if supported by sense experience and that when there are suspicions about the meaning that can have a statement or a complex expression it means that inside there is some inference that must be inserted and analyzed.
The method of analysis of Russell wants to be a rigorous method to determine whether or not the assumptions are equipped with sense, so also to overcome the '' absolute empiricism. "His method says that if an object, A, is something of which we have direct knowledge, that sense experience, Bertrand Russell is considered especially important for the program of logical positivism verificationism for his atomic theory of the relationship between language and the world. The neo-positivist Ayer put Russell one of the protagonists of English empiricism.
To say that A has a meaning, one could show how to state A can be a logical construction which allows to deduce it by another object, such as B, of which – instead - we have empirical knowledge. When this construction is possible it can be said that A and B have the same factual content, and that knowledge of A is as certain as that of B, as well as the proposition that they assert or deny something. All our knowledge, Russell realizes, should comprise such constructions.
When you are faced with a statement whose meaning is obscure or not immediately verifiable, it will be sufficient to break down the sentence (parse) in the simplest propositions (atomistic) whose meaning will be experienced. It shows as well as the belief complex has the same factual content of a series of simple and verifiable beliefs directly.
As with Comte, in order to have a tool able to tell if an utterance is provided with sense or less comes to the aid logic, which has the aim to provide a set of symbols to manipulate the truth values of the individual propositions empirically verifiable. A proposition however complex and difficult for this attemptable clearly in its immediate meaning, it can therefore always be decomposed (analysis) in the simplest propositions whose truth value can be verified and reassembled through the logical symbols.
Some positivists noted that the principle of verifiability makes some judgments metaphysical, such as "The soul is immortal." Indeed, there is a method of verification and it is simply ‘wait a while and die’. To avoid that, statements of this type can be prepared with sense, it is processed a stronger version of the principle of verifiability. This states that a judgment has meaning only because it can be shown definitively true or false; i.e. it must give a proof that can show the truth value. This is because of the fact that strong version excludes everyone can desire any knowledge that is not empirical and logical and so maybe prevent a way to any expression that is not the result of empirical knowledge or logical deduction derived from empirical propositions. This version of verificationism meet criticism by some positivists less radical, as Neurath and Carnap, for the simple fact that if to make sense of a proposition it is necessary verification, the principle of verifiability itself must be verified, and this is not possible.
The principle of strong verification, according to other logical positivism, for example expressed by Neurath, does not seem to satisfy verificationism and in particular that common sense of truth which neo-positivism held in high regard. First, pursuing this version of the standard, each unscientific speech must be rejected as a meaningless discourse (hence any moral discourse, for example). Also numerous propositions commonly used, whose meaning seems clear to the terms that we use, are unverifiable as statements that express the past or the future, such as Churchill sneezed 47 times in 1949 or "Tomorrow it rains." These propositions can, in principle, not be verified, then it can be provided a method for the verification and for the principle of verifiability (weak version) are equipped with meaning, but not for the strong version; they are only of nonsense, for example as far as the sneezing of 1949 or "Tomorrow it rains" are concerned. But the most obvious logical problem, the paradox is that the principle of verification seems to violate the same rule that imposes: it originates without the verification as it is neither an analytic proposition (whose truth is implied by itself, as a proposition of type "the triangle has three sides"), or synthetic, that is deductible from experience. Paradoxically, even the principle of verification, at least in its strong version appears to be a metaphysical principle. To quote Popper, the principle of verification ends up looking like a dogma of empiricism not empirical, as a metaphysical belief embraced by ‘anti-metaphysical’ philosophers.
Perhaps, the criticism more famous to the principle of verifiability came from the same Popper. He, being also the main official opponent as Neurath says, does not abandon the convictions of the manifesto and the positivist idea that science has a rational and deductive structure, though describable in ways other than those assumed by Schlick. In particular the principle of verification, weak and strong version, is abolished and replaced with that of falsifiability. This principle is in fact an admission of the impossibility of science to arrive at statements that they claim to be checked as they are, and also it condemned the principle of induction when it asserts to provide a basis for the formulation of necessary laws.
The metaphysical statements differ from those of empirical nature because they can not be falsified, and therefore can not be objects of science, but not for this are not equipped with meaning.. A metaphysical assertion we know very well what it means and whether science can not be it, it can be guide or at least inspiration. Many theories of the past, even metaphysical, have inspired and then – with the growth of background knowledge - have been admitted in science (see E. Morin, ‘Knowledge of knowledge’, 1986 as reported by Wikipedia).
@Tucci
The situation gets complicated when you consider that certain statements of, for example, religion and mathematics are in principle verifiable but not falsifiable:
1. There is an afterlife. (‘wait a while and die’)
2. There are 7 consecutive 7s in the decimal expansion of pi.
Note: "The soul is immortal" is neither verifiable (mere survival after bodily death doesn't establish infinite duration) nor falisifiable.
That is a very long question!
what experiences allow testing?
I would say that the experiences must be repeatable and reproducible.
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