It’s strange that in a philosophical world (circa the 1920s to the late 1940s) in which metalinguistic statements, metalanguages and other higher-order techniques were so popular that the Verificationist Principle (as well as Karl Popper’s falsificationism) came in for so much criticism. And from then on, of course, the Verification Principle’s ostensible self-refuting nature is usually the first thing that many people say about it. (Many people say it about logical positivism itself.)
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There are many and various versions of Verification Principle, each of lesser or greater degrees of detail. That said, I’ll cite the following simple expression of it. Thus:
“Every statement must be either verifiable or tautological in order to be meaningful.”
Of course we can now ask:
What about that very statement? Is is either verifiable or tautological?
Isn’t it (almost) obvious that the verificationist statement is aimed at statements which (to put it broadly) refer to the world? If that wasn’t the case, then why did verificationists talk about such things as “evidence”, “testability” and “verification” in the first place? Yet if the Verification Principe is a statement about other statements (i.e., not a statement about the world), then is it at all apt to ask for a verification of the Principle itself?
It now needs to be said that the word “world” is being used very broadly here. It’s simply meant in the sense of statements that are about — or refer to — phenomena which aren’t themselves other statements. And that includes statements about physical reality, metaphysical reality, “abstract reality” or whatever.
To repeat: clearly the sentence
“Every statement must be either verifiable or tautological in order to be meaningful.”
is not itself a statement about the world. Of course the linguistic expression above can be said to be in the world. (Where else could it be?) Yet it’s not about the world — it’s about other statements which are about (or refer to) the world. Again, linguistically- or vocally-expressed statements about the world are in the world too… That’s unless one is referring to the abstract propositions which are believed — by some philosophers — to be their “content”. In that case, then, the linguistic expression of the Verification Principle itself may have the status of expressing an abstract entity that isn’t in the world — i.e., it is abstract. In that case, it’s an abstract entity (that’s also expressed linguistically in space and time) about other statements which refer to — or are about — the world.
Clearly, then, the Verificationist Statement is not verifiable in the way in which statements about the world are verifiable. It’s of an entirely different logical order.
[It must be said here that if that much is granted, then perhaps many more statements can be given such a — as it were — special status.]
Take also the Testability Principle and the following expression of it:
“A hypothesis is testable if there is a possibility of deciding whether it is true or false based on experimentation by anyone.”
Now the above is strictly a scientific doctrine. Thus it’s not really meant to be applicable across the board; or applicable to, more relevantly, philosophical statements (as, arguably, the Verification Principle is). Nonetheless, let’s express it as a general principle:
Every statement about the world must be either testable or tautological if it is to be deemed meaningful.
On first glance, the statement directly above must refer to itself — primarily because of the quantifier “every” at the beginning. That is, it states that every statement must be either testable or tautological. Therefore it too must be either testable or tautological. However, the statement (or principle) can be taken normatively. In that case, it may not be correct to call it a “statement” at all. And that’s because it’s not evaluable in terms of truth or falsity in the first place (see later).
Take the formulation again:
Every statement about the world must be either testable or tautological if it is to be deemed meaningful.
Now the above can be taken to be a linguistic expression of an abstract content or proposition (i.e., that’s not strictly speaking in the world or about the world). It’s not, therefore, a reference to things/events/conditions/etc. which are in the world. Thus the testability statement doesn’t refer to the world; though the statements it refers to do refer to the world.
So here’s another formulation:
The testability statement expresses an abstract entity (i.e., it can be taken propositionally) which is about statements which refer to the world.
It follows that the testability statement (at least on the reading so far given) needn’t necessarily be either testable or tautological. We could see it, instead, in various other ways. It could be a normative, stipulative, prescriptive, foundational, axiomatic or simply a higher-order statement. Of course whether any of these possibilities are workable or acceptable is another matter. Nevertheless, the testability statement is certainly of a different logical order than statements which refer to the world.
The Normative and Modal ‘Must’
The Verification and Testability Principles state that meaningful statements must either be testable/verifiable or tautological in nature.
Now the word “must” can be taken normatively or modally (see here).
If the word “must” is taken normatively, then it can also be replaced by the word “should”. (This would make its normative character clearer.) If the word “must” is taken logically, on the other hand, then the testability/verificationist metastatement is claiming that all statements about the world are (or should be) either testable/verifiable or tautological otherwise they’re meaningless. It can also be a modal claim about world-directed statements.
In a sense, then, the modal and/or normative character of the Testability and Verifiability Statements can’t be clearly disentangled. That is, if it’s the case that all meaningful statements which refer to the world are either testable or verifiable, then the verificationist can (or should) also say that they should be either testable or verifiable (i.e., in order to be genuine statements about the world). The normative “must” (or “should”) is therefore born of the modal “must”. Or, more clearly, the normative “must” (or “should”) is born of the modal property must necessarily be the case.
Of course what’s necessarily the case doesn’t depend on what should necessarily be the case (or even on what simply should be the case). However, we’re talking about both a normative statement and a statement which also includes a modal claim about world-directed statements in all possible cases or situations.
Finally, even if the Verification and Testability Principles aren’t actually (as it’s often put) “self-referentially self-refuting”, then that doesn’t automatically mean that there aren’t other things wrong with them.
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