[In the following I'll take the words 'verifiability' and 'testability' as synonyms.]
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It's
strange (prima facie strange, at least) that in a
philosophical world (circa the 1920s to the late 1940s) in
which metalinguistic statements and meta-languages (along with other
higher-order techniques) were so popular that the verificationist
principle (as well as Popper's falsificationism) came in for so much
criticism.
In
any case, there are many and various versions of Verification
Principle, each of lesser or greater degrees of detail. However, I'll
use the following simple expression of it. Thus:
“Every statement
must be testable/verifiable or tautological in order to be
meaningful.”
Of
course we can now ask:
What about this very
statement? Is that testable/verifiable or tautological?
It's
almost obvious that the verificationist statement was aimed at
statements which refer to the world. If that wasn't the case, then
why would verificationists have talked about ‘evidence’,
‘testability’ and ‘verification’ in the first place?
Clearly
“Every statement
must be testable/verifiable or tautological in order to be
meaningful.”
is
not itself a reference to the world as such (even if it's taken to be
either false or normative). The expression itself can be said to be
in the world. (Where else could it be?) Nonetheless, it may
have the status of expressing an abstract entity that isn't in the
world. In that case, it's an abstract entity (expressed
linguistically in space and time) about other entities (i.e., what
all other statements refer to). These other entities, on the other
hand, purport to refer to the world or are tautological. This isn't
the case with the verification/testability statement. Clearly, then,
it's not testable or verifiable in the way in which statements about
the world are testable or verifiable. It's of a different logical
order. That much can be granted. (Though if that much is indeed
granted, then so many more statements can be
granted – as it were - a special status.)
The
testability principle is a statement. Therefore, on first glance, it
must refer to itself; primarily because of the quantifier “every”
at the beginning. It states that every statement must be
verifiable/testable or tautological. Therefore it must also be
verifiable/testable or tautological. The statement can, of course,
be taken normatively. In that case, it may not be correct to call it
a “statement” in the first place (see later).
There’s
a simple way out of this. Take this reformulation:
Every statement about
the world must be testable/verifiable or tautological if it's to be
deemed meaningful.
Now
the above can be taken to be a linguistic expression of an abstract
content/proposition (i.e., that's not strictly speaking in the world
or a reference to the world). It's not, therefore, a reference to
things/events/conditions/etc. which are in the world (i.e., the statements
themselves).
Thus
the verificationist statement doesn't refer to the world; though the
statements it refers to do refer to the world.
We
can now have another formulation:
The testability
statement expresses an abstract entity (i.e., it can be taken
propositionally) which refers to entities (i.e., statements) which
refer to the world.
It
follows that the verificationist statement (at least on the reading
so far given) needn't necessarily be verifiable/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. 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
testability principle states that meaningful statements must either be
testable/ verifiable or tautological in nature. This “must” can be taken
normatively or modally. If taken normatively, then the word “must”
can also be replaced by the word “should”. (This would make its
normative character clearer.) If “must” is taken logically, on
the other hand, then the testability meta-statement is claiming that
all statements about the world are either testable/verifiable or
tautological otherwise they're meaningless. It can also be a modal
claim about meaningful world-directed statements at all possible
worlds.
In
a sense, then, the modal and normative character of the testability
statement can't be clearly disentangled. That is, if it's the case
that all meaningful statements which refer to the world are testable
or verifiable, then the verificationist can also say that they should
be testable or verifiable (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 that also includes a modal claim about world-directed statements
in all possible cases or situations.
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Finally,
even if the Verification Principle isn't “self-referentially
self-refuting” (as it's often put), that doesn't automatically mean
that there aren't other things wrong with it.
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