verifiability principle

English - English

Definition of verifiability principle in English English dictionary: The principle, especially in 20th-century empiricism, that a statement has meaning if, and only if, either it can be verified by means of empirical observations or it is logically true by definition
Carnap, for example, invoked the verifiability principle to argue that the problem of the external world was a 'pseudo-problem'—for neither the proposition 'there is an external world' nor its negation is verifiable in experience, so both are meaningless.; Criterion of meaningfulness associated with logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. Moritz Schlick's formulation "The meaning of a [declarative sentence] is the method of its verification" was close to the view held in pragmatism, and later in operationalism, that an assertion has factual meaning only if there is a difference in principle, open to test by observation, between the affirmation and the denial of the assertion. Thus, the statements of ethics, metaphysics, religion, and aesthetics were held to be meaningless. The verifiability criterion of meaningfulness was in part inspired by Albert Einstein's abandonment of the ether hypothesis and the notion of absolute simultaneity
principle of verifiability: Alternative name of verifiability principle