X-Message-Number: 21268
From: 
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 12:17:03 EST
Subject: logical positivism

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The central tenet of logical positivism in its weak form is this:

"If a statement can be verified, or a question answered, by observation or 
experiment, then the statement or question is meaningful."

This is certainly useful. However, there is also a strong form of the tenet:

"If a statement cannot be verified, or a question answered, by observation or 
experiment, then the statement or question is not meaningful."

This is not always true, for reasons that ought to be fairly obvious and have 
been spelled out by many writers. For one thing, just as the meaning of a 
word may depend on context, the meaning of a sentence may depend on context, 
and the context is rarely made fully explicit. Further, the interpretation of 
observations or experiments is often uncertain. 

Robert Ettinger 

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