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Testability and Meaning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap*
Affiliation:
Cambridge, Mass.
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Extract

Two chief problems of the theory of knowledge are the question of meaning and the question of verification. The first question asks under what conditions a sentence has meaning, in the sense of cognitive, factual meaning. The second one asks how we get to know something, how we can find out whether a given sentence is true or false. The second question presupposes the first one. Obviously we must understand a sentence, i.e. we must know its meaning, before we can try to find out whether it is true or not. But, from the point of view of empiricism, there is a still closer connection between the two problems. In a certain sense, there is only one answer to the two questions. If we knew what it would be for a given sentence to be found true then we would know what its meaning is. And if for two sentences the conditions under which we would have to take them as true are the same, then they have the same meaning. Thus the meaning of a sentence is in a certain sense identical with the way we determine its truth or falsehood; and a sentence has meaning only if such a determination is possible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , October 1936 , pp. 419 - 471
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1936

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References

1 Wittgenstein [1].

2 I use this geographical designation because of lack of a suitable name for the movement itself represented by this Circle. It has sometimes been called Logical Positivism, but I am afraid this name suggests too close a dependence upon the older Positivists, especially Comte and Mach. We have indeed been influenced to a considerable degree by the historical positivism, especially in the earlier stage of our development. But today we would like a more general name for our movement, comprehending the groups in other countries which have developed related views (see: Congress [1], [2]). The term ‘Scientific Empiricism’ (proposed by Morris [1] p. 285) is perhaps suitable. In some historical remarks in the following, concerned chiefly with our original group I shall however use the term ‘Vienna Circle’.

3 Schlick [1] p. 150, and [4]; Waismann [1] p. 229.

4 Reichenbach [1] and earlier publications; [3].

5 Popper [1].

6 Lewis [2] has given the most detailed analysis and criticism of the requirement of verifiability.

7 Nagel [1].

8 Stace [1].

9 Schlick [4].

10 Comp.: Erkenntnis 2, p. 461.

11 Comp.: Carnap [6] p. 32, 34.

12 Comp.: Carnap [4] §45.—About the indefinite character of the concepts ‘analytic’ and ‘contradictory’ comp.: Carnap [7] p. 163, or: [4b] §34a and 34d.

13 “Erschüttert,” Neurath [6].

14 Popper [1].

15 Lewis [2] p. 137, note 12: “No verification of the kind of knowledge commonly stated in propositions is ever absolutely complete and final.”

16 Nagel [1] p. 144f.

17 Reichenbach [1].

18 Lewis [2] p. 133.

19 Reichenbach [2] p. 271 ff.; [3] p. 154 ff.

20 Popper [1] Chapter VIII; for the conventional nature of the problem compare my remark in “Erkenntnis” vol. 5, p. 292.

21 Lewis [2], especially p. 133.

22 Morris [1], [2].

23 Here I can give no more than some rough indications concerning the material and the formal idioms. For detailed explanations compare Carnap [4]. Ch. V. A shorter and more easily understandable exposition is contained in [5] p. 85–88.—What I call the formal and the material idioms or modes of speech, is not the same as what Morris ([1], p. 8) calls the formal and the empirical modes of speech. To Morris's empirical mode belong what I call the real object-sentences; and these belong neither to the formal nor to the material mode in my sense (comp. Carnap [4], §74, and [5], p. 61). The distinction between the formal and the material idioms does not concern the usual sentences of science but chiefly those of philosophy, especially those of epistemology or methodology.

24 Lewis [2], p. 127–128.

25 Lewis [2], p. 138.

26 For more exact explanations of these terms see Carnap [4]; some of them are explained also in [5].

27 Compare Hilbert [1] p. 13.

28 In contradistinction to the term ‘atomic sentence’ or ‘elementary sentence’ as used by Russell or Wittgenstein.

29 Carnap [4] §51.

30 Compare Carnap [4] §59.

31 Compare Hilbert [1] p. 13; Carnap [4b] §34b, RR 2.

32 Comp. Neurath [1], [2], [3]; Carnap [2], [8].

33 Compare Carnap [4] §3.