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On the Nature of the Predicate, ‘Verified’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Everett W. Hall
Everett W. Hall*
Affiliation:
State University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
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Extract

Although a great deal has been written concerning the verifiability of empirical, declarative sentences, yet some further clarification in this area seems possible and desirable. I think it is important to determine what sort of property ‘verified by’ is. Obviously it is a semiotical property. Only sentences, never matters of fact, are verified. But where, in the area of semiotics, is it to be placed? To use Charles Morris's useful and now somewhat traditional classification, is it a syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic (i.e. psychological) predicate? My answer is that it falls within semantics. Before developing this, however, I should like to point out why I do not place it in either of the other two subdivisions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , April 1947 , pp. 123 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1947

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Footnotes

1

This paper is greatly indebted to Rudolph Carnap's “Testability and Meaning,” Philosophy of Science, vol. iii and iv, 1936 and 1937. It should not be considered however as simply a criticism of certain aspects of that paper. It is an attempt at a positive analysis.

References

2 It might be held that a consequence that follows analytically from a total set of premises, but from no subset thereof, follows with some degree of probability from any subset of that set. Such a view rests on a confusion. If a definition of probability is included in the premises such that the degree of probability assigned follows, then the conclusion is that such and such a sentence has such and such a probability. However, this conclusion follows strictly from the premises, and cannot be said to be verified by them to some degree only. Otherwise the conclusion does not follow at all from any subset of the original set of premises.

3 In this paper, ‘p’ and ‘q’ are not sentential variables but abbreviations for typical propositions of the sort made clear by the context. When in quotes, they are the names of such propositions.

4 To say that the reasonable man is the scientist or one who uses scientific methods likewise is circular, unless ‘scientist’ is simply a professional class-symbol. In the latter case, however, we have abandoned epistemology entirely and embarked on irrelevant sociological considerations. That they are irrelevant can be simply indicated by the case of the individual scientist who, perhaps from senility, lowers his scientific standards (allows his convictions to outrun the degree of verification obtained) without thereby losing his social status as “scientist”—he may even add thereto in the eyes of the public and the clergy.

5 It has been suggested (G. Bergmann: “Pure Semantics, Sentences, and Propositions,” Mind, N.S., vol. liii, July, 1944, p. 255) that pragmatics includes semantics “in the same indirect sense in which semantics can be said to contain syntax.” The present is not the proper context for a criticism of the highly amorphous concept of pragmatics. However, if the inclusiveness of pragmatics is used as the basis for asserting that ‘verified by’ is a pragmatic predicate my response would be that it is by virtue of its inclusion of semantics, not by anything distinctive in itself, that pragmatics can be said to embrace the predicate, ‘verified by.‘

6 I realize that ‘basic sentence’ is an ambiguous term. For present purposes it may be sufficient to define it as a non-generalized factual sentence, that is, a sentence containing no variables (free or bound) and whose predicates are descriptive.

7 Strictly, as a matter of “applied logic.” Cf. Philosophy of Science, vol. 4, 1937, p. 2.

8 Except for the psychologist, and he is not interested in the verifying of his own psychological sentences but only in their verification.

9 To avoid multiplication of quotation marks with consequent, difficulty in reading, I have not enclosed sentences illustrative of the semantical use of ‘verified’ in quotation marks. Strictly this is incorrect, since I am talking about these sentences, not asserting them.

10 I am assuming that the relation between language and matter of fact is properly represented by such a semantical sentence as ‘E’ designates e’ where ‘E’ is the name of any linguistic expression and ‘e’ is that expression (in use). As I have tried to indicate elsewhere, however, (Cf. “The Extra-Linguistic Reference of Language (II),” Mind, N.S., vol. liii, Jan. 1944) I seriously doubt whether the juxtaposition of the name of an expression and the expression in use really get us outside language. However, for present purposes this type of statement is adequate providing we add that it is a mere reflection in language of a relation that transcends language.

11 I omit any further mention of the theoretically uninteresting case:’ ‘p’ is true’ is verified if p. This of course would have its place in any system, the only philosophical question being as to the nature of the proposition ‘p’.

12 I hope it is clear that the above is in no sense a criticism of positivism. Every epistemological position must make categorial assumptions which are not themselves verifiable, yet on the other hand are about the world, are not formal tautologies.

13 I have formulated my own view in “A Realistic Theory of Distortion,” The Philosophical Review XLVIII (1939) 525–31, and “Perception As Fact and As Knowledge,” ibid., LII (1943) 468–489.