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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
The contentions of this paper are essentially two. One is that truth does not consist of verifiability—and still less of verification—in the sense in which this has been maintained by some pragmatists, operationalists, and positivists. The other is that in a certain other sense of “verifiability”, which will be described, truth is the same thing as verifiability. The paper, it should be understood, attempts only to make clear what is and what is not the relation between truth and verifiability. It does not attempt in addition to carry the analysis of verification itself to the point where it would, by implication, furnish a terminal answer to the question, what is truth. The latter task, because of space limitations, must be reserved for some future occasion.
1 In many cases, the proposition whose truth-value the procedure reveals is not the proposition—let us call it P—which appears to be under consideration, but another, of the form “Proposition P has probability of degree D”. The number of possible probability-values is infinite, but the number of truth-values is just two; and “truth” and “falsity” are not the names of any of the degrees of probability. For support of these statements see the writer's Propositions, opinions, sentences, and facts, Jour of Philos., Vol. 37, No. 26, Dec. 19, 1940, and Some observations concerning the nature of probability, Jour. of Philos. (to appear later).
2 Indeed, the statement that P is verifiable may even mean both of the above at once.
3 In a paper entitled Propositions, opinions, sentences, and facts (Jour, of Philos., Vol. 37, No. 26, Dec. 19, 1940) I have contended that what a declaratory sentence formulates is not a proposition simply, but both a proposition and an attitude of belief or disbelief towards it; and that the affirmative or negative form of the verb of the sentence formulates no part of the proposition but only the attitude of belief or disbelief. Accordingly, in the formulation of the proposition alone, the affirmative or negative symbol must not be introduced. For example, the proposition which, together with affirmation of it, is formulated by the sentence “It rains here now” is, when divorced from affirmation of it, formulated instead by the expression “Rain, here now”.
4 If E should itself be a subjective event of our own, then being past, present or future would be subjectivo-subjective relations between it and given references by us to it. The word “objective” is here used in the sense of “other than any act or event in ourselves”; and “subjective”, on the contrary, in the sense of “being an act or event in ourselves”.
