From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 8:54 AM To: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: Are irrational numbers supernatural? "Buridan" wrote > > If a synthetic statement is neither falsifiable nor > > verifiable under any possible circumstances, then it > > is propositionally meaningless. > > > the claim above is *on your > own account* quite meaningless. No, because the statement is analytic: it helps define propositional meaninglessness. > This sort of verificationism is hoplessly outdated, Strong verificationism, defined by one writer as the thesis that "a declarative sentence is factual and meaningful if and only if it can in principle be conclusively verified by empirical observation", was hopeless to begin with. My position is a rather weak form of verificationism, in which I include falsifiability as an alternative criterion, and I replace conclusiveness with the requirement that the possible evidence merely count for or against the statement. If you have any good arguments against such a weak form of verificationism, I'd love to hear them. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net