Online research in philosophy

For the logical positivists, protocol statements are points of contact between experience and knowledge. But within the Vienna Circle there were controversies with regard to how protocol statements are to play the key role in the process of verification. The uniqueness of Schlick's concept of protocol statement consists in the unity between its intelligibility and its validity. When the protocol statements are formulated during observations, the statements themselves are not verified but the whole body of the theory is. The momentary experience confirms the protocol statement at the moment, and the satisfaction of the knower attained through confirmations is the end of scientific inquiries.

(1) It remains to be seen if in the field of Psychiatry just as in that of Psychology the verbal output of a subject can be submitted to verification. Many statements of a highly emotional character being merely symptoms of certain dispositions have no direct communicative sense at all.(2) It being one of the characteristics of the mentally ill to loose contact and exchange of ideas with other people, the question naturally suggests itself if this symptom may be at the bottom of the phenomenon of these persons taking refuge in logical and ideological terminologies, their talk being a kind of verbal autism.

Karl Popper rightly contests the possibility of a verification of basic statements. At the same time he strictly believes in the possibility of growth of empirical knowledge. Knowledge growth, however, is only possible if empirical theories can be falsified. This raises the question, how theories can be falsified, if a verification of those statements that falsify theories – i.e. basic statements – is not possible. This problem is often referred to as the “basic problem” or “prob-lem of the empirical basis”. In this paper I show that – from a logical point of view – a falsification of theories is possible without a verification of basic state-ments. Furthermore I show that knowledge growth in the empirical sciences will be possible if two assumptions are valid. These assumptions can neither be proven nor falsified. However, they have to be postulated by everybody in eve-ryday life.

Mathematical statements arising from program verification are believed to be much easier to deal with than statements coming from serious mathematics. At least this is true for “normal programming”.

Abstract On the basis of Professor Ayer's The Problem of Knowledge, Mr. Stigen criticizes Ayer for defending a position which the sceptic does not attack. Ayer's ?descriptive analysis?, which is his answer to the sceptic, consists in an analysis of statements about, e.g. material objects or other minds into verifiable propositions. In other words, Ayer points to the fact that our statements are shown to be true by verification. However, according to Stigen, this analysis does not remove the sceptic's doubts, for the sceptic does not doubt that our statements are true; his attack is directed against the validity of those of my present beliefs for which I claim knowledge?status. The sceptic asks me to justify my claim that the statement is not only true, but that I have also good grounds now for being sure of it, i.e. that my present belief amounts to knowledge in virtue of its credibility. On this point, according to Stigen, Ayer offers no satisfactory solution.

Abstract On the basis of Professor Ayer's The Problem of Knowledge, Mr. Stigen criticizes Ayer for defending a position which the sceptic does not attack. Ayer's ?descriptive analysis?, which is his answer to the sceptic, consists in an analysis of statements about, e.g. material objects or other minds into verifiable propositions. In other words, Ayer points to the fact that our statements are shown to be true by verification. However, according to Stigen, this analysis does not remove the sceptic's doubts, for the sceptic does not doubt that our statements are true; his attack is directed against the validity of those of my present beliefs for which I claim knowledge?status. The sceptic asks me to justify my claim that the statement is not only true, but that I have also good grounds now for being sure of it, i.e. that my present belief amounts to knowledge in virtue of its credibility. On this point, according to Stigen, Ayer offers no satisfactory solution.

In chapter VI of Language, Truth, and Logic, A.J. Ayer argues that ethical statements are not literally significant. Unlike metaphysical statements, however, ethical statements are not nonsensical: even though they are not literally significant, Ayer thinks that they possess some other sort of significance. This raises the question: by what principle or criterion can we distinguish, among the class of statements that are not literally significant, between those which are genuinely meaningless and those which possess some other, non-literal form of significance. I suggest that Ayer needs a generalised version of the verification principle in order to answer this question. However, when we formulate the generalised version, it turns out that ethical statements do not satisfy it, so that the emotivist is committed to viewing ethics, like metaphysics, as meaningless verbiage.