Abstract

Schlick and Neurath shared a common assumption, what I call the verification theory of truth, as well as the verification of meaning. It is the claim that the truth of a sentence is the method of it's verification. For Neurath, the method of scientific verification must be interpersonal, and, therefore, private experience is precluded. This leads hmi to the doctrme that there is no truth beyond intersubjective agreement. Schlick, on the contrary, regarded it as obvious that certain sentences, even if they were not sentences in a conventional language, were confirmations or Konstatierungen verified by the private experiences they described. These sentences, which Schlick called basic contrasted with the protocol sentences of Neurath m that the truth of the former is determined by private experience and that of latter by interpersonal test. It is argued that once one distinguishes between the facts that make a sentence true and the meaning of a sentence one need not accept either the position of Schlick or that of Neurath. One may hold that the meaning of a sentence is interpersonal even if the fact described by a sentence is a personal experience. This theory yields a form of falliblism according to which the best method of verification of a sentence need not eliminate all possibüity of error.