In the first part of this paper the author restates arguments made earlier against well-known criticisms of a logical nature leveled (by C. Hempel and others) against the so-called verifiability principle, which purport to show that it is at once both too restrictive and too permissive: including as cognitively meaningful, statements intuitively lacking this property, and excluding others that are generally admitted to possess it. The author claims to show that the charge that the verifiability principle is unduly permissive will (...) not stand, because of certain logico-semantical blunders made by the critics; and that the charge of being too restrictive can be removed by introducing the notion of guasi-truth-conditions. He then moves on to an examination and elaboration of the concept of cognitive use, in terms of which he attempts to turn the flank of the argument purporting to show that the verifiability principle is too restrictive, explaining that even if one does not invoke the concept of quasi-truth-conditions, that of cognitive use enables one to save for science and cognition in general sentences that lack truth-values (cognitive meaning). A version of the verifiability principle that denies cognitive meaning to non-finitistic, non-analytic mixed-quantifications does not therefore do any injury to science, frequent claims to the contrary notwithstanding. (shrink)

We can now see, perhaps, what merits if any this definition has. It ties in the concept of evidence with that of law, and requires us to support our claim that some fact (or statement) is evidence for another by pointing out the science, and within it the law (or what meets the tests of being acceptable as such) whose existence alone justifies us in assuming that a certain conditional statement qualifies as acceptable as nomological. Whoever claims that a certain (...) fact is evidence for another is required to justify his assumption that there exists a certain law. That in some sense there are such justifiable assumptions is clear from the existence of natural sciences and technologies based upon them. But it will turn out that in many cases it is impossible, as of a given moment, to make out a case for the claim that a certain conditional statement, required to support the view that a certain fact is evidence for another, is nomological. In such cases we are able to draw a clear line between what someone may think or claim is evidence, and what we have reasonable grounds for accepting as such. In short the concept offers us a principle of demarcation between justified and unjustified claims for the evidential nature of facts (or statements) offered as such. If this is not a very impressive achievement still it is not wholly contemptible, considering the confusion that prevails among many people concerning the question of evidence. (shrink)

The philosophically important questions concerning what can be deduced from a given statement, of what would constitute a correct analysis or translation of it, of whether to say that P is to say that Q., and others, can be clearly formulated and possibly answered only on the basis of prior clear formulations of what is to be meant by “statement component of a statement”;. This paper takes up these questions in the context of a discussion of a certain formulation of (...) the so-called Extensionality Thesis. It attempts to show the hidden complexity of this thesis (and those questions) by indicating the consequences for it of several more or less plausible interpretations of the notions of meaningful statement , and statement component. (shrink)

His final verdict, after an exhaustive study, runs as follows.