Logic and Ordinary Language

Abstract

By the early 1950s, the supporters of the Verification Criterion had for the most part transferred their attention to what has come to be known as ‘formal semantics’. There is a sense in which formal semantics can be seen as representing a continuation of the thought of the Vienna Circle positivists. But this relationship is generally obscured because, naturally enough, the approach to the problem of meaning through the construction of formal, set-theoretic languages is very often presented as a way of avoiding the errors of verificationism.