Verificationism and its Failure to Allow for Error and Misrepresentation

Abstract

Since we are rejecting non-naturalistic views of meaning, the most obvious approach would seem to be an empiricist one, particularly, a verificationist one, which would focus on finding a naturalistic theory of meaning based on experience. Of course, it is both unnecessary and impractical here to go over the entire long history of verificationism and the major movement that subscribed to it, Logical Positivism. So I will keep us focused on meaning, and especially error. But we will need to examine some details of verificationist theories of meaning and see how they account for error. This presents difficulties in exposition. It is unnecessary and even tedious to present the details of famous arguments in Quine, Davidson, and Wittgenstein to those readers who are familiar with Positivism and the criticisms of it. However, in my experience, we can no longer assume that all philosophers, even philosophers of mind, automatically know the details and history of Positivism and chapter and verse of Quine and Davidson. To those who do not, especially those non-philosophers (in psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, and AI) who could benefit from the book, this will be essential background. My argument will be that the whole history of Logical Positivism exhibits a battle over error and misrepresentation, and the ultimate result is failure to account for it. To make this case, I must lead the reader through verificationist positions on meaning, and show how verificationism repeatedly undermines the possibility of error, and how Quine and Davidson and others attempt modifications of verificationism to allow for error. The conclusion will be that the verificationist (and behaviorist) approach to meaning fails to give a satisfactory account of content, and, in particular, fails to allow it to be possible to have error, false belief, and misrepresentation.