Abstract

MELOGNO, Pablo. Verificationism and self-refutation. Sig. Fil [online]. 2014, vol.16, n.32, pp.8-37. ISSN 1665-1324.

Empiricism has frequently been said to appeal to non-empirical principles to defend empirical knowledge, which is why it has been accused of falling into some form of self-refutation. With the advent of logical empiricism, this objection became a questioning of the empiricist criterion of meaning, noting that since it is neither a logical nor an empirical proposition, it does not fulfill its own conditions of meaningfulness. This paper intends to show that responses to this criticism, consistent enough to resist the objection of self-refutation, have been developed whithin logical empiricism. In addition, the article claims that the assertion that the empiricist criterion of meaning is self-refuting is based on an inadequate understanding of the linguistic levels involved in its formulation, as well as on some unspecified assumptions regarding its status.

Keywords : verification; empiricist criterion of meaning; Putnam; Carnap; Hempel.