The verification principle is too wide ...

Hi, Doc. Thanks for the two comments. I will devote one full post to answering your very valuable contribution to the debate. So far, very interstingly, we are moving along almost the same lines as those followed by the LPs and their oponents in the 30s and 40s.

But meanwhile, I would like to finish the inventory of the most common types of criticisms used against the verification principle. In the previous post, we saw those saying it was too narrow, now we will turn to those saying it is too wide, i.e. that it leaves standing a number of statements that Logical Positivism intended to reject.

If you say 'God exists, he will show up tomorrow', you utter a statement that is perfectly valid according to the principle, since it has an obvious verification method : 'wait until tomorrow and watch if God does show up'. LP has no qualms about that. Presumably, if you wait until tomorrow, God will not show up and the statement will turn out false; meaningful, but false.

Now you are a steadfast prophet and you say 'No I was wrong, it was not tomorrow, it was the day after that', and, the next day, after another failure : 'No, the day yet after that', etc. In effect, you go on saying 'God exists, he will show up tomorrow' every day, and failing every day. According to the verification principle, you are still saying something meaningful. After some days, nobody will believe you, but it is still going to be meaningful.

Then, a wiser prophet passes by, pities you, and says 'No, the right thing to say is : Got exists, he will show up eventually'. Here, the principle cries foul : no finite method of verification; this is meaningless! The shrewd prophet, who expected this reply, shoots back : 'Actually, an angel appeared to me last night and he told me the real truth : "God exists, he will show up in 10^{1.000.000.000} years", but I did not want to bother the lay people with technical details so I just said "eventually"'.

Here, the Logical Positivist trying to unmask the shrewd godman finds himself in a quandary because the last statement has a finite verification method and thus passes the test of the verification principle as meaningful. But, for all practical purposes, this statement is equivalent to the version with "eventually" that the priniciple rejects as meaningless. It can be used just as effectively, to build a church organization, get a grip on people's minds, coax them into making "donations" and so on. In many ways, with its air of precision, it looks even more credible, and so is probably more effective.

This is not mere hypothesizing. Christian doctrine developped more or less along this path when christianity was transformed, in the IVth century CE, from a loose set of fringe groups eagerly expecting a second coming in the near future, to a more sedate, state sponsored religion that was happy to postpone apocalyse to a safer, more distant, date.

To summarize, if we follow the verification principle, we have to accept the following verdicts :

'All C14 atoms will eventually disintegrate" --> meaningless.
'God exists, he will show up in 10^{1.000.000.000} years" --> meaningful.

This is quite surprizing, to say the least. Seeing the last two lines out of context, one would believe they came out of som fundamentalist propaganda booklet rather than as results of a scientifically inspired theory of meaning making metaphysics obsolete.