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Verificationism | Stroud Vs Verificationism | I 201 Verificationism/Knowledge/Stroud: this draws attention to a little-noticed problem of the relation between the verification principle and traditional skepticism: one usually only sees a one-sided competition between them: the principle implies that the skeptical conclusion is meaningless. Asymmetry: so the whole problem is meaningless. Verification Principle/VP/Skepticism/Stroud: but in reality have the same task to solve: to explain how our belief is empirically confirmed. SkepticismVsVerificationism: its standards of confirmation are not fulfilled at all. Stroud: this is a dispute about what our standards are and if anything fulfils them. No side is in a better position, they share the problem. I 202 Skepticism/Stroud: is not refuted by the verification principle: if we do not know whether we are dreaming, we also do not know whether the confirmation by evidence does not only take place in the dream. ((s) The argument of empirical verification is something quite different from the argument about the use of language.) Confirmation/StroudVsVerificationism/StroudVsCarnap: there is already a conflict about how the verification principle (VP) should be formulated at all, or about what can be considered a confirmation. If the verification principle is to be adequate, it must imply that there can be no meaningful difficulty of the kind that the traditional skeptic puts forward. Problem: when formulating the principle, the principle itself cannot yet be applied to the decisive concept of confirmation. ((s) Otherwise circular). Empirical confirmation/confirmability/Stroud: their definition would need an explanation of how and why the traditional concept of our everyday practice should be wrong. I 203 Skepticism/Stroud: cannot simply be rejected without showing the relationship between "internal" and "external" (distanced) access as incoherent. StroudVsVerificationism: in everyday life, the conditions of the verification principle are never completely fulfilled. A successful theory of empirical confirmation must therefore show what is wrong with the concept of confirmation. It could nevertheless be that verificationism is on the right track. I 204 Confirmation/Tradition/Stroud: it is generally true that the problem of the outside world (skepticism) is empirically undecidable, no matter what concept of empirical confirmability one chooses. This is the common problem that scepticism and verificationism must share. So it seems reasonable that the verification principle must first be formulated precisely before it can be used. SkepticismVsVerificationism/StroudVsVerificationism: as long as lack of verifiability is connected with futility, our speech about the world around us will be condemned to futility if skepticism is right. StroudVsRational Reconstruction/StroudVsCarnap: we can leave the rational reconstruction aside and simply ask how plausible it is to make sense of verifiability. And apparently we cannot do that without trying to assess the plausibility of skepticism ((s) and not dismissing it as meaningless ourselves). I 205 SkepticismVsVerificationism/StroudVsVerificationism/StroudVsCarnap: even if verificationism is true, we still need an explanation of how and why traditional philosophical ((s) non-empirical) inquiry fails. ((s) should correspond here to skepticism). (>Why Question). Verification Principle/Stroud: to accept it, we need an understandable diagnosis of why and how skepticism is wrong. ((s) quasi circular, one presupposes the other). StroudVsVerificationism/DescartesVsVerificationism/StroudVsCarnap: Descartes' example "I don't know if I'm really sitting by the fireplace with a piece of paper in my hand" is a perfectly sensible sentence! We understand it well enough to know what would be the case if it were true. And it can be true or false. It would be nonsense to claim that sentences like "Here is a human hand" or "There are mountains in Africa" would be meaningless. Verificationism/Stroud: but only claims that they are meaningless in connection with the traditional conclusion that their truth can never be known (skeptical conclusion). I 206 Verification Principle/Stroud: we would have to show that there is nothing to fear from scepticism. |
Stroud I B. Stroud The Significance of philosophical scepticism Oxford 1984 |
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