{"id":9862,"date":"2012-03-13T12:50:22","date_gmt":"2012-03-13T12:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/13\/nietzsche-and-the-appeal-of-the-verifiability-criterion\/"},"modified":"2012-03-13T12:50:22","modified_gmt":"2012-03-13T12:50:22","slug":"nietzsche-and-the-appeal-of-the-verifiability-criterion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/13\/nietzsche-and-the-appeal-of-the-verifiability-criterion\/","title":{"rendered":"Nietzsche and the Appeal of the Verifiability Criterion"},"content":{"rendered":"

A long-gone blogger once asked:<\/span><\/p>\n

Has anyone ever seen an argument – or even a plea – in favor of the<\/span> verification principle? I mean, beyond anything that just goes,<\/span> "Hey, now this is cool. We can bash the ethicists, metaphysicians,<\/span><\/span>
and theologians quite thoroughly with this."<\/span><\/p>\n

As a preliminary stab at an answer, consider the Nietzsche quotation that Richard von Mises uses for the motto of his book Positivism<\/em> (Harvard University Press, 1951, p. xii): <\/span><\/p>\n

. . . die kleinen, unscheinbaren vorsichtigen Wahrheiten, welche<\/em><\/span> mit strenger Methode gefunden werden, hoeher zu schaetzen als jene<\/em><\/span> weiten, schwebenden, umschleiernden Allgemeinheiten, nach denen das<\/em><\/span> Beduerfnis religoeser oder kuenstlerischer Zeitalter greift.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

. . . to value more highly the little, unpretentious, cautious<\/span> truths, arrived at by rigorous methods, than those vast, floating,<\/span> veiling generalities for which the yearnings of a religious or<\/span> artistic era reach.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A plea for the Verifiability Principle (VP) might just consist of an invocation of the above value judgment: precise, verifiable knowledge about matters of empirical fact is of higher value than broad and uncertain theories about ultimates like God and the soul.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, no (classical) metaphysician shares this value judgment — a judgment which, nota bene<\/em>, must be merely subjective on good positivist principles — and will hasten to point out that the Principle is self-vitiating in that it implies its own lack of cognitive significance. (Exercise for the reader: 'verify' that for yourself.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, Hume, whose famous Fork is a conceptual precursor of the VP, faces a similar difficulty: What is the epistemological status of the principle that every significant idea derives from a sensory <\/span>impression? Does that express a matter of empirical fact? No. A mere relation of ideas? No.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then consign it to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A long-gone blogger once asked: Has anyone ever seen an argument – or even a plea – in favor of the verification principle? I mean, beyond anything that just goes, "Hey, now this is cool. We can bash the ethicists, metaphysicians, and theologians quite thoroughly with this." As a preliminary stab at an answer, consider … Continue reading “Nietzsche and the Appeal of the Verifiability Criterion”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nietzsche"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}