Criticisms of verification

'The meaning of a statement is its method of verification' is neither logically obvious nor supported by empirical evidence - thus the statement is not verifiable

• A self-defeating principle is not the bedrock upon which to build a criterion for establishing the meaningfulness of language

As recognised by Ayer, the fact that the intitial criteria for the verification principle did not take into account historical statements or even universal scientific statements as meaningful further undermines its usefulness

• This is why Ayer needed to amend the principle so that a 'weak' form could be established which would allow for such statements to be meaningful in principle, even if they were not meaningful in practice

A further observation was made by John Hick, who argued that the Christian concept of God was verifiable in principle

• ‘Two men are travelling together along a road. One of them believes…