I have lately noticed here in "The Academy" the occasional use of words with positivist provenance, e.g., "verifiable". I have no problem per se with the use of such words and expressions. But I do object to what those who use such terms seem to think is a consequence of their use: that they have said something incontrovertible; that their poor interlocutor - be he a man of faith, a metaphysician, or cut from some other mystical cloth - has been trumped; that the conversation has ended with him vanquished.
Such crowing is not without precedent. Having worked out various "criteria of meaning" during the late 1920s, the Viennese logical positivists spent the next several years gleefully declaring "meaningless" all metaphysics and religion. Their delight in this endeavor soon turned to outright shame. For it was pointed out to them that their basic criterion of "meaningfulness" which they applied so ruthlessly was itself "meaningless." You see, for the logical positivists a statement is meaningful if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable. But this very statement is neither. Consequently, they and the English positivists (including Ayer) began to back down, keeping the principle as a methodological tool, but admitting that, yes, emotional, religious, and metaphysical statements could indeed have meaning. As Ayer himself later remarked about the failure of logical positivism, "Well I suppose that the most important of the defects was that nearly all of it was false."
"Academy" members who would wield "verifiability" should familiarize themselves with the history of logical positivism. Perhaps they would then understand exactly what they are and are not saying when they invoke it:
To say that something cannot be verified is only to say that it is not a scientific something. But then to go further and say that the non-scientific is meaningless or false -- to speak so is to make a non-verifiable value judgment. Again, those who relegate to "meaninglessness" all statements that cannot be verified in terms of experiential data are simply expressing a personal preference, a value.
Now a more interesting question is that concerning the psychological ground of such a valuation. It is important to note here that science itself does not require this. Science should be content to observe that if a hypothesis is not testable, then it simply is not a scientific hypothesis. More than this need not be said.
I have already suggested one such ground, that evinced by the 1920s positivist attacks against metaphysics and religion. One could see this as the expression of a kind of will to power tainted, perhaps, by a vengeful spirit; the revolutionary desire to tear down the towers of the reigning ideas, to overthrow one's enemies, to see one's own perspective triumph that one's type might rule.
But I also sense another psychological ground beneath the empirical philosophy of logical positivism. And here we are in a sadder and less energetic place. I would describe it as a deep-seated fear of disappointment that gives rise to a need for certainty. It is a kind of depression, a lack of abandonment, an unwillingness to risk, to trust the world; an unwillingness even to hope that there might be more than mere matter - because one might learn that there isn't. Such a spirit is, I suppose, not unlike that of one who guards against falling in love for fear he might have his heart broken.
Against so cautious and timid a disposition, I hold up the stirring invitation of Christ to Peter in Luke 5.4: "Ἐπανάγαγε εἰς τὸ βάθος", "Duc in altum", "Put out into the deep." These words invite us to engage the world in a spirit of trust, with the certain hope that there is always more in the cosmos than meets the eye.
Cordially,
Paul
