Epistemic Theories of Truth - Verificationist Views

Verificationist Views

The two main kinds of verification philosophies are positivism and a priorism.

In positivism, a proposition is meaningful, and thus capable of being true or false, if and only if it is verifiable by sensory experiences.

A-priorism, often used in the domains of logic and mathematics, holds a proposition true if and only if a priori reasoning can verify it. In the related certainty theory, associated with Descartes and Spinoza, a proposition is true if and only if it is known with certainty.

Logical positivism attempts to combine positivism with a version of a-priorism.

Another theory of truth which is related to a priorism is the concept-containment theory of truth. The concept-containment theory of truth is the view that a proposition is true if and only if the concept of the predicate of the proposition is "contained in" the concept of the subject. For example, the proposition that bachelors are unmarried men is true, on this view, because the concept of the predicate (unmarried men) is contained in the concept of the subject (bachelor). A contemporary reading of the concept-containment theory of truth is to say that every true proposition is an analytically true proposition.