Abstract

The verification theory of meaning as originally put forth by Ayer suffered from the problem that according to its criterion, any statement, including “green ideas sleep furiously", was meaningful. This problem did not go away with the reformulation put forth by Wright. This article proposes a different criterion which aims to preserve the notion of “verifiability in principle" which Ayer claimed separated the meaningful from the meaningless. The status of the verification theory as verifiable according to its own standards is also discussed, and the objections to the theory as unverifiable are rejected.