Editing Philosophical methodology (section)

=== Verificationism ===
The method of [[verificationism]] consists in understanding sentences by analyzing their characteristic conditions of verification, i.e. by determining which empirical observations would prove them to be true.<ref name="DalyHandbook"/><ref>{{cite book |last1=Misak |first1=C.J. |title=Verificationism: Its History and Prospects |date=1995 |isbn=9780415125987 |url=https://www.routledge.com/Verificationism-Its-History-and-Prospects/Misak/p/book/9780415125987 |language=en |chapter=Introduction|publisher=Psychology Press }}</ref> A central motivation behind this method has been to distinguish meaningful from meaningless sentences. This is sometimes expressed through the claim that "[the] meaning of a statement is the method of its verification".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wisdom |first1=John |title=Metaphysics and Verification (I.) |journal=Mind |date=1938 |volume=47 |issue=188 |pages=452–498 |doi=10.1093/mind/XLVII.188.452 |jstor=2250385 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2250385 |issn=0026-4423}}</ref> Meaningful sentences, like the ones found in the natural sciences, have clear conditions of empirical verification.<ref name="DalyHandbook"/><ref>{{cite web |last1=Creath |first1=Richard |title=Logical Empiricism: 4.1 Empiricism, Verificationism, and Anti-metaphysics |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-empiricism/#EmpVerAntMet |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=27 February 2022 |date=2021}}</ref> But since most [[metaphysical]] sentences cannot be verified by empirical observations, they are deemed to be non-sensical by verificationists. Verificationism has been criticized on various grounds. On the one hand, it has proved very difficult to give a precise formulation that includes all scientific claims, including the ones about [[unobservables]].<ref name="DalyHandbook"/> This is connected to the problem of [[underdetermination]] in the [[philosophy of science]]: the problem that the observational evidence is often insufficient to determine which theory is true.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Okasha |first1=Samir |title=Verificationism, Realism and Scepticism |journal=Erkenntnis |date=2001 |volume=55 |issue=3 |pages=371–385 |doi=10.1023/A:1013370201189 |jstor=20013095 |s2cid=141073837 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20013095 |issn=0165-0106}}</ref> This would lead to the implausible conclusion that even for the empirical sciences, many of their claims would be meaningless. But on a deeper level, the basic claim underlying verificationism seems itself to be meaningless by its own standards: it is not clear what empirical observations could verify the claim that the meaning of a sentence is the method of its verification. In this sense, verificationism would be contradictory by directly refuting itself.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Uebel |first1=Thomas |title=Verificationism and (Some of) its Discontents |journal=Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy |date=4 June 2019 |volume=7 |issue=4 |doi=10.15173/jhap.v7i4.3535 |s2cid=196700261 |url=https://jhaponline.org/jhap/article/view/3535 |language=en |issn=2159-0303|doi-access=free }}</ref> These and other problems have led some theorists, especially from the sciences, to adopt [[Falsifiability|falsificationism]] instead. It is a less radical approach that holds that serious theories or hypotheses should at least be falsifiable, i.e. there should be some empirical observations that could prove them wrong.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fretwurst |first1=Benjamin |title=The International Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods |date=7 November 2017 |pages=1–6 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781118901731.iecrm0261 |chapter=Verification and Falsification|doi=10.1002/9781118901731.iecrm0261 |isbn=9781118901762 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=criterion of falsifiability |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/criterion-of-falsifiability |website=www.britannica.com |access-date=5 March 2022 |language=en}}</ref>