Abstract
The concept of open texture was invoked by Waismann to revoke verificationism.1 Empirical terms, so his argument goes, are essentially open-ended: no set of rules can determine their application for all possible situations. The reason is that we cannot envisage all possible states of affairs in which such application might take place. Thus, empirical sentences which employ such terms cannot be verified conclusively, and hence complete verifiability cannot be taken as an adequate criterion for meaningfulness.
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Notes
F. Waismann, “Verifiability,” in his How I See Philosophy, R. Harrand (ed.), London, 1968, pp. 39–66.
No one defends complete verificationism nowadays.
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© 1979 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Margalit, A. (1979). Open Texture. In: Margalit, A. (eds) Meaning and Use. Synthese Language Library, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4104-4_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4104-4_12
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