ROBERT BROWN AND JOHN WATLING
University College, London
HYPOTHETICAL STATEMENTS IN PHENOMENALISM
Two kinds of objections to phenomenalism have become familiar. The first is that this thesis
transforms our every day world of permanent things into a stage set at whose lighting panel stands a
phenomenalist; the play ends when he turns up the auditorium lights and the back-drop loses a
dimension. The exposed canvas flats with their painted doors, the mache tree, the glass pond, these are
the real objects of sense experience. These are the sense-data. But, adds the second criticism, the
operator can never throw the auditorium switch. Fixed in the spell of a false analogy, he sits dreaming
of an imaginary panel. There are no lights, no sets, no theatre. No translation from a basic sense-datum
terminology to a less basic material object language is possible.
What we want to maintain here is that these objections in the form which they have taken in
recent discussions are inadequate to their task. Whilst, in general, those who have argued that
phenomenalism makes factual assertions have not been able to substantiate their claim by indicating
just what these assertions are, and since phenomenalism proposes an analysis of statements rather than
questions their truth it is difficult to understand what these factual assertions could be; still some of the
arguments for this point of view require examination. The correctness of the various analyses offered by
phenomenalists is in considerable doubt, but here again certain of the recent arguments against the
possibility of an analysis are based upon misunderstandings. These arguments are set out at length in
an article by Mr. Berlin and in a subsequent note by Mr. Warnock.1 The former is afraid that the ghost
of phenomenalism is still at large. We shall contend that whether it is or not, it cannot possibly be
stilled by these criticisms, for more haunting than the memories of phenomenalism are the errors of its
opponents.
I.
Mr. Warnock makes use of the distinction between a sentence and the use of a sentence in
order to establish his argument against the phenomenalist thesis. He accepts Mr. Strawson’s distinction
between different utterances of the same sentence and “different occasions of the use of this sentence”.
Two men uttering the sentence “The King of France is wise” during the rule of Louis XIV make
different utterances of the same sentence, although they make the same use of the same sentence. If one
1
G. J. Warnock, “Empirical Propositions and Hypothetical Statements”, Mind
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man utters this sentence during the reign of Louis XIV and the other man utters the sentence in the
reign of Louis XV they are making not only different utterances but different uses of the same sentence.
The sentence, while meaningful, is neither true nor false, nor do any of its component expressions refer
to particular objects or persons. In order for a sentence to make a true or false assertion and for an
expression to refer we must use the sentence or expression on some particular occasion. ‘Truth and
falsity’, ‘mentioning and referring’, are properties of the use of sentences and expressions respectively,
whereas ‘significance’ is a property of sentences and expressions.
But clearly this distinction between a sentence and the use of a sentence is not intended to
apply to all sentences. It does not apply to sentences like ‘On September 29, 1938 Hitler, Mussolini,
Chamberlain and Daladier met in conference’. Anyone speaking or writing this sentence makes the
same use of it, for the temporal indicators and proper names show us that the sentence has only one
use, if it has a use at all. Similarly, ‘The French king, Louis XIV, was wise” has only one use, if any. It is
about some person if the sentence ‘There was a French king named Louis XIV’ is true. If this sentence is
false then the first sentence is not about any person, has no use; if, with Mr. Strawson, we say that
nevertheless “The French king, Louis XIV, was wise” is significant, we must either say that its one use is
true or false, or that the sentence has more than one use. Obviously the latter alternative is not feasible:
the truth value of the sentence (or statement) does not change with the date of utterance. The former
alternative is no better, for if there was no French king named Louis XIV the sentence “The French
king, Louis XIV, was wise” is neither true nor false. Therefore the sentence is significant, is neither true
nor false, but seems to have only one use. In such cases we cannot distinguish between a sentence and
its use precisely because the sentence is being used. What Mr. Strawson has done, of course, is to rename the familiar distinction between the analogues of propositional functions (Carnap’s ‘open’
sentences) and propositions (Carnap’s ‘closed’ sentences). Open sentences are significant in the sense
that we know how to turn them into closed sentences by substituting the name of an object for the
variable. Only then do they become true or false assertions. ‘X is a French king’ becomes true when the
names of French kings are substituted for ‘X’ and becomes false when any other names are substituted.
‘There was a man who was a French king and he was wise’ presupposes that there was at least one
French king; if none has existed the open sentence ‘X is a French king and X is wise’ is still significant,
although we shall have no occasion to turn it into a true or false assertion, that is, to use it. Closed
sentences are significant when they have a use, unlike open sentences which are significant if they can
be given a use. But while the open sentence ‘X is a French king and X is wise’ is significant even when
there has been no French king, the closed sentence formed from it indirectly, ‘The French king, Fido, is
wise’ is not; it is not being used at all. Not being significant it cannot be either true or false, nor could it
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be significant without at the same time having a truth-value. Hence, Mr. Strawson’s distinction between
an open sentence and a closed sentence cannot be used of closed sentences so as to distinguish a
sentence from the use of a sentence. Among closed sentences ‘truth and falsity’ and ‘significance’ are
properties of the used sentence, just as ‘mentioning and referring’ and ‘significance’ are properties of
the used expression. It is only of open sentences that we can attribute significance to the sentence and
truth or falsity to the use of the sentence.
Mr. Warnock takes the sentence “This table is brown”, points out that it specifies no particular
table, and claims that the phenomenalists cannot analyse, reduce or translate it. “For as soon as we seek
to specify who is to do what, or how he is to be situated, to achieve what result, we require information
about some particular occasion on which the material object sentence may be supposed to be used; and
thereafter we are not analysing (etc.) the sentence, but making possibly true statements about the
circumstances of some one occasion of its use; and these possibly true statements will certainly be false
of almost every other such occasion.”2 Of another material object sentence, “The battalion is on a night
exercise”, he concludes that only the absurd belief that the meaning of such a sentence is different on
each occasion of its use would permit us to uphold the phenomenalist analysis.
The mistake in this argument is simple. Mr. Warnock has treated his two material object
sentences as though they were closed sentences, whereas they are, in fact, open sentences or analogues
of propositional functions. In these sentences “The” and “This” are dangling demonstratives; out of a
context the expressions of which they are a part do not refer to a particular table or to a particular
battalion. Of course we can close the sentence “The battalion is on a night exercise” without providing a
unique reference for “The battalion” by using the existential or the universal quantifier. The closed
sentences will then be “A battalion is on a night exercise” and “All battalions are on a night exercise”.
However, there will not be many occasions on which we shall want to do this. The reference of
‘battalion’ is so general that it would be very difficult to provide evidence for the falsity of the first or for
the truth of the second. Open sentences, then, contain no grammatical antecedents for the
demonstratives and we require a context before we can understand which antecedents to supply. In
arguing that, for this reason, the phenomenalists cannot provide a suitable analysis of such sentences
Mr. Warnock is actually arguing that open sentences cannot be formulated in the sense-datum
terminology, and this is false. He gives us an almost correct sketch of a sense-datum analysis of “This
table is brown”, but mistakenly believes it to be quite unsuitable. Modifying his version we can write, ‘If
an observer were to do something or other, or were in some situation or other, there would occur some
brown-tablish sense-data”. This is the form a correct analysis would take. We cannot close this open
2
Ibid.
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sentence, ie. replace the expressions “observer”, “something or other” and “some situation or other”
which function as variables, until we replace “This” in “This table is brown” by a uniquely referring
expression. We can make the parallel even closer. ‘If this observer were to do this, or were in this
situation, there would occur some brown tablish sense-data’ employs more occurrences of ‘this’ than
does the corresponding material object sentence, but if the latter could be used by someone to refer to a
specific table, so could the former. When we do use “This table is brown” on a particular occasion to
refer to a particular table we understand from the context which table is being referred to, though the
grammatical antecedent is not expressed. In the same way we understand which observer, action and
situation are being mentioned in the use of a sense-datum sentence:
‘If this observer does this, or is in this situation, there occur some brown-tablish sense-data’.
There is a temptation to believe that the context in which the material object sentence is used must be
described or expressed by the corresponding sense-datum sentence. But it need not; we can point, for
instance, to a particular observer, his action and situation just as we can point to a particular table. The
form of this sense-datum sentence can even he shortened to ‘There occur some brown-tablish sensedata from here’ where “here” refers to the possibility of a specific observer performing certain actions
and being in a particular situation.
A sentence like “The battalion is on a night exercise” is an open sentence whose translationsketch would be of the same form as that of the previous example. Given a use of this material object
sentence we could, for all that Mr. Warnock’s argument shows, produce a list of sentences describing
the actions of the individually named men in the sense-datum terminology. And this would be a
phenomenalist translation, for the set of sentences — excluding objections other than the one under
discussion — would be synonymous with the original sentence. As long as the material object sentence
remains an open sentence we have only to provide an open sense-datum sentence as its analysis. It is
not the meaning (sense) of the material object sentence which changes with each occasion of its use, but
the denotation of ‘the battalion’, or to put it more briefly, the reference of ‘the’. Until an occasion of use
is specified the reference of the demonstrative remains unknown. This is hardly, however, an argument
against phenomenalism.
II
Mr. Berlin’s “many-weaponed attack” is rather different. He complains that on a
phenomenalist analysis “The table next door exists” entails that someone who is in the room is a
“possible or potential table-data observer”. This is not the case. In the first place, to verify that the table
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exists we need table observers, not table-data observers. We may constantly observe (or have) table-data
without ever finding a table to eat at. In the second place, on the phenomenalist analysis “The table next
door exists” entails that a table observer, if he is next door, will see a table, but it does not entail that
such a table observer exists. If we are to be able to verify that there is a table next door we must, of
course, have a table observer to go and see, yet there may be many people in the room with the table
who, for any number of reasons, may not be able to tell whether it is there or not.
Again, Mr. Berlin asks the question: “But if I say, ‘The table is next door.... even with no one
looking’, do I mean, ‘There are table data whenever people look; but at other times, when no one is
looking, nothing at all?’. The answer depends upon whether the phrase “nothing at all” refers to the
absence of table-data or to the absence of tables. If the former, then the answer is ‘yes’, if the latter ‘no’.
It is a mistake to conclude that the continuity of the table is destroyed. It would be destroyed if, on the
phenomenalist interpretation, statements about the existence of the table were true when table was
observed and false when it was unobserved. To put the analysis crudely, ‘The table exists’ is true in case
‘If an observer is in the room, then he sees the table’ is true. The statement that no observer is present
does not entail that the second sentence is false, and so does not entail that ‘The table exists’ is false. The
existence of the table is independent of the existence of any observers.
If we believe that phenomenalism requires us to accept both the intermittency of tables and
the intermittency of such states as irritability, we shall have to explain why common sense denies the
first whilst granting the second. The reason is that words like ‘irritable’ are used to refer to occurrences
— displays of irritation — and also used to describe people who are liable to such displays. On the other
hand material object words are never used in the occurrent sense. Hence it is natural and correct to say
that irritability is intermittent but absurd to say that tables are. In fact, phenomenalism allows
continuity to both, and there is a common sense usage which does the same.
The same confusion between the existence of material objects and the existence of
observations is displayed in the assertion that it may happen that nothing exist at all and yet all
hypothetical statements be true; and, therefore, on the phenomenalist thesis, all statements about
material objects be true as well. If ‘nothing exists at all’ refers to material objects and to observations, it
is incorrect to say that the truth of all hypothetical statements is compatible with the existence of
nothing at all. If ‘nothing exists at all’ refers only to observations, then the truth of any material object
statement is compatible with the existence of nothing at all.
Nor is it correct to maintain that on a phenomenalist analysis, statements about material
objects will only be indirectly verifiable. Mr. Berlin argues that this will be so because “. . . it is
notoriously impossible directly to verify unfulfilled conditionals: but all conditionals must entail at least
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one such unfulfilled conditional . . .”. This fails to distinguish between unfulfilled conditionals and
counter- factual conditionals. The former are conditionals whose antecedent is false but which are,
nevertheless, decided truth functionally, that is, as true. The latter also have false antecedents, though
they are not for that reason decided as false. They are only decidable indirectly by their connection with
empirical laws. An example of an unfulfilled conditional is ‘If Baron Münchausen was telling the truth,
I’ll eat my hat’, whereas an example of a counterfactual conditional is ‘If Cleopatra’s nose had been an
inch longer, then the Roman Republic would not have fallen’. The conditionals entailed by material
object statements will be decided as truth functions of their components, yet they may well be
unfulfilled because the antecedent is false. They are not counterfactual conditionals which are only to
be decided indirectly. Therefore the statement that material object statements are analysable into
unfulfilled conditionals does not entail that these conditionals are only indirectly verifiable.
The central point in these criticisms is that hypotheticals merely assert what would be the case
under certain conditions, while categoricals assert the occurrence of an event at some date in time. This
is further expanded by suggesting “that those categorical propositions which we seem to be unable to
‘reduce’ to other logical forms without doing apparent violence to normal usage, tend to direct
attention to-invite us to look for — things and events in a way which other kinds of expressions do not”
. But, of course, hypotheticals “direct attention to”, “invite us to look for”, “point semi-metaphorically”,
in exactly the same way as categoricals. For example, when the guide in the Battistero of Ravenna says
‘If you will look above your heads you will see the mosaic of the apostle in the cupola’ he is certainly
‘directing attention to’ and ‘inviting us to look for the mosaic of the apostle. Yet again, it is argued that
“In saying ‘There is a table next door’, I am, as it were, trying to refer to the table through the wall’ or to
the back or inside of the table as if it were not concealed but before me, in my sense field”.3 In asserting
that “There is a table next door” refers in the same way as does the sentence ‘There is a table before me’
Mr. Berlin supposes that he has to persuade us of something we do not believe. He does this by pointing
out that there is only an empirical difference between the two cases. Thus far he is correct. But he is
mistaken in supposing that this shows that a statement which is in danger of being taken as an
hypothetical refers in the same way as an undoubtedly categorical statement. The phenomenalist would
analyse ‘There is a table before me’ and “There is a table next door” as hypotheticals of the same kind.
The statement which is certainly categorical is the one describing the occurrence of an observation of
the table. If instead of comparing ‘There is a table next door’ with ‘There is a table before me’ we
compare “There is a table next door” with ‘I am having a table sense-datum’, we can no longer assert
that the difference in reference is merely spatial. We then fail to show that all categorical statements,
3
Berlin. op. cit., p. 302.
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material object or sense-datum, have a unique way of referring which distinguishes them from
hypotheticals. We only make clear that categorical material object statements all refer in the same way,
and this Mr. Berlin has done. He has not shown that categorical sense-datum statements refer in this
way, so his argument does not establish that categorical material object statements have an ostensive
pointing element which hypothetical sense-datum statements do not have.
To review: Mr. Berlin attempts to draw an important distinction between all categorical
statements and all hypothetical statements. He does this by considering several examples of categoricals
and claiming that they refer directly, ‘point’, in a way that hypotheticals do not. However, since all his
examples are chosen from material object statements, they do not enable him to argue that this
distinction between categoricals and hypotheticals also holds for sense-datum statements. Because of
this inadequate sampling he cannot conclude that categorical material object statements and
hypothetical sense-datum statements refer in different ways. Had his examples been more widely
chosen he would not have found that all categoricals ‘assert the occurrence of an event at some date in
time”.
III
Finally, Mr. Berlin cites a familiar objection against all analyses of categorical statements into
material implications. This general criticism has been made so often that it will be useful to consider
how satisfactory the material implication analysis of hypotheticals is, and what other alternatives there
are. The question is, then: given that categorical statements of the material object terminology are to be
analysed into hypothetical statements of the sense-datum terminology, or given that categorical
statements of a theory are to be analysed into hypothetical statements of a more basic language; are
these hypotheticals to be taken as material implications? First we want to make the assumption, which
we hope is a minimum one, that material object statements entail singular sense-datum statements but
that singular sense-datum statements only confirm material object statements. Then the objections to
interpreting singular sense-datum statements as material implications are these two:
(a) A material object statement ‘S’ may entail a hypothetical statement ‘⊃q’, and the negation
of the material object statement, ‘~S’ entail another hypothetical statement ‘p⊃~q’; and both the
hypotheticals may be entailed by a categorical statement ‘~p.q’.
(b) A physical object statement may be confirmed by falsifying the antecedent of a material
implication entailed by it.
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In order to assess these objections consider as examples the dispositional word ‘soluble’ and
the statement ‘This is soluble in water’. Suppose ‘This is soluble in water’ entails ‘If this is put in water,
then it disappears’, and suppose ‘This is insoluble in water’ entails ‘If this is put in water, then it does
not disappear’. If this, whatever it may be, never is put in water, then the antecedents of both
conditionals are false and so both the conditionals are true. This illustrates the first objection (a). The
second objection assumes that any statement entailing a statement which a theory also entails, confirms
that theory. It is, of course, not enough to assume that any statement entailed by a theory confirms the
theory; ‘If this is put in water, then it disappears’ confirms ‘This is soluble’, but ‘This has never been put
in water’ does not confirm ‘This is soluble’. For although ‘This has not been put in water’ entails ‘If this
is put in water, then it disappears’, the converse entailment does not hold. Therefore ‘This is soluble’
does not entail ‘This has never been put in water’. If we make the assumption, how ever, which the
second objection makes, that a theory is confirmed by any statement entailing a statement which the
theory also entails, ‘This is soluble’ is confirmed by ‘This has never been put in water’. But no one
wishes to say that a theory is confirmed by not being tested.
Accepting, for the moment, that these two objections show the material implication
interpretation to be unsatisfactory, what alternatives can be found? Perhaps it is possible to find a truth
functional connective other than material implication, one which will not be made true by the falsity of
the antecedent irregardless of the truth value of the consequent. We can have a connective which is
false when the first component is false, independent of the truth value of the second component. In fact
we have the connective ‘and’ with this truth table; but it does not suit our purpose here. Nor, it can
easily be shown, will any other truth functional connective, at least if only two truth values are allowed.
We can try, then, a connective which makes the conditional true in case both antecedent and
consequent are true, makes the conditional false if the antecedent is true and the consequent false, but is
inapplicable if the antecedent is false. This connective avoids the two objections we have cited. Yet it
does so at the cost of abandoning the law of the excluded middle, for now the falsity of the antecedent
entails that the conditional is neither true nor false. The use of the phrase ‘the conditional is
inapplicable or undecidable’ could lead us to suppose that it is inapplicable in the way that “It rained on
January 1st” is inapplicable on January 31st, or undecidable in the way that ‘It rained on January 1st’ is
un decidable by observations of whether it is raining on January 31st. The way in which this kind of
conditional is inapplicable is quite different. With some values of its antecedent it is logically
undecidable, and so meaningless on the verification criterion. We can avoid making the conditional
meaningless by allowing a third truth value, that of ‘undecidable’, although this is hardly justifiable if
we do not intend to work with a three valued logic in general. If ‘S’ is a statement belonging to a theory
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or a statement of the material object language, and ‘S’ entails the statement of lower order ‘p⊃q’ then
with the use of our non-truth functional conditional, the statement ‘~S’ will entail ‘p⊃~q’. No
difficulties about confirmation arise. This happy result is achieved by adopting three truth values for
‘p⊃q’, two truth values for ‘p’ and ‘q’, and two truth values for ‘S’. It also requires us to assume that by
‘~(p⊃q)’ we mean ‘p⊃q’ is false and do not mean ‘p⊃q’ is undecidable. For if this last possibility is
allowed then the negation of a theory statement or of a material object statement merely entails that the
order statement ‘p⊃q’ is undecidable or false.
Carnap’s reduction sentences do not offer a third way of avoiding the difficulties of material
implication, as it has often been said they do, though Carnap himself never claimed as much. In
general, each theory statement ‘S’ requires several pairs of reduction sentences, one member of each
pair specifying statements which entail ‘S’, the other member specifying statements which entail ‘Where
‘p’ and ‘pi’ are statements like ‘If this is put in water’ or ‘If I go into the next room’, and ‘q’ and ‘qi’
report the results of these operations, the reduction sentences are:
1 a. ‘p⊃(q⊃s)’
b. ‘pi⊃ (qi⊃~s)’
These are logically equivalent to:
2 a. ‘p.q)⊃s)’
b. ‘(pi. qi)⊃~s’
Taking the contrapositives of 2 a. and 2 b.:
3 a. ‘~s⊃~(p.q)’ b. ‘s⊃~(pi. qi)’
Rewriting ‘~(p.q)’ as ‘p⊃~q we have:
4 a. ‘~s⊃(p⊃~q)’ b. ‘s~(pi⊃~qi)’
Hence, a pair of reduction sentences asserts that a theory statement or a material object
statement entails an hypothetical statement of lower level. This is just the assumption which gives rise
to the problem of whether the entailed hypotheticals should be interpreted as material implications.
The use of reduction sentences does not provide a solution to our problem. In view of the difficulties of
this alternative, as well as of the others examined, let us return to scrutinise material implication more
closely. Are the original objections (a) and (b) sound?
Consider, first, objection (b). Assume, as we found was necessary if the objection is to hold,
that a statement is confirmed by the truth of another statement which entails one of its consequences,
e.g. that ‘This is soluble’ is confirmed by ‘This has never been put in water’ because the latter entails ‘If
this is put in water, then it disappears’. Objection (b) is that a statement cannot be confirmed by not
putting it to the test. But by the same reasoning ‘This has never been put in water’ confirms ‘This is
insoluble’, for the first statement also entails ‘If this is put in water, then it does not disappear’. Now if
two theories are both confirmed by the same statement, as is frequently the case, this statement cannot
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decide between them. So we arrive at the satisfactory conclusion that ‘This has never been put in water’
cannot decide between ‘This is soluble’ and ‘This is insoluble’. At least the conclusion is satisfactory
unless these two statements are contradictory. For then we have an empirical statement confirming a
contradiction. ‘This has never been put in water’ confirms ‘This is soluble’ and also confirms ‘This is
not soluble’. However, on the interpretation we have been taking of ‘This is soluble’ and ‘This is
insoluble’, which is undoubtedly the normal one, these two statements are not negations of each other.
The negation of ‘If this is put in water, then it disappears’ is expressible as ‘Not (if this is put in water,
then it disappears)’. The negation is not expressible as ‘If this is put in water, then it does not disappear’.
If this interpretation we have been using is accepted, ‘This is soluble’ and ‘This is insoluble’ are not
contradictory; the first entails the negation of the second, but the second’s negation does not entail the
first. The two statements are contraries.
Objection (a), that there are statements which are in agreement with both the material object
statement and its negation, depends, likewise, on a similar assumption. It supposes that ‘There is a table
in the next room’ entails ‘If I go in, then I shall see a table’ and ‘There is not a table in the next room’
entails ‘If I go in, then I shall not see a table’, and that therefore ‘There is a table in the next room’
contradicts ‘There is not a table in the next room’. If these last two statements are not contradictory,
then there is no reason why ‘I don’t go in the room and don’t see a table’ should not be compatible with
both. If we do make the two statements contradictory, we suppose that ‘There is a table in the next
room’ entails ‘If I go in, then I shall see a table’ and that ‘There is not a table in the next room’ entails
‘Not (if I go in, then I shall see a table)’. In this case there are no statements such as ‘I don’t go into the
room’ which are in agreement with both the table statement and its negation, and objection (a) does
not hold against this interpretation. But objection (b) becomes rather more severe; now ‘I don’t go into
the next room’ confirms ‘There is a table in the next room’ and disconfirms ‘There is not a table in the
next room’, instead of confirming both, as before. Moreover, the fatal objection to this interpretation is
that ‘There is not a table in the next room’ will entail ‘Not (if I go in, then I shall see a table)’ and this
last statement is equivalent to ‘I shall go into the next room and shall not see a table’. This is a
categorical statement which cannot be sup posed ordinarily to follow from ‘There is not a table in the
next room’, for the first categorical statement describes my behaviour as well as what I shall see.
Summing up: if we have a statement ‘S’ belonging to a theory or have a statement of the
material object language, and we interpret the statement as entailing, amongst other statements, the
statement of lower order ‘p⊃q’, then, because we wish all our statements of the level as ‘S’ to be
hypothetical, we have no use for the negation of ‘S’, for this negation entails a categorical statement of
lower level. We use, instead, a statement ‘T’ which is related to ‘S’ in such a way that it entails the
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negation of ‘S’, but that its negation does not entail ‘S’, and such that ‘T’ entails ‘p⊃~q’. There are some
primary statements agreeing with both ‘S’ and ‘T’; and there are some statements, e.g. ‘~p.q’ and ‘~p.~q’
that confirm ‘S and ‘T’ equally and cannot be used to decide between them. It is satisfactory to consider
statements such as ‘p⊃q’ as material implications provided it is not considered objectionable that ‘S
and ‘T’ do not contradict. This only appears paradoxical if we suppose the analysis of theory statements
to be identical with that of observation statements. After all, if the two analyses were the same there
would be no point in introducing the theory.
Applying these conclusions to the case of material object statements we have:
(1) A material object statement cannot be confirmed by simply not putting it to the test.
(2) Nor is it paradoxical that not putting it to the test is compatible with both the material
object statement and its contrary.
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