Meaningfulness without Confirmability—A Reply

In the course of "Confirmability and factual meaningfulness" (See Analysis, 1973, 33, 3, 71-76.), Swinburne argued that the confirmationist (or weak verificationist) principle is false. This is the principle that a statement is factually meaningful if and only if either it is an observation-statement or there are observation-statements which, if true, would confirm or disconfirm it. In "Confirmability and meaningfulness" (See LLBA VIII/4, abstract #7405606.), R. I. Sikora attempted to show that Swinburne's main proposed example of a factually meaningful statement which was neither confirmable nor disconfirmable was in fact confirmable. The example is amended here to meet Sikora's criticisms and a general argument is produced to demonstrate that the amended example does make the point. AA