Concept
Intersubjective verifiability
Overview
Intersubjective verifiability is the capacity of a concept to be readily and accurately communicated between individuals ("intersubjectively"), and to be reproduced under varying circumstances for the purposes of verification. It is a core principle of empirical, scientific investigation.
Although there are areas of belief that do not consistently employ intersubjective verifiability (e.g., many religious claims), intersubjective verifiability is a near-universal way of arbitrating truth claims used by people everywhere. In its basic form, it can be found in colloquial expressions, e.g., "I'm from Missouri. Show me!" or "Seeing is believing". The scientific principle of replication of findings by investigators other than those that first reported the phenomenon is simply a more highly structured form of the universal principle of intersubjective verifiability.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Simplicity and objectivity do not have to be secured through elaborate and labored metaphysical construction. The data are simple and the hypothesis objective in so far as they accomplish the work where unto they are called--the removal of conflict, ambiguity, and inhibition in conduct and affection. In the experimental conception of inference it is clear that the principles of formal logic must play their role…
John Dewey, Creative Intelligence
States what Intersubjective verifiability is.
To certain facts, certain facts always do, and, as we believe, will continue to, succeed. The invariable antecedent is termed the cause; the invariable consequent, the effect. And the universality of the law of causation consists in this, that every consequent is connected in this manner with some particular antecedent, or set of antecedents.
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Intersubjective verifiability is.
The holding of a thing to be true is a phenomenon in our understanding which may rest on objective grounds, but requires, also, subjective causes in the mind of the person judging. If a judgement is valid for every rational being, then its ground is objectively sufficient, and it is termed a conviction. If, on the other hand, it has its ground in the particular character of the subject, it is termed a persuasion…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
States what Intersubjective verifiability is.
Related ideas
- Empiricism
- Intersubjectivity
- Physics
- Anthroposophy
- Religion
- Science
- Semantics
- Mysticism
- Experience
- Truth
- Theory
- Subject and object (philosophy)
- Reproducibility
- Phenomenon
- Albert Einstein
- Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy)
Place in the tradition
Part of Phenomenology (philosophy).
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