Another time, another place, another person

Abstract

In Language, Truth and Logic Ayer proceeded on the basis that a sentence uttered by A on a given occasion, if it was to have empirical meaning, had to make a statement which was verifiable by A on that occasion, and this led to the well known reduction of statements about the past to statements about present evidence, and of third-personal statements about the mental to statements about observable behaviour. (Statements about the future, of course, are not strictly speaking verifiable at the time of utterance, but nevertheless were allowed to count, presumably because there is something that the utterer can start to do at the time of utterance which will, in principle, issue in verification – roughly, waiting and seeing.)