Verificationism, also known as the verification principle or the verifiability criterion of meaning, is the philosophical doctrine which asserts that a statement is meaningful only if it is either empirically verifiable (i.e. confirmed through the senses) or a truth of logic (e.g., tautologies).
Verificationism rejects statements of metaphysics, theology, ethics, and aesthetics, as cognitively meaningless.[1][2] Such statements may be meaningful in influencing emotions or behavior, but not in terms of conveying truth value, information, or factual content.[3] Verificationism was a central thesis of logical positivism, a movement in analytic philosophy that emerged in the 1920s by philosophers who sought to unify philosophy and science under a common naturalistic theory of knowledge.