The paper is an attack on two central aspects of the logical positivists' philosophy.

There, Quine turns the focus to the logical positivists' theory of meaning.

There are only two distinctions of statements that have any meaning to logical positivists.

The logical positivists, for example, associated meaning with scientific verification.

Earlier this century, the logical positivists portrayed science as the very model of impartial rationality.

The logical positivists argued that the meaning of a statement arose from how it is verified.

The logical positivists held a wide range of views on many matters.

A logical positivist might accept the propositions of Tractatus before 6.4.

Of course, some philosophers who were not logical positivists disagreed with this.

The logical positivists thought of scientific theories as statements in a formal language.