 Let us briefly examine an example of the strong form of the thesis that metaphysics is impossible. The logical positivists maintained that the meaning of a (non-analytic) statement consisted entirely in the predictions it made about possible experience. They maintained, further, that metaphysical statements (which were obviously not put forward as analytic truths) made no predictions about experience. Therefore, they concluded, metaphysical statements are meaningless—or, better, the “statements” we classify as metaphysical are not really statements at all: they are things that look like statements but aren't, rather as mannequins are things that look like human beings but aren't.