 Now against both the pragmatic and the post-linguistic responses to the perceived failure of the attempt to provide a precise formal criterion of significance serious worries can be raised. Thus it must be asked whether without a precise way of determining when a statement ‘makes an appreciable difference’, criticism of metaphysics based on such a criterion may be not be considered as a biased dismissal rather than a demonstration of fact and so fall short of what is needed. Likewise in the case of the anti-deductivist response, it must be noted that a criterion based on analogical reasoning will only be as effective as the strength of the analogy which can always be criticized as inapt (and similarly for appeals to causal reasoning). The very point of exact philosophy in a scientific spirit—for many the very point of Vienna Circle philosophy itself—seems threatened by such maneuvres. Acquiescence in the perceived failure of the proposed criteria of significance thus comes with a price: if not that of abandoning Vienna Circle philosophy altogether, then at least that of formulating an alternative understanding to how some of its ambitions ought to be understood. (Recent reconstructive work on Carnap, Neurath and Frank may be regarded in this light.)