 Not surprisingly, it was the Circle’s rejection of metaphysics by means of their seemingly devastating criterion of cognitive significance that attracted immediate opposition. (That they did not deny all meaning to statements thus ruled out of court was freely admitted from early on, but this “expressive” surplus was considered secondary to so-called “cognitive” meaning and discountable in science (see Carnap 1928b, 1932a).) Notwithstanding the metaphysicans’ thunder, however, the most telling criticisms of the criterion came from within the Circle or broadly sympathetic philosophers. When it was protested that failure to meet an empiricist criterion of significance did not make philosophical statements meaningless, members of the Circle simply asked for an account of what this non-empirical and presumably non-emotive meaning consisted in and typically received no convincing answer. The weakness of their position was rather that their own criterion of empirical significance seemed to resist an acceptable formal characterization.