 Consider verificationism. While the idea to show metaphysics once-and-for-all and across-the-board to be not false but meaningless—arguably the most distinctive thesis associated with the Vienna Circle—did indeed have to be abandoned, two elements of that program remain so far unrefuted. On the one hand, it remains an option to pursue the search for a criterion of empirical significance in terms of constructed, formal languages further along the lines opened by Carnap with his theory-relative proposal of 1956 (and its later defense against critics). On the other hand—albeit at the cost of merging with the pragmatist tradition and losing the apparent Viennese distinctiveness—the option to neglect as cognitively irrelevant, and in this sense metaphysical, all assertions whose truth or falsity would not make a difference remains as open as it always was. In addition it must be noted that, properly formulated, neither the formalist version of the criterion of empirical significance for constructed languages nor the pragmatist version of the criterion for natural languages are threatened by self-refutation.