Logical positivist's theory of meaning can be claimed to be a formulation of atomistic theory of meaning. This view can be seen in continuation to Frege and Early Wittgenstein's approaches to meaning. This is because logical positivists hold the same view as Frege and Early Wittgenstein ascribe, i.e. the meaning of a proposition is determined by its truth-value. This prescription on meaning is atomistic because it holds that the meaning of a proposition can be determined in isolation from the rest of the propositions in a language. Thus, meaning of a sentence does not require any further propositions or its understanding. It is self-sufficient and self-evident to convey its meaning independently from other propositions. This is so because the main concern of meaning, as argued here, is about the facts or state of affairs of the world. The proposition which states about facts or states of affairs of the world will be regarded as true when the meaning of the proposition corresponds to the facts of the world, and if it does not, then the proposition will be treated as false.

Logical positivism accepts a full-blooded version of this view of meaning. Its concern for empirical knowledge exerts considerable influence on its view on meaning. Meaning is thus viewed in experiential term. Accordingly, logical positivists argue that a proposition will be meaningful if it is either true or false, and truth or falsity will be decided in the light of sense-experience. In this connection, they introduced verifiability as a criterion of meaning through which they tried to establish the inseparable connection between meaning and sense-experience. According to them, the sense of a proposition means to know the method of its verification. While perusing this they considered only individual propositions for verification through which meaning of a sentence under consideration is established. It is through verifiability criteria one confirms whether the meaning of a proposition matches correctly with the facts of the world or not. Accordingly, the truth-value of the proposition is decided. If a proposition does not have any truth-value it is rendered meaningless.

On this ground, logical positivists made a claim that a sentence is meaningful if and only if what it expresses is either analytic or empirically verifiable. From this it is held that to know the meaning of a proposition is to know its truth-value. Hence, for a statement not having truth-value means it is regarded as meaningless statement. On this ground, they criticized Kant's synthetic-a priori statements. First of all, a statement cannot be both synthetic and a priori. It is a contradiction in terms. Here, logical positivists claim that synthetic-a priori statements do not deal with the facts or states of affairs of the phenomenal world, rather they deal with the metaphysical entities which cannot be verified empirically by the help of our observational experiences. Further, it gives us the knowledge about the metaphysical reality which transcends our experience all together. Thus, synthetic- a priori statements are meaningless.