Truth and Verisimilitude

The compatibility of scientific realism and evolutionary epistemology is a controversial issue in contemporary philosophy of science. Scientific realism is the view that scientific theories aim to describe the true nature of reality, while evolutionary epistemology is the view that scientific knowledge is the product of natural selection and adaptation. Some philosophers argue that evolutionary epistemology undermines the epistemic status of scientific theories and thus poses a serious challenge to scientific realism. This paper examines this problem and explores whether scientific (...) realism can be reconciled with evolutionary epistemology. The paper argues that critical rationalism (CR), a philosophical approach that rejects justificationism and emphasizes the role of criticism, rationality, and objectivity in science, can provide a viable framework for integrating scientific realism and evolutionary epistemology. The paper shows that by adopting a non-justificationist fallibilist stance toward scientific theories, CR can reconcile the realist and the evolutionary views on scientific knowledge. (shrink)

As a young man, Michael Polanyi gloried in the freedoms he experienced in turn of the century liberal society. He understood liberal society to be the beneficent heritage of Enlightenment thinking. Then the disasters of war, totalitarian rule, and economic breakdown occurred in the twentieth century. Were not these traumatic outcomes also products of Enlightenment thinking? In his 1946 book, Science, Faith and Society, Polanyi struggled to distinguish what was positive from what was negative in the legacy of Enlightenment influence. (...) He discerned that Enlightenment rejection of traditional sources of authority and skepticism about many sorts of normative claims needed to be rethought and replaced. This article examines the intellectual moves Polanyi makes to constitute a post-Enlightenment understanding of social philosophy. Among the features of his resulting philosophy are the importance of traditions as nurturers of norms, the central importance of persons accepting transcendent values embedded within conscience, and the social value of responsible persons relying upon the witness of feelings of existential meaning attuned to the welfare of significant purposes. (shrink)

There is a limited understanding amongst scientists, students and the public about realizing trust in scientific findings. This should be a paramount objective, or is it only about career ambition? What is the role of the individual? Scientists and the public need to know more about the link between the philosophy of science and the science research methods. There is a limited understanding of why accuracy is important and that it is not the same as precision. Also, there is often (...) the need to measure an approximation of a real system and the classic case is reductionism in biology versus whole organism biology. The author brings these topics together in terms of trusting in science. (shrink)

Presenting portraits of many central figures in modern physics, including Stephen Hawking and Leonard Susskind, this critique of modern theoretical physics provides the latest ideas about the nature of physical reality while clearly distinguishing between fact and fantasy.

The later Wittgenstein has been accused of veering into relativism. A stress on concepts, as expressed in language, can leave even science looking like one social practice amongst alternatives. The cognitive science of religion emphasizes the importance of a pre-social human nature, as the basis of all human cultures. Yet it has been seen as encouraging, and even assuming, a physicalist, and reductionist, approach to our conceptual architecture. Are the two visions in complete conflict, or can some of their respective (...) insights be combined? (shrink)

A collection of some of Sellars' lectures and articles from 1951 to 1962.

The traditional No-Miracles Argument (TNMA) asserts that the novel predictive success of science would be a miracle, and thus too implausible to believe, if successful theories were not at least approximately true. The TNMA has come under fire in multiple ways, challenging each of its premises and its general argumentative structure. While the TNMA relies on explaining novel predictive success via the truth of the theories, we put forth a deductive version of the No-Miracles argument (DNMA) that avoids inference to (...) the best explanation entirely. Instead, a relatively simple empirical framework and a probabilistic analysis can accomplish the ambitious goals of the TNMA while entirely sidestepping its problems. This close-but-distinct argument has many independent strengths and comparatively few weaknesses. Indeed, objections tailored specifically to the DNMA reveal surprising insights into how exactly NMAs are neither circular nor question-begging, as has been widely speculated. (shrink)

The notion of understanding occupies an increasingly prominent place in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of science, and moral theory. A central and ongoing debate about the nature of understanding is how it relates to the truth. In a series of influential contributions, Catherine Elgin has used a variety of familiar motivations for antirealism in philosophy of science to defend a non- factive theory of understanding. Key to her position are: (i) the fact that false theories can contribute to the upwards trajectory (...) of scientific understanding, and (ii) the essential role of inaccurate idealisations in scientific research. Using Elgin’s arguments as a foil, I show that a strictly factive theory of understanding has resources with which to offer a unified response to both the problem of idealisations and the role of false theories in the upwards trajectory of scientific understanding. Hence, strictly factive theories of understanding are viable notwithstanding these forceful criticisms. (shrink)

There are various conceptions of objectivity, a characteristic of the scientific enterprise, the most fundamental being objectivity as faithfulness to facts. A brute fact, which happens independently from us, becomes a scientific fact once we take cognisance of it through the means made available to us by science. Because of the complex, reciprocal relationship between scientific facts and scientific theory, the concept of objectivity as faithfulness to facts does not hold in the strict sense of an aperspectival faithfulness to brute (...) facts. Nevertheless, it holds in the large sense of an underdetermined faithfulness to scientific facts, as long as we keep in mind the complexity of the notion of scientific fact (as theory-laden), and the role of non-factual elements in theory choice (as underdetermined by facts). Science remains our best way to separate our factual beliefs from our other kinds of beliefs. (shrink)

"La struttura delle rivoluzioni scientifiche", dopo più di mezzo secolo dalla sua pubblicazione, è ancora in grado di offrire un contributo alla pratica filosofica? In questo articolo, attraverso i concetti peirceani di Abito, Abduzione e Verità, si propone una lettura pragmaticista del testo di Kuhn che intende rilanciare un fecondo confronto, ancora poco considerato, tra i due filosofi.

This paper is a response to Baumann's comments on "Can Knowledge Really be Non-fative?" In this paper Baumann's suggestions for how those who deny the factivty of knowledge might deal with the argument from inconsistency and explosion are addressed.

I distinguish three primary notions of objectivity that may be applied to the sciences. There is an ontological sense of objectivity which relates to the way in which the natural world exists independently of human thought. There is a semantic form of objectivity which relates to the nature of truth. There is an epistemic notion of objectivity which relates to the methodological norms and procedures which are employed in the sciences, and the epistemic justification of beliefs and theories which are (...) licensed by those norms and procedures. These three forms of objectivity may be brought into conjunction. It is because we employ methods of scientific inquiry which function to exclude subjective factors and to incorporate only genuinely epistemic factors that the results and theories of the sciences should be accepted. They should be accepted because by employing such methods we have the best chance of arriving at true beliefs about the nature of reality. In short, it is the epistemic objectivity of the methods of science that leads us to the objective truth about the objective world. (shrink)

Scientific realism is a thesis about the success of science. Most traditionally: science has been so successful at prediction and guiding action because its best theories are true (or approximately true or increasing in their degree of truth). If science is in the business of doing its best to generate true theories, then we should turn to those theories for explanatory knowledge, predictions, and guidance of our actions and decisions. Views that are popular in contemporary philosophy of science about scientific (...) modeling and the centrality of idealization create several challenges for this traditional form of scientific realism. Yet the basic idea behind scientific realism that science has been and will continue to be epistemically successful is deeply appealing. This chapter explores the challenges posed by idealization and scientific modeling to motivate a scientific realism fully divorced from the idea that science is in the business of generating true theories. On the resulting view, the objects of scientific knowledge are causal patterns, so this knowledge only ever provides partial, simplified accounts of a complex reality. This variety of selective realism better accommodates the nature of our present-day scientific successes and offers an interpretation of scientific progress that resists the antirealist’s pessimism. (shrink)

This paper advocates for making epistemic interests a central object of philosophical analysis in epistemology and philosophy of science. It is argued that the importance of epistemic interests derives from their fundamental importance for the notion of objectivity. Epistemic interests are defined as individuated by a set of objectives, each of which represents a dimension of the search for truth. Among these dimensions, specificity, sensitivity, and productivity are discussed in detail. It is argued that the relevance of productivity is often (...) overlooked in debates about the ends and means of science. A definition of the objectivity of inquiry is proposed that takes the notion of epistemic interest as its starting point. (shrink)

La vérité est le degré d’exactitude d’une représentation de la réalité. Nous postulons trois étapes cognitives : le psychon, produit par la perception ; le construit, produit par intellection; et l’acte de parole, produit par la communication. La vérité se trouve à la seconde étape; seuls les construits sont aléthiques. La vérité est une qualité qui vient en degrés. La certitude est le point d’aboutissement parfait et inaccessible de cette gradation ; il s’agit donc d’un concept idéal. Une thèse est (...) réputée vraie si son degré aléthique est acceptablement efficace, sinon la thèse est considérée comme fausse. En d’autres termes, nous jugeons vraie toute thèse n’ayant pas assez d’échecs pour qu’elle soit considérée fausse. (shrink)

This is a brief conceptual analysis of the limitations of scientific empiricism, which I have attempted to convey without relying too much on the scientific or philosophical jargon commonly used by experts—though I acknowledge the fact that ‘the truth’, as Oscar Wilde once said, ‘is rarely pure and never simple’. A while back, a psychic experiencer invited me to comment on his thesis concerning the reality of spiritual/psychic experiences. Through his lifelong, painstaking research, he sought scientific evidence—particularly from psychology, psychoanalysis, (...) and cognitive neuroscience—to substantiate the reality of psychic phenomena. My attempt to respond is elaborated in this discussion note. -/- Keywords: 'scientific' empiricism; faith; evidence; spirituality; psyche. (shrink)

In this paper, I reply to Seungbae Park’s (2021) reply to my (Mizrahi 2021) reply to his (Park 2020) critique of the view I defend in Chapter 6 of The Relativity of Theory: Key Positions and Arguments in the Contemporary Scientific Realism/Antirealism Debate (Cham: Springer, 2020), namely, Relative Realism. Relative Realism is the view that, of a set of competing scientific theories, the more successful theory is comparatively true. Comparative truth is a relation between competing theories. So, to say that (...) T1 is comparatively true is to say that T1 is closer to the truth than its competitors, T2, T3, …, Tn. In his latest reply, Park (2021) clarifies his notions of “T-space” and “F-space,” which he now labels “T-space” and “O-space,” and further develops what he calls the “Argument from Double Spaces,” which is supposed to show that, contrary to what the relative realist argues, relative judgments about the comparative truth of competing theories are not rationally justified. I argue that Park’s revised version of the “Argument from Double Spaces” still fails as an argument against Relative Realism. (shrink)

In True enough,, Elgin argues against veritism, which is the view that truth is the paramount epistemic objective. Elgin’s argument against veritism proceeds from considering the role that models, idealizations, and thought experiments play in science to the conclusion that veritism is unacceptable. In this commentary, I argue that Elgin’s argument fails as an argument against veritism. I sketch a refutation by logical analogy of Elgin’s argument. Just as one can aim at gold medals and still find approximations to gold, (...) such as silver and bronze medals, to be acceptable and honest achievements in competitive sports, one can aim at full truths as the paramount epistemic objective and still find approximations to truth, such as models and idealizations, to be acceptable and honest achievements in scientific inquiry. (shrink)

I provide a critical review of Moti Mizrahi's The Relativity of Theory, expounding on the book's strengths and then providing an extended argument that Mizrahi mischaracterizes the epistemic attitude of concern to antirealism about science as well as the practical stakes involved in adopting the antirealist position.

Truth is the degree of accuracy when representing reality. We postulate three cognitive stages: the psychon, produced by perception; the construct, produced by intellection; and the speech act, produced by communication. Truth lies in the second; only constructs are alethic. Truth is a quality which takes place in degrees. Certainty is the unreachable perfect tip of this gradation, so it is an ideal concept. A thesis is deemed true if its alethical degree is acceptably efficacious, otherwise the thesis is deemed (...) false. Put in other words, we deem true any thesis not having enough fails to deem it false. (shrink)

Notwithstanding what the champions of post-truth may think, truth remains a key concept of scientific research. In this contribution, several theories of factual truth are evaluated with the help of a simple and straightforward tool, i.e., a logical table of contingency. Its application shows that most contemporary disconcerting theories of truth have critical flaws, and that, albeit imperfect, truth-as-correspondence is still the best theory. Further criticism of correspondence as adaequatio, compliance and isomorphism suggests that correspondence-as-mapping constitutes a more acceptable theory. (...) This contribution provides a definition and examples in the empirical sciences. (shrink)

Algunos defensores del realismo científico, particularmente Ilkka Niiniluoto y Philip Kitcher, han intentado moderar las tesis ontológicas más fuertes del realismo buscando la integración de la teoría de la verdad como correspondencia con alguna versión matizada del relativismo conceptual propugnado por Putnam, según el cual el mundo carece de una estructura propia y, por tanto, la ontología depende de nuestros esquemas conceptuales. No es claro, sin embargo, que ambas cosas se puedan armonizar fácilmente. Si nuestro conocimiento del mundo está mediado (...) por nuestras categorías y conceptos, y si además la elección de esas categorías y conceptos puede variar en función de nuestros intereses y no obedecen a la existencia de unos supuestos géneros naturales o a una estructura propia del mundo, se torna entonces problemático establecer a qué corresponden nuestros enunciados verdaderos. ¿Corresponden al mundo independiente de nuestra mente o al mundo estructurado por nosotros mediante nuestras categorías y conceptos? En este artículo se presentarán las principales dificultades que encuentra este proyecto de realismo moderado tanto en Niiniluoto como en Kitcher, se analizarán sus propuestas para solventar dichas dificultades, mostrando sus insuficiencias y, finalmente, se propondrá una modalidad de realismo ontológico moderado que, recogiendo algo del espíritu de la relatividad conceptual de Putnam, es lo suficientemente fuerte como para sustentar una teoría de la verdad como correspondencia. Replucación autorizada. Publicado por primera vez en Contrastes vol. XII. (shrink)

Le réalisme scientifique occupe une place centrale dans le système philosophique de Mario Bunge. Au cœur de cette thèse, on trouve l’affirmation selon laquelle nous pouvons connaître le monde partiellement. Il s’ensuit que les théories scientifiques ne sont pas totalement vraies ou totalement fausses, mais plutôt partiellement vraies et partiellement fausses. Ces énoncés sur la connaissance scientifique, à première vue plausible pour quiconque est familier avec la pratique scientifique, demandent néanmoins à être clarifiés, précisés et, ultimement, à être inclus dans (...) un cadre théorique plus large et rigoureux. Depuis ses toutes premières publications sur ces questions et jusqu’à récemment, Mario Bunge n’a cessé d’interpeller les philosophes afin qu’ils développent une théorie, au sens propre du terme, de la vérité partielle afin de clarifier les enjeux épistémologiques liés au réalisme scientifique. Bunge a lui-même proposé plusieurs parties de cette théorie au fil des années, mais aucune de ces propositions ne l’a satisfait pleinement et la construction de cette théorie demeure un problème entier. Dans ce texte, nous passerons rapidement en revue certaines des approches proposées par Bunge dans ses publications et nous esquisserons certaines pistes qui devraient servir à tout le moins de desiderata pour la construction d’une théorie de la vérité partielle. (shrink)

Semantic realism can be characterised as the idea that scientific theories are truth-bearers, and that they are true or false in virtue of the world. This notion is often assumed, but rarely discussed in the literature. I examine how it fares in the context of the semantic view of theories and in connection with the literature on scientific representation. Making sense of semantic realism requires specifying the conditions of application of theoretical models, even for models that are not actually used, (...) which leads to several difficulties. My conclusion is that semantic realism is far more demanding than one would expect. Finally, I briefly examine some pragmatist alternatives. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this journal, entitled ‘Scientific Progress: Why Getting Closer to Truth is Not Enough’ (2017), Moti Mizrahi argues that the view of progress as approximation to the truth or increasing verisimilitude is plainly false. The key premise of his argument is that on such a view of progress, in order to get closer to the truth one only needs to arbitrarily add a true disjunct to a hypothesis or theory. Since quite clearly scientific progress is not (...) a matter of adding true disjuncts to theories, the argument goes, the view of progress as approximation to the truth is untenable. We show that the key premise of Mizrahi’s argument is false: according to verisimilitude-based accounts of progress, adding arbitrary true disjuncts to existing theories is just not enough to get closer to the truth. (shrink)

A crucial aspect of scientific realism is what do we mean by true. In Luk’s theory and model of scientific study, a theory can be believed to be “true” but a model is only accurate. Therefore, what do we mean by a “true” theory in scientific realism? Here, we focus on exploring the notion of truth by some thought experiments and we come up with the idea that truth is related to what we mean by the same. This has repercussion (...) to the repeatability of the experiments and the predictive power of scientific knowledge. Apart from sameness, we also found that truth is related to the granularity of the observation, the limit of detection, the distinguishability of the objects in theory, the simultaneous measurements of objects/processes, the consistencies of the theory and the one-to-one correspondence between terms/events and objects/processes, respectively. While there is no guarantee that we can arrive at the final “true” theory, we have a process/procedure with more and more experiments together with our own ingenuity, to direct us towards such a “true” theory. For quantum mechanics, since a particle is also regarded as a wave, quantum mechanics cannot be considered as a true theory based on the correspondence theory of truth. Failing this, truth may be defined by the coherence theory of truth which is similar to the coherence of beliefs. However, quantum mechanics may not be believed to be a true theory based on the coherence theory of truth because wave properties and particle properties may contradict. Further research is needed to address this problem if we want to regard quantum mechanics as a “true” theory. (shrink)

Elgin offers an influential and far-reaching challenge to veritism. She takes scientific understanding to be non-factive and maintains that there are epistemically useful falsehoods that figure ineliminably in scientific understanding and whose falsehood is no epistemic defect. Veritism, she argues, cannot account for these facts. This paper argues that while Elgin rightly draws attention to several features of epistemic practices frequently neglected by veritists, veritists have numerous plausible ways of responding to her arguments. In particular, it is not clear that (...) false propositional commitments figure ineliminably in understanding in the manner supposed by Elgin. Moreover, even if scientific understanding were non-factive and false propositional commitments did figure ineliminably in understanding, the veritist can account for this in several ways without thereby abandoning veritism. (shrink)

Recently Kenneth Kendler and Peter Zachar have raised doubts about the correspondence theory of truth and scientific realism in psychopathology. They argue that coherentist or pragmatist approaches to truth are better suited for understanding the reality of psychiatric disorders. In this article, I show that rejecting realism based on the correspondence theory is deeply problematic: It makes psychopathology categorically different from other sciences, and results in an implausible view of scientific discovery and progress. As an alternative, I suggest a robustness-based (...) approach that can accommodate the significance of coherence and pragmatic factors without rejecting scientific realism and the correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

Lyons (2016, 2017, 2018) formulates Laudan’s (1981) historical objection to scientific realism as a modus tollens. I present a better formulation of Laudan’s objection, and then argue that Lyons’s formulation is supererogatory. Lyons rejects scientific realism (Putnam, 1975) on the grounds that some successful past theories were (completely) false. I reply that scientific realism is not the categorical hypothesis that all successful scientific theories are (approximately) true, but rather the statistical hypothesis that most successful scientific theories are (approximately) true. Lyons (...) rejects selectivism (Kitcher, 1993; Psillos, 1999) on the grounds that some working assumptions were (completely) false in the history of science. I reply that selectivists would say not that all working assumptions are (approximately) true, but rather that most working assumptions are (approximately) true. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis discussion note aims to contribute to the ongoing debate over the nature of scientific progress. I argue against the semantic view of scientific progress, according to which scientific progress consists in approximation to truth or increasing verisimilitude. If the semantic view of scientific progress were correct, then scientists would make scientific progress simply by arbitrarily adding true disjuncts to their hypotheses or theories. Given that it is not the case that scientists could make scientific progress simply by arbitrarily adding (...) true disjuncts to their hypotheses or theories, it follows that the semantic view of scientific progress is incorrect. (shrink)

After a brief presentation of the Verisimilitudinarian approach to scientific progress, I argue that the notion of estimated verisimilitude is too weak for the purposes of scientific realism. Despite the realist-correspondist intuition that inspires the model—the idea that our theories get closer and closer to ‘the real way the world is’—, Bayesian estimations of truthlikeness are not objective enough to sustain a realist position. The main argument of the paper is that, since estimated verisimilitude is not connected to actual verisimilitude, (...) the way the Verisimilitudinarian account works is not in the end different from other antirealist accounts. Finally, I briefly present Alexander Bird’s cumulative approach to scientific progress, and argue that it has a similar problem; Bird has in mind truth in the correspondence sense, but all the metaphysical weight is put on the notion of ‘approximate truth’—whose connection to ‘the real way the world is’ is not clear. (shrink)

Ian Hacking defines a “style of scientific thinking” loosely as a “way to find things out about the world” characterised by five hallmark features of a number of scientific template styles. Most prominently, these are autonomy and “self-authentication”: a scientific style of thinking, according to Hacking, is not good because it helps us find out the truth in some domain, it itself defines the criteria for truth-telling in its domain. I argue that Renaissance medicine, Mediaeval “demonology”, and magical thinking pass (...) muster as scientific according to Hacking's criteria. However, application of these thought styles to the entities they introduce generates statements that logically imply a set of “ordinary” statements—or what Bernard Williams calls “plain truths”—which, contra the claims of autonomy and self-authentication, allows styles to be assessed from a style- independent perspective. Using Williams’ notion of plain truth, I show that Renaissance medicine, demonology, and magical thinking, in reality issue in many plain falsehoods. This confronts us with what I call Hacking's dilemma: either define stricter necessary conditions on being a style of scientific thinking, or concede that some styles albeit scientific are not as good at finding things out about the world as others. I make three suggestions to deal with the dilemma. (shrink)

The paper is a sketch of a conception of approximative truth (or verisimilitude). The concepts of relative error, and degree of inadequacy are introduced. By means of them the concept of truth-content of quantitative facts-statements, laws and theories is defined. Laws and theories accepted in science have a high truth-content, i.e. they are approximately true.

Asay (2018) criticizes our contention that psychologists do best to adhere to a substantive theory of correspondence truth. He argues that deflationary theory can serve the same purposes as correspondence theory. In the present article we argue that (a) scientific realism, broadly construed, requires a version of correspondence theory and (b) contrary to Asay’s suggestion, correspondence theory does have important additional resources over deflationary accounts in its ability to support generalizations over classes of true sentences.

The goal of this paper is to provide an interpretation of Feyerabend's metaphysics of science as found in late works like Conquest of Abundance and Tyranny of Science. Feyerabend's late metaphysics consists of an attempt to criticize and provide a systematic alternative to traditional scientific realism, a package of views he sometimes referred to as “scientific materialism.” Scientific materialism is objectionable not only on metaphysical grounds, nor because it provides a poor ground for understanding science, but because it implies problematic (...) claims about the epistemic and cultural authority of science, claims incompatible with situating science properly in democratic societies. I show how Feyerabend's metaphysical view, which I call “the abundant world” or “abundant realism,” constitute a sophisticated and challenging form of ontological pluralism that makes interesting connections with contemporary philosophy of science and issues of the political and policy role of science in a democratic society. (shrink)

The modern discussion on the concept of truthlikeness was started in 1960. In his influential Word and Object, W. V. O. Quine argued that Charles Peirce's definition of truth as the limit of inquiry is faulty for the reason that the notion 'nearer than' is only "defined for numbers and not for theories". In his contribution to the 1960 International Congress for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science at Stan­ ford, Karl Popper defended the opposite view by defining a compara­tive (...) notion of verisimilitude for theories. The concept of verisimilitude was originally introduced by the Ancient sceptics to moderate their radical thesis of the inaccessibility of truth. But soon verisimilitudo, indicating likeness to the truth, was confused with probabilitas, which expresses an opiniotative attitude weaker than full certainty. The idea of truthlikeness fell in disrepute also as a result of the careless, often confused and metaphysically loaded way in which many philosophers used - and still use - such concepts as 'degree of truth', 'approximate truth', 'partial truth', and 'approach to the truth'. Popper's great achievement was his insight that the criticism against truthlikeness - by those who urge that it is meaningless to speak about 'closeness to truth' - is more based on prejudice than argument. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Haig and Borsboom explore the relevance of the theory of truth for psychological science. Although they conclude that correspondence theories of truth are best suited to offer the resources for making sense of scientific practice, they leave open the possibility that other theories might accomplish those same ends. I argue that deflationary theories of truth, which deny that there is any substantive property that unifies the class of truths, makes equally good sense of scientific practice as (...) the correspondence theory, but at lesser theoretical cost. I also argue that the considerations Haig and Borsboom draw on are better thought of as issues relevant to realism, and thus separate from the theory of truth. I conclude that while they are correct to engage questions about what makes true the various claims that arise in psychological research, they may do so without saddling themselves with a correspondence theory. (shrink)

Scientists often use aesthetic values in the evaluation and choice of theories. Aesthetic values are not only regarded as leading to practically more useful theories but are often taken to stand in a special epistemic relation to the truth of a theory such that the aesthetic merit of a theory is evidence of its truth. This paper explores what aesthetic considerations influence scientists' reasoning, how such aesthetic values relate to the utility of a scientific theory, and how one can justify (...) the epistemic role for such values. The paper examines ways in which the link between beauty and truth can be defended, the challenges facing such accounts, and explores alternative epistemic roles for aesthetic values in scientific practice. (shrink)

The notion of truthlikeness, coined by Karl Popper, has very much fallen into oblivion, but the paper defends it. It can be regarded in two different ways. Either as a notion that is meaningful only if some formal measure of degree of truthlikeness can be constructed; or as a merely non-formal comparative notion that nonetheless has important functions to fulfill. It is the latter notion that is defended; it is claimed that such a notion is needed for both a reasonable (...) backward-looking and a reasonable forward-looking view of science. On the one hand, it is needed in order to make sense of the history of science as containing a development; on the other, it is needed in order to understand present-day sciences as containing knowledge-seeking activities. The defense of truthlikeness requires also a defense of two other notions: quasi-comparisons and regulative ideas, which is supplied in this paper as well. (shrink)

The criticisms levelled at the notion of truth by an anti-realist and an entity-realist are critically examined. The upshot of the discussion will be that whilst neither of the two anti-truth philosophers have succeeded in establishing their cases against truth, for entity-realists to reject the notion of truth is to throw out the baby with the bath water: entity-realism without the notion of correspondence truth will degenerate into anti-realism.

Charles Sanders Peirce has been characterized as the greatest American philosophic genius. He is the creator of pragmatism and one of the founders of modern logic. James, Royce, Schroder, and Dewey have acknowledged their great indebtedness to him. A laboratory scientist, he made notable contributions to geodesy, astronomy, psychology, induction, probability, and scientific method. He introduced into modern philosophy the doctrine of scholastic realism, developed the concepts of chance, continuity, and objective law, and showed the philosophical significance of the theory (...) of signs and mathematical logic. The present series is the first published edition of his systematic works. (shrink)

The discourse on nihilism in the German-speaking world continues to take its orientation primarily from Friedrich Nietzsche’s understanding of nihilism as a historical movement of the decline of values. This means that the aspects of nihilism that are not tied to specific epochs and cultures are not accorded due importance (I). In order to make a reappraisal of nihilism that does justice to these objective contents, I will present a classification of types of nihilism and of arguments that support it. (...) The discussion of the typology of the principal meanings of nihilism points to a loss in relevance of conceptions that take their orientation from Nietzsche (II). The discussion of the arguments testifies to the importance of objective knowledge in the justification of nihilism (III). (shrink)

Three related intuitions are explicated in this paper. The first is the idea that there must be some kind of probabilistic version of the HD-method, a 'Hypothetico-Probabilistic method', in terms of something like probabilistic consequences, instead of deductive consequences. According to the second intuition, the comparative application of this method should also be functional for some probabilistic kind of empirical progress, and according to the third intuition this should be functional for something like probabilistic truth approximation. In all three cases, (...) the guiding idea is to explicate these intuitions by explicating the crucial notions as appropriate 'concretizations' of their deductive analogs, being 'idealizations'. It turns out that the comparative version of the proposed HP-method amounts to the likelihood comparison method applied to the cumulated evidence. This method turns out to be not only functional for probabilistic empirical progress but also for probabilistic truth approximation. The latter is based on a probabilistic threshold theorem constituting for this reason the analog of the deductive success theorem. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam deals in this book with some of the most fundamental persistent problems in philosophy: the nature of truth, knowledge and rationality. His aim is to break down the fixed categories of thought which have always appeared to define and constrain the permissible solutions to these problems.