Waclaw Kusnierczyk schrieb:
> Ingvar Johansson wrote:
>
>> Waclaw Kusnierczyk schrieb:
>>
>>>
>>> I would think that, irrespectively of (1) being true or false (in the
>>> sense of its correctly describing the state of the matters, as in some
>>> flavour of the correspondence theory of truth), any of (2) and (3) is
>>> either true or false. Their truthlikeness is not really a measure of
>>> how much they are true, but rather of how much we certain that they (or
>>> the initial assumption) are or are not true.
>>>
>>>
>> You are saying that the truth of the notion of 'truthlikeness' is to be
>> found in an epistemological notion of 'truthlikeness'. But you are
>> simply bringing in *another notion* of 'truthlikeness' than the one that
>> I have presented. Don't present your own preferred views as being the
>> true interpretation of my views.
>>
>
> :)
>
> I haven't said that this was what *you* meant.
> (01)
Come on, look above. You wrote: "Their truthlikeness is *not really* a
measure of how much they are true, but *rather* of ..." (02)
>>> If we assume that (1) is simply (?) true, then both (2) and (3) must be
>>> (simply?) false to us.
>>>
>> As long as you stick to the polar notion of truth-falsity, then you have
>> to say that all propositions that are not 'simply true' are 'simply
>> false'. And then you end up in the curious position that all scientific
>> theories - today, in the past, and for an immensely long future to come
>> - are simply false.
>>
>
> Why? I don't see how this follows. Surely, there may be theories that
> are simply true? Even if only incidentally?
> (03)
It does not follow logically, but most scientists who believe in
truth-seeking seem to be of the opinion (which I share) that even
today's and tomorrow's theories will have to be revised. (04)
>> Usually, people who want to deny degrees and gray
>> zones, and who want to see everything in only black and white, end up in
>> curious positions. Here coms a quotation from Popper.
>>
>
> I do not deny degrees. I just say that -- for me, if you'd like it
> stressed -- truth is as you call it 'polar'. Truthlikeness maybe is
> not, but truthlikeness is not truth.
> (05)
You have not understood the concept of 'truthlikeness'. At one end it
contains 'simple truth', and at the other end 'simple falsity'. If it
could be linearly quantified, which I am fairly sure it cannot, then
'true' could be given the value 1 and 'false' the value 0. (06)
>> "I have in these last sections merely sketched a programme […] so as to
>> obtain a concept of /verisimilitude/ which allows us to speak, without
>> fear of talking nonsense, of /theories which are better or worse
>> approximations to truth/. I do not, of course, suggest that there can be
>> a criterion for the applicability of this notion, any more than there is
>> one for the notion of truth. But some of us (for example Einstein
>> himself) sometimes wish to say such things as that we have reason to
>> conjecture that Einstein’s theory of gravity is /not true/, but that it
>> is a /better approximation to truth/ than Newton’s. To be able to say
>> such things with a good conscience seems to me a major desideratum of
>> the methodology of the natural sciences ("Objective Knowlege", 1972, p.
>> 335)."
>>
>
> Here, apparently, Popper speaks about better or worse approximations of
> truth, not of better and worse truths. These approximations can be
> graded wrt. how well they approximate the truth -- but is this supposed
> to support the view that truth is or can be graded?
> (07)
You must be using some "principle of uncharity in interpretation".
Popper means that a "better approximation to truth" has a higher degree
of verisimilitude/truthlikeness than a "worse approximation to truth"
has. He subscribes (as do I) to a correspondence theory of truth, and he
thinks (as do I) that this correspondence allows for degrees. (08)
Ingvar (09)
>
> vQ
>
>
>
>> best,
>> Ingvar
>>
>>
>>> That (2) appears more truthlike than (3) to you
>>> reflects your uncertainty about how accurate (1) is. (Not 'how true (1)
>>> is'.)
>>>
>>> If I am sure that (1) is true, then (2) and (3) are equally truthlike to
>>> me, in that I am sure that both (2) and (3) are false. This is of
>>> course completely irrespective of whether any of (1), (2), (3) is true.
>>>
>>> But if I have any doubt in (1), then (2) and (3) should appear at least
>>> plausible to me. And, as far as my experience reaches, the situations
>>> in which it is raining are only some of the situations in which it is
>>> cloudy, and all situations in which it is raining are situations in
>>> which it is cloudy (leave exceptions aside). So yes, (2) appears more
>>> truthlike than (3) to me, but this is only in virtue of my doubt about
>>> (1)s truth, and irrespectively of the truth; either (1) or (2) are
>>> true, but not both, and none of them is 'partially true'.
>>>
>>> Another thing is how likely it is that, given that the sky is completely
>>> blue, it won't be completely blue in a few moments. So you could say
>>> that, given (1) is true, it is more likely that (2) will soon be true
>>> than it is for (3). I would expect that becomes cloudy before it begins
>>> to rain, and that it may get cloudy and not raining, but not the other
>>> way round. So, given (1), (2) is more truthlikely to me; but still,
>>> either (1) or (2) is true now, and either (1) or (2) will be true later.
>>>
>>> Given a statement s, we should keep separate the truthness of s (s is
>>> either true or not) and our confidence in that s is true (here you may
>>> have degrees). I agree that talking about truthlikeness may be very
>>> useful, but it is not talking about truth.
>>>
>>> (In the case of (1') and the rest, I would rather subscribe to (3').)
>>>
>>> vQ
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>
>
> (010)
--
Ingvar Johansson
IFOMIS, Saarland University
home site: http://ifomis.org/
personal home site:
http://hem.passagen.se/ijohansson/index.html (011)
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