Ingvar Johansson wrote:
> 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.
>>
>
> Come on, look above. You wrote: "Their truthlikeness is *not really* a
> measure of how much they are true, but *rather* of ..." (01)
Ok, so replace 'their truthlikeness is not really ...' with 'their
truthlikeness as wk understands the term is not really that what wk
thinks is what ij means by this term.' (02)
Apologies for presenting my own preferred views as if they were
presented as being the true interpretation of your views. (03)
>
>>>> 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?
>>
>
> 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)
I agree with this, but your 'are simply false' was much stronger than
what you actually seem to mean. (No presentation of my own views as
yours intended.) (05)
>
>>> 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.
>>
>
> 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)
It does not have to be linearly quantified to have extremes given the
values 0 and 1. (07)
Yes, it seems to me that I am confused with this way of characterizing
truthlikeness. (08)
>
>>> "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?
>>
>
> You must be using some "principle of uncharity in interpretation". (09)
o? (010)
> 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. (011)
Fine, but this still does not seem to give support to the view that
truth can be graded. Approximations, yes. (012)
vQ
>
> Ingvar
>
>> 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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>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
> (013)
--
Wacek Kusnierczyk (014)
------------------------------------------------------
Department of Information and Computer Science (IDI)
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Sem Saelandsv. 7-9
7027 Trondheim
Norway (015)
tel. 0047 73591875
fax 0047 73594466
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