more on this theme | more from this text
Full Idea
If realists think an ideal theory could be false, then the theory is consistent, and hence complete, and hence finitely modellable, and hence it is guaranteed that there is some way to make it true.
Gist of Idea
An ideal theory can't be wholly false, because its consistency implies a true model
Source
Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 02.2)
Book Ref
Button,Tim: 'The Limits of Realism' [OUP 2013], p.17
A Reaction
[compressed] This challenges the realists' supposed claim that even the most ideal of theories could possibly be false. Presumably for a theory to be 'ideal' is not all-or-nothing. Are we capable of creating a fully ideal theory? [Löwenheim-Skolem]
Related Idea
Idea 18692 Realists believe in independent objects, correspondence, and fallibility of all theories [Button]
| 18692 | Realists believe in independent objects, correspondence, and fallibility of all theories [Button] |
| 18693 | Indeterminacy arguments say if a theory can be made true, it has multiple versions [Button] |
| 18694 | Permutation Theorem: any theory with a decent model has lots of models [Button] |
| 18695 | An ideal theory can't be wholly false, because its consistency implies a true model [Button] |
| 18696 | The vagueness of truthmaker claims makes it easier to run anti-realist arguments [Button] |
| 18697 | A sentence's truth conditions are all the situations where it would be true [Button] |
| 18698 | Predictions give the 'content' of theories, which can then be 'equivalent' or 'adequate' [Button] |
| 18700 | Cartesian scepticism doubts what is true; Kantian scepticism doubts that it is sayable [Button] |
| 18701 | The coherence theory says truth is coherence of thoughts, and not about objects [Button] |