Combining Texts

Ideas for 'The Rationality of Science', 'On What Grounds What' and 'Writing the Book of the World'

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3 ideas

3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 3. Value of Truth
We don't care about plain truth, but truth in joint-carving terms [Sider]
     Full Idea: What we care about is truth in joint-carving terms, not just truth.
     From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 04.5)
     A reaction: The thought is that it matters what conceptual scheme is used to express the truth (the 'ideology'). Truths can be true but uninformative or unexplanatory.
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 6. Verisimilitude
More truthful theories have greater predictive power [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: If a theory is a better approximation to the truth, then it is likely that it will have greater predictive power.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], VIII.8)
Theories generate infinite truths and falsehoods, so they cannot be used to assess probability [Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: We cannot explicate a useful notion of verisimilitude in terms of the number of truths and the number of falsehoods generated by a theory, because they are infinite.
     From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.4)