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The Significance of Verisimilitude

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Ilkk Niiniluoto
Ilkk Niiniluoto*
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki
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Extract

This paper defends the thesis that the concept of verisimilitude is an indispensable tool for the fallibllist and realist epistemology. Part of my argument consists in suggesting that this concept has important applications within the history and philosophy of science (Section 6). But this is not enough to convince a critical reader who suspects that talk about “closeness to the truth” is perhaps meaningless - or “mumbojumbo”, to use Laudan's (1981) expression. Surely a necessary condition for the significance of verisimilitude is its existence. Therefore, I also have to outline in some detail a programme which, at least in my view, leads to a satisfactory definition of the degrees of truthlikeness for various kinds of scientific statements (Sections 3 - 5). But first I try to give a,diagnosis of the main reasons why Popper's theory of truthlikeness failed (Sections 1 - 2).

Type
Part XV. Invited Paper: Truthlikeness
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1984 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1984 , 1984 , pp. 590 - 613
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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