Download or read book Truthlikeness written by I. Niiniluoto and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern discussion on the concept of truthlikeness was started in 1960. In his influential Word and Object, W. V. O. Quine argued that Charles Peirce's definition of truth as the limit of inquiry is faulty for the reason that the notion 'nearer than' is only "defined for numbers and not for theories". In his contribution to the 1960 International Congress for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science at Stan ford, Karl Popper defended the opposite view by defining a compara tive notion of verisimilitude for theories. was originally introduced by the The concept of verisimilitude Ancient sceptics to moderate their radical thesis of the inaccessibility of truth. But soon verisimilitudo, indicating likeness to the truth, was confused with probabilitas, which expresses an opiniotative attitude weaker than full certainty. The idea of truthlikeness fell in disrepute also as a result of the careless, often confused and metaphysically loaded way in which many philosophers used - and still use - such concepts as 'degree of truth', 'approximate truth', 'partial truth', and 'approach to the truth'. Popper's great achievement was his insight that the criticism against truthlikeness - by those who urge that it is meaningless to speak about 'closeness to truth' - is more based on prejudice than argument.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism written by Juha Saatsi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 907 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientific realism is a central, long-standing, and hotly debated topic in philosophy of science. Debates about scientific realism concern the very nature and extent of scientific knowledge and progress. Scientific realists defend a positive epistemic attitude towards our best theories and models regarding how they represent the world that is unobservable to our naked senses. Various realist theses are under sceptical fire from scientific antirealists, e.g. empiricists and instrumentalists. The different dimensions of the ensuing debate centrally connect to numerous other topics in philosophy of science and beyond. The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism is an outstanding reference source – the first collection of its kind – to the key issues, positions, and arguments in this important topic. Its thirty-four chapters, written by a team of international experts, are divided into five parts: Historical development of the realist stance Classic debate: core issues and positions Perspectives on contemporary debates The realism debate in disciplinary context Broader reflections In these sections, the core issues and debates presented, analysed, and set into broader historical and disciplinary contexts. The central issues covered include motivations and arguments for realism; challenges to realism from underdetermination and history of science; different variants of realism; the connection of realism to relativism and perspectivism; and the relationship between realism, metaphysics, and epistemology. The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of science. It will also be very useful for anyone interested in the nature and extent of scientific knowledge.
Download or read book Beyond Truthlikeness written by Eric Christian Barnes and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Likeness to Truth written by G. Oddie and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of likeness to truth, like that of truth itself, is fundamental to a realist conception of inquiry. To demonstrate this we need only make two rather modest aim of an inquiry, as an inquiry, is realist assumptions: the truth doctrine (that the the truth of some matter) and the progress doctrine (that one false theory may realise this aim better than another). Together these yield the conclusion that a false theory may be more truthlike, or closer to the truth, than another. It is the aim of this book to give a rigorous philosophical analysis of the concept of likeness to truth, and to examine the consequences, some of them no doubt surprising to those who have been unduly impressed by the (admittedly important) true/false dichotomy. Truthlikeness is not only a requirement of a particular philosophical outlook, it is as deeply embedded in common sense as the concept of truth. Everyone seems to be capable of grading various propositions, in different (hypothetical) situations, according to their closeness to the truth in those situations. And (if my experience is anything to go by) there is remarkable unanimity on these pretheoretical judge ments. This is not proof that there is a single coherent concept underlying these judgements. The whole point of engaging in philosophical analysis is to make this claim plausible.
Download or read book From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism written by Theo A.F. Kuipers and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surprisingly, modified versions of the confirmation theory (Carnap and Hempel) and truth approximation theory (Popper) turn out to be smoothly sythesizable. The glue between the two appears to be the instrumentalist methodology, rather than that of the falsificationalist. The instrumentalist methodology, used in the separate, comparative evaluation of theories in terms of their successes and problems (hence, even if already falsified), provides in theory and practice the straight road to short-term empirical progress in science ( à la Laudan). It is also argued that such progress is also functional for all kinds of truth approximation: observational, referential, and theoretical. This sheds new light on the long-term dynamics of science and hence on the relation between the main epistemological positions, viz., instrumentalism (Toulmin, Laudan), constructive empiricism (Van Fraassen), referential realism (Hacking, Cartwright), and theory realism of a non-essentialist nature (constructive realism à la Popper). Readership: Open minded philosophers and scientists. The book explains and justifies the scientist's intuition that the debate among philosophers about instrumentalism and realism has almost no practical consequences.
Download or read book Towards the Future of Fuzzy Logic written by Rudolf Seising and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-05-26 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides readers with a snapshot of the state-of-the art in fuzzy logic. Throughout the chapters, key theories developed in the last fifty years as well as important applications to practical problems are presented and discussed from different perspectives, as the authors hail from different disciplines and therefore use fuzzy logic for different purposes. The book aims at showing how fuzzy logic has evolved since the first theory formulation by Lotfi A. Zadeh in his seminal paper on Fuzzy Sets in 1965. Fuzzy theories and implementation grew at an impressive speed and achieved significant results, especially on the applicative side. The study of fuzzy logic and its practice spread all over the world, from Europe to Asia, America and Oceania. The editors believe that, thanks to the drive of young researchers, fuzzy logic will be able to face the challenging goals posed by computing with words. New frontiers of knowledge are waiting to be explored. In order to motivate young people to engage in the future development of fuzzy logic, fuzzy methodologies, fuzzy applications, etc., the editors invited a team of internationally respected experts to write the present collection of papers, which shows the present and future potentials of fuzzy logic from different disciplinary perspectives and personal standpoints.
Download or read book Philosophy and Logic In Search of the Polish Tradition written by Jaakko Hintikka and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains papers on truth, logic, semantics, and history of logic and philosophy. These papers are dedicated to Jan Wolenski to honor his 60th birthday. Jan Wolenski is professor of philosophy at the Department of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland. He is likely to be the most well-known Polish philosopher of this time, best known for his work on the history of the philosophy and logic of the Lvov-Warsaw School.
Download or read book Refined Verisimilitude written by S.D. Zwart and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The subject of the present inquiry is the approach-to-the-truth research, which started with the publication of Sir Karl Popper's Conjectures and Refutations. In the decade before this publication, Popper fiercely attacked the ideas of Rudolf Carnap about confirmation and induction; and ten years later, in the famous tenth chapter of Conjectures he introduced his own ideas about scientific progress and verisimilitude (cf. the quotation on page 6). Abhorring inductivism for its apprecia tion of logical weakness rather than strength, Popper tried to show that fallibilism could serve the purpose of approach to the truth. To substantiate this idea he formalized the common sense intuition about preferences, that is: B is to be preferred to A if B has more advantages andfewer drawbacks than A. In 1974, however, David Millerand Pavel Tichy proved that Popper's formal explication could not be used to compare false theories. Subsequently, many researchers proposed alternatives or tried to improve Popper's original definition.
Download or read book Is Science Progressive written by I. Niiniluoto and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection brings together several essays which have been written between the years 197 5 and 1983. During that period I have been occupied with the attempt to find a satisfactory explicate for the notion of tnithlike ness or verisimilitude. The technical results of this search have partly appeared elsewhere, and I am also working on a systematic presentation of them in a companion volume to this book: Truthlikeness (forthcoming hopefully in 1985). The essays collected in this book are less formal and more philos ophical: they all explore various aspects of the idea that progress in science is associated with an increase in the truthlikeness of its results. Even though they do not exhaust the problem area of scientific change, together they constitute a step in the direction which I find most promising in the defence of critical scientific realism. * Chapter 1 appeared originally in Finnish as the opening article of a new journal Tiede 2000 (no. 1 I 1980) - a Finnish counterpart to journals such as Science and Scientific American. This explains its programmatic character. It tries to give a compact answer to the question 'What is science?', and serves therefore as an introduction to the problem area of the later chapters. Chapter 2 is a revised translation of my inaugural lecture for the chair of Theoretical Philosophy in the University of Helsinki on April 8, 1981. It appeared in Finnish inParnasso 31 (1981), pp.
Download or read book Philosophy of Science written by Gerhard Schurz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-20 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy of Science: A Unified Approach combines a general introduction to philosophy of science with an integrated survey of all its important subfields. As the book’s subtitle suggests, this excellent overview is guided methodologically by "a unified approach" to philosophy of science: behind the diversity of scientific fields one can recognize a methodological unity of the sciences. This unity is worked out in this book, revealing all the while important differences between subject areas. Structurally, this comprehensive book offers a two-part approach, which makes it an excellent introduction for students new to the field and a useful resource for more advanced students. Each chapter is divided into two sections. The first section assumes no foreknowledge of the subject introduced, and the second section builds upon the first by bringing into the conversation more advanced, complementary topics. Definitions, key propositions, examples and figures overview all of the core material. At the end of every chapter there are selected readings and exercises (with solutions at the end of the book). The book also includes a comprehensive bibliography and an index.
Download or read book New Philosophical Perspectives on Scientific Progress written by Yafeng Shan and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-11-01 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of original essays offers a comprehensive examination of scientific progress, which has been a central topic in recent debates in philosophy of science. Traditionally, debates over scientific progress have focused on different methodological approaches, notably the epistemic and semantic approaches. The chapters in Part I of the book examine these two traditional approaches, as well as the newly revived functional and newly developed noetic approaches. Part II features in-depth case studies of scientific progress from the history of science. The chapters cover individual sciences including physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, seismology, psychology, sociology, economics, and medicine. Finally, Part III of the book explores important issues from contemporary philosophy of science. These chapters address the implications of scientific progress for the scientific realism/anti-realism debate, incommensurability, values in science, idealisation, scientific speculation, interdisciplinarity, and scientific perspectivalism. New Philosophical Perspectives on Scientific Progress will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on the history and philosophy of science.
Download or read book The Philosophy of Science N Z Index written by Sahotra Sarkar and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2006 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first in-depth reference to the field that combines scientific knowledge with philosophical inquiry, this encyclopedia brings together a team of leading scholars to provide nearly 150 entries on the essential concepts in the philosophy of science. The areas covered include biology, chemistry, epistemology and metaphysics, physics, psychology and mind, the social sciences, and key figures in the combined studies of science and philosophy. (Midwest).
Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science written by Martin Curd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-24 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science is an indispensable reference source and guide to the major themes, debates, problems and topics in philosophy of science. It contains sixty-two specially commissioned entries by a leading team of international contributors. Organized into four parts it covers: historical and philosophical context debates concepts the individual sciences. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science addresses all of the essential topics that students of philosophy of science need to know - from empiricism, explanation and experiment to causation, observation, prediction and more - and contains many helpful features including chapters on individual sciences (such as biology, chemistry, physics and psychology), further reading and cross-referencing at the end of each chapter. Expanded and revised throughout, this second edition includes new chapters on Conventionalism, Social Epistemology, Computer Simulation, Thought Experiments, Pseudoscience, Species and Taxonomy, and Cosmology.
Download or read book Analytic Philosophy in Finland written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finland is internationally known as one of the leading centers of twentieth century analytic philosophy. This volume offers for the first time an overall survey of the Finnish analytic school. The rise of this trend is illustrated by original articles of Edward Westermarck, Eino Kaila, Georg Henrik von Wright, and Jaakko Hintikka. Contributions of Finnish philosophers are then systematically discussed in the fields of logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, history of philosophy, ethics and social philosophy. Metaphilosophical reflections on the nature of philosophy are highlighted by the Finnish dialogue between analytic philosophy, phenomenology, pragmatism, and critical theory.
Download or read book Karl Popper s Science and Philosophy written by Zuzana Parusniková and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-07-19 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all philosophers of the 20th century, few built more bridges between academic disciplines than Karl Popper. He contributed to a wide variety of fields in addition to the epistemology and the theory of scientific method for which he is best known. This book illustrates and evaluates the impact, both substantive and methodological, that Popper has had in the natural and mathematical sciences. The topics selected include quantum mechanics, evolutionary biology, cosmology, mathematical logic, statistics, and cognitive science. The approach is multidisciplinary, opening a dialogue across scientific disciplines and between scientists and philosophers.
Download or read book Formal Methods in the Methodology of Empirical Sciences written by Marian Przelecki and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proceedings of the Conference for Formal Methods in the Methodology of Emperical Sciences, Warsaw, June 17-21, 1974, Poland.
Download or read book Rational Understanding written by Miloud Belkoniene and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-30 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops a novel account of the connections between justification, understanding and knowledge. It lays the foundation for a more systematic and interconnected treatment of these central notions in epistemology. The author’s key move is to show first that a specific conception of doxastic justification constitutes our best point of entry into questions pertaining to a subject’s ability to secure understanding of reality. Second, that the traditional order of analysis when it comes to the connection between understanding and knowledge should be reversed: knowledge itself is best conceived of in terms of a specific type of understanding. Rational Understanding will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology and philosophy of science.
