Verisimilitude or the Approach to the Whole Truth

Abstract

Science progresses if we succeed in rendering the objects of scientific inquiry more comprehensively or more precisely. Popper tries to formalize this venerable idea. According to him the most comprehensive and most precise description of the world is given by the set T of all true statements. A hypothesis comes the closer to T, or has the more verisimilitude, the more true consequences and the fewer false consequences it implies. Popper proposes to order hypotheses by the inclusion relations between the sets of their true and of their false consequences (“truth contents” and “falsity contents”). A partial ordering would permit one to decide whether the substitution of theory t1 by t2 represents scientific progress. But because of the logical relations between the elements of the sets of logical consequences, or contents, false hypotheses cannot be compared. As our theories usually turn out to be false sooner or later, they can seldom be compared as to their verisimilitude and when they can, the result depends only on which theory implies the other and on their truth-values. Popper even tries to define a measure of verisimilitude on the partial ordering. It has to fail for the same reason. In addition he tries to relativize the concept of a content and fails. What is more, any attempt at defining a measure of better or worse correspondence to the whole truth must fail, as there is no justification for saying that any true primitive sentence asserts as much about reality as some other primitive sentence, or more.

The effects of visual realism, spatial abilities, and competition on performance in map-based route learning in men

“…As an example of such a belief, Zanola et al (2009) showed that people trust realistic displays more than their less realistic alternatives. This belief is often based on the reasoning that verisimilitude (i.e., representing objects as realistically as possible) allows for more intuitive recognition of the represented features (Keuth, 1976;Popper, 1976;Dykes et al, 1999). However, Smallman and colleagues report a dissociation between map type preference and map-use performance, especially with respect to the amount of realism shown in a display, which they coin naïve realism (Smallman & John, 2005a, 2005bSmallman & Cook, 2011).…”

A note on incongruent counterparts and verisimilitude

“…It turns out that in such languages the number of the true consequences of any false proposition equals the nmnber of its false consequences. This had been proved, for finitely axiomatisable propositions, by Herbert Keuth (1976) and independently by Hermann Vetter (19771. (David Miller drew my attention to Keuth's proof and Graham Oddie to Vetter's. ) I will turn to Vetter's proof shortly.…”

Natural Heritage Reconstruction Using Full-Color 3D Printing: A Case Study of the Valley of Five Polish Ponds

“…Zanola, Fabrikant, and Çöltekin [2] showed that people trust realistic displays more than their less realistic alternatives. Such beliefs are often explained on the basis of reasoning that representing objects as realistically as possible enables a more intuitive recognition of these objects' features [3][4][5].…”