Re: Universality as warrant for relative truth value

jason <jasonkstevens@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

When you mentioned other fields of knowledge, depths of reality and
grand theories of everything, I assumed you were expanding science to
cover all reality, raising it to the status of a religion. I was
poking fun at the science god.

Understood

There are several virtues of a so-called "good" scientific theory in
the philsophy of science: scope, accuracy, fruitfulness, simplicity,
consistency, explanatory power and others. You would do better
looking at a combination of them, not just one. Scope alone can't
increase a theorie's truth value. For example, material dialectics
and string theory have massive scopes but no explanatory power. As
such, they're not "good" scientific theories.

I wasn't asking for a list of features that might make up
"robustness". Some of them are justifiable (accuracy); some are not
(aesthetics). However, I was asking about a specific criterion, the
why the potential truth value of a particular domain of scientific
knowledge is a funtion of its determinant relationship with others.

I see no relation of truth value and explanatory power. If I said the
moon consisted of cheese, the statement has the quality of truthfulness,
but has no explanatory power.

I would have no trouble definding this proposition, but wanted to know
what others thought, and so asked for citations on the issue.

Check out bayesianism, it may be what you're after. It offers a
measure for good scientific theories by accomodating ideas of scope
and its ilk. This way you can measure competing theories and see
which is "better". I can try and find my notes if you like, it's kind
of cool.

Yes, once we understand that a theory has degrees of truth. Perhaps
Bayesianism can accomodate the factor of a theory's scope, but if you
had a citation to a discussion of this specific point, I'd be
interested.

I'm not sure what you're doing, but you may do well touching on the
idea of truth in science as well. Realists (metaphysicians) say that
science aims at truth and instrumentalists (pragmatists) say that
science aims at usefulness. So, for example, would an instrumentalist
agree, albeit in different terms, with a realist with respect to a
theory with a wide scope? I.e. is "truth" and "usefulness" pretty
much the same thing when it comes to theory choice?

This comment raises a host of issues. My question presumed that
statements can have truth value, and I was looking for discussions of
that value might be linked to the scope of a theory. For example, any
kind of holistic theory I presume would agree with the correlation of
truth and scope, but I'm simply looking for citations regarding such a
correlation.

--

Haines Brown, KB1GRM



.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Universality as warrant for relative truth value
    ... poking fun at the science god. ... the philsophy of science: scope, accuracy, fruitfulness, simplicity, ... increase a theorie's truth value. ... they're not "good" scientific theories. ...
    (sci.philosophy.meta)
  • Re: Universality as warrant for relative truth value
    ... If science does not yield knowledge of the world having truth ... in scope and the more immediate to the observer is a theory, ... they're not "good" scientific theories. ...
    (sci.philosophy.meta)
  • Re: Evolutionists, agnostics and creationist are all the same
    ... IOW the truth is dead...long live the truth. ... Those situations which science deems as being outside it's scope have ... At least you are 'up front' concerning your deliberate ignorance. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Universality as warrant for relative truth value
    ... If science does not yield knowledge of the world having truth ... in scope and the more immediate to the observer is a theory, ... regarding how the universality of a theory increased its potential truth ...
    (sci.philosophy.meta)
  • Re: The root of all evil? - Dawkins Documentary
    ... active and who intervenes in history is one which it should be ... but the claim that there exists a God who ... it actually can be established as a truth. ... science, observation and experiment must be objective. ...
    (talk.origins)