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Refined Verisimilitude

  • Book
  • © 2001

Overview

Authors:
  1. Sjoerd D. Zwart

    1. Delft University of Technology and University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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Part of the book series: Synthese Library (SYLI, volume 307)

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
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  2. Introduction and Terminology

    • Sjoerd D. Zwart
    Pages 1-34

  3. Verisimilitude

    • Sjoerd D. Zwart
    Pages 35-73

  4. Truthlikeness

    • Sjoerd D. Zwart
    Pages 74-120

  5. The Epistemic Problem

    • Sjoerd D. Zwart
    Pages 121-167

  6. The Hidden Variable

    • Sjoerd D. Zwart
    Pages 168-190

  7. Refined Verisimilitude

    • Sjoerd D. Zwart
    Pages 191-226

  8. Back Matter

    Pages 227-263
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Keywords

About this book

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.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Delft University of Technology and University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Sjoerd D. Zwart

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Refined Verisimilitude

  • Authors: Sjoerd D. Zwart

  • Series Title: Synthese Library

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2870-6

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2001

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4020-0268-7Published: 31 January 2002

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-90-481-5932-1Published: 15 December 2010

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-017-2870-6Published: 11 November 2013

  • Series ISSN: 0166-6991

  • Series E-ISSN: 2542-8292

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XI, 263

  • Topics: Philosophy of Science, Logic, Epistemology, Computational Linguistics

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