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#4944·Knut Sondre Sæbø, 3 days agoI completely agree with the definition in 4894. But to verify absolute truth you would need to know every possible criticism of an idea. Without a god’s eye view, you can’t know if your ideas are fallible to a criticism you haven’t detected.
A better framing of what I mean might be «closer to truth». If the theories are consistent with more perspectives (big objects, people, small objects etc.), it is closer to truths. Newton’s theory is in that sense closer to truth than Ptolemy’s geocentric theory.
A better framing of what I mean might be «closer to truth». If the theories are consistent with more perspectives (big objects, people, small objects etc.), it is closer to truths. Newton’s theory is in that sense closer to truth than Ptolemy’s geocentric theory.
This sounds like verisimilitude, which Popper worked on a bunch. As I recall, David Miller refuted it toward the end of Popper’s life. Popper was still around to accept the refutation.
I’m not aware that anyone restored or vindicated verisimilitude. But even if someone did, we’d need to formalize and quantify it. Just saying “Newton’s theory is in that sense closer to truth than Ptolemy’s geocentric theory” would be too vague IMO.