Tag: truth

Better problems, closer to the truth

[T]heories are steps in our search for truth – or to be both more explicit and more modest, in our search for better and better solutions of deeper and deeper problems (where ‘better and better’ means, as we shall see, ‘nearer and nearer to the truth’). [154-5]

The infinity of absolute truth

But if ‘2 + 2 = 4’ is true, then it follows that ‘2 + 2 = 5’ is false—and that ‘2 + 2 = 6’ is false, and that ‘2 + 2 = 7’ is false, and so on. But if these statements are false, then the statements ‘“2 + 2 = 5” is false’ and ‘“2 + 2 = 6” is false’ and ‘“2 + 2 = 7” is false’ are one and all true. And it is easy to see that we can, in this way, generate an infinite number of true statements that are of no interest to science at all, or to anyone else for that matter. [57]

Just the facts

Earlier I said that Popper believed in absolute and objective truth. This is very easily misunderstood, especially if we equate a definition of ‘truth’ with a criterion of truth. But whether or not truth is absolute has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not we have a criterion for determining what it is. ‘Absolute’ simply means that something is not con­ditional or relative to anything else. Popper thought that truth is absolute in just this sense. Being true is different from being-believed-to-be true. It is not relative to or conditioned by what anyone believes. And it does not depend upon a theory, or evidence, or a historical context, or anything else—except the facts. [51]

Slaying the hydra of verisimilitude

In my view, trying to measure verisimilitude by counting a theory’s true or false consequences always missed the point. Every false theory has the same number (if we can really talk this way) of true and false consequences as every other. This is a consequence of the truth-functional nature of our logical connectives and the truth-functional definition of validity. But some false statements are still closer to the truth than others. [411]

Working with false theories

Whether we should work with a theory that we know to be false or eliminate our error will depend almost entirely on our alternatives, and on the problem that they are supposed to solve. [406]

The primary task of science

The primary task of science is not to differentiate the true from the false—it is to solve scientific problems. [406]

Science and truth

There is … an infinite number of true statements about the world that no empirical science would ever, or should ever, take notice [of]. [403]

Russell’s theory of objective truth

Thus although truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs, yet they are in a sense extrinsic properties, for the condition of the truth of a belief is something not involving beliefs, or (in general) any mind at all, but only the objects of the belief. A mind, which believes, believes truly when there is a corresponding complex not involving the mind, but only its objects. This correspondence ensures truth, and its absence entails falsehood. Hence we account simultaneously for the two facts that beliefs (a) depend on minds for their existence, (b) do not depend on minds for their truth. [93]

The foundations of ‘truth’

There are three points to observe in the attempt to discover the nature of truth, three requisites which any theory must fulfil.

(1) Our theory of truth must be such as to admit of its opposite, falsehood. A good many philosophers have failed adequately to satisfy this condition: they have constructed theories according to which all our thinking ought to have been true, and have then had the greatest difficulty in finding a place for falsehood. In this respect our theory of belief must differ from our theory of acquaintance, since in the case of acquaintance it was not necessary to take account of any opposite.

(2) It seems fairly evident that if there were no beliefs there could be no falsehood, and no truth either, in the sense in which truth is correlative to falsehood. If we imagine a world of mere matter, there would be no room for falsehood in such a world, and although it would contain what may be called ‘facts’, it would not contain any truths, in the sense in which truths are things of the same kind as falsehoods. In fact, truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs and statements: hence a world of mere matter, since it would contain no beliefs or statements, would also contain no truth or falsehood.

(3) But, as against what we have just said, it is to be observed that the truth or falsehood of a belief always depends upon something which lies outside the belief itself. If I believe that Charles I died on the scaffold, I believe truly, not because of any intrinsic quality of my belief, which could be discovered by merely examining the belief, but because of an historical event which happened two and a half centuries ago. If I believe that Charles I died in his bed, I believe falsely: no degree of vividness in my belief, or of care in arriving at it, prevents it from being false, again because of what happened long ago, and not because of any intrinsic property of my belief. Hence, although truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs, they are properties dependent upon the relations of the beliefs to other things, not upon any internal quality of the beliefs. [87-8]

If you are serious about truth…

Wer wirklich an der Wahrheit Interesse hat, wird so verfahren, daß er gerade Auffassungen, die er für besonders wichtig hält, am schärfsten der kritischen Prüfung aussetzt, nicht nur diejenigen, die er ohnehin einigermaßen leichten Herzens zu opfern bereit ist. [135]