Nomic Truth Approximation Revisited

Abstract

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Approaching probabilistic and deterministic nomic truths in an inductive probabilistic way

“…In my work on the approximation of deterministic (nomic) truths, notably (Kuipers, 2000(Kuipers, , 2019, the so-called success theorem is a kind of backbone. The following (easy to prove) theorem is a special case 7 : Theorem 5 (Deterministic Success Theorem)…”

“…Graham Oddie's Likeness to truth (1986) and Ilkka Niiniluoto's Truthlikeness (1987) focus on deterministic actual truths. My own From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism (Kuipers, 2000) and Nomic truth approximation revisited (Kuipers, 2019) deal almost exclusively with (qualitatively) approaching deterministic nomic truths, based on the hypothetico-deductive method.…”

“…Some more background may be useful. The focus in this paper is, like in Kuipers (2000Kuipers ( , 2019, on nomic truths, that is, truths dealing with which conceptual possibilities are nomically, e.g. physically or biologically, possible and which ones are not, the nomic (im-)possibilities, for short.…”

“…As far as Kuipers (2000Kuipers ( , 2019 are concerned, Option 1 deals primarily with qualitative (basic, refined, and stratified) ways of approximation of a deterministic nomic truth. A consequence of the basic definition of closer to the truth in this approach will play a recurrent role in this paper.…”

Optimizing group learning: An evolutionary computing approach

“…While truth is generally regarded as the overarching goal of science (Psillos, 1999), it is equally acknowledged that science serves many practical purposes, too. For that reason, we are often forced to make a speed-accuracy trade-off: we do want to get at the truth, but we also want to get there fast, which may require that we settle on quickly becoming highly confident in the truth (even if we cannot completely rule out alternative hypotheses) or quickly getting close to the truth (Kuipers, 2000(Kuipers, , 2001(Kuipers, , 2014(Kuipers, , 2019.…”