MORE ON PROMISES AND TRUTH –“Other philosophers believe it’s a mistake to say t

MORE ON PROMISES AND TRUTH

–“Other philosophers believe it’s a mistake to say the researchers’ goal is to achieve truth. … When they aren’t overtly identifying truth with usefulness, the instrumentalists Peirce, James and Schlick take this anti-realist route, as does Kuhn. They would say atomic theory isn’t true or false but rather is useful for predicting outcomes of experiments and for explaining current data. Giere recommends saying science aims for the best available “representation”, in the same sense that maps are representations of the landscape. Maps aren’t true; rather, they fit to a better or worse degree. Similarly, scientific theories are designed to fit the world. Scientists should not aim to create true theories; they should aim to construct theories whose models are representations of the world.”–

This is a wordy paragraph that simply states that better theories correspond to and explain reality, than less good theories. But theories can never be identical to reality, since they are always representations (I would call them ‘aggregates that exclude information’).

I can promise you that I followed the scientific method, and that my theory is internally consistent, externally correspondent and falsifiable (and perhaps a few other things). If you agree that my theory is useful, internally consistent, externally correspondent, and falsifiable, (and perhaps a few other things) then you can say that I spoke the truth. You may, for sake of manners and brevity say that the theory is then true. But that is merely an abbreviation for the fact that the theory is true, and useful.

As far as I know this is the limit of our ability without entering the fantasy world of platonism.