Research Catalog

Title

Truthlikeness for multidimensional, quantitative cognitive problems / I.A. Kieseppä.

Author

Kieseppä, I. A.

Publication

Dordrecht [Netherlands] ; Boston, MA : Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xii, 223 pages; 25 cm.

Summary

• This book is concerned with the problem of applying the theory of verisimilitude to cognitive problems of a quantitative nature. Attention is mostly focused on hypotheses concerned with (physical or other) systems whose state can be represented with an element of a multidimensional state space, but hypotheses concerned with quantitative laws are also considered.
• The book provides a systematic introduction to the main contemporary forms of the theory of verisimilitude, including both proposed definitions of quantitative degrees of verisimilitude and proposed definitions of the relation 'closer to the truth than'. It shows why the quantitative measures that have been proposed earlier produce unacceptable results in the multidimensional case and, using the tools of geometric measure theory, works out alternatives for them in detail.
• In addition, the standard structuralist theory of science and the way in which the problems of approximation are dealt with in it are presented and evaluated critically.

Series Statement

Synthese library ; v. 254

Uniform Title

Synthese library ; v. 254.

Subjects

• Truth
• Similarity judgment
• Resemblance (Philosophy)
• Vagueness (Philosophy)

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [211]-218) and indexes.

Contents

Ch. 1. Introduction -- Ch. 2. On Competing Theories of Verisimilitude and on Evaluating Them -- Ch. 3. The Problems of Arbitrariness and Vagueness -- Ch. 4. The Measures of Verisimilitude of the Similarity Approach -- Ch. 5. Verisimilitude and the Standard Structuralist Framework -- Ch. 6. The Structuralist Definitions of Verisimilitude -- Ch. 7. Galileo, Aristotle, and Some Difficulties with Quantitative Laws -- Ch. 8. Concluding Remarks.

ISBN

0792340051 (alk. paper)

LCCN

96012014

OCLC

• 34513289
• ocm34513289

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries