Why Adding Truths Is Not Enough: A Reply to Mizrahi on Progress as Approximation to the Truth

ABSTRACT

In a recent paper in this journal, entitled ‘Scientific Progress: Why Getting Closer to Truth is Not Enough’ (2017), Moti Mizrahi argues that the view of progress as approximation to the truth or increasing verisimilitude is plainly false. The key premise of his argument is that on such a view of progress, in order to get closer to the truth one only needs to arbitrarily add a true disjunct to a hypothesis or theory. Since quite clearly scientific progress is not a matter of adding true disjuncts to theories, the argument goes, the view of progress as approximation to the truth is untenable. We show that the key premise of Mizrahi’s argument is false: according to verisimilitude-based accounts of progress, adding arbitrary true disjuncts to existing theories is just not enough to get closer to the truth.

ORCID

Gustavo Cevolani http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8770-8877

Luca Tambolo http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4313-6496

Notes

1 In a reply to Mizrahi's attack against VS published after the submission of this paper (cf. Mondragón 2017), the author advances similar worries concerning Mizrahi's central argument.

Additional information

Funding

Gustavo Cevolani acknowledges financial support by Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca [grant number FFABR2017].