The correspondence theory of truth and scientific confirmation

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Published: 2021-07-12
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17163/soph.n31.2021.02
Keywords:
Science, truth, confirmation, correspondence, realism, logic

Main Article Content

Damián Islas Mondragón
Universidad Juárez del Estado de Durango
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8538-6835

Abstract

Historically, implicit in the main philosophical analyzes of the concept of ‘truth’ it was implicit what is now known as the correspondence theory of truth, which can be traced from Aristotle to Immanuel Kant. In the early nineteenth century, detractors of the correspondence theory of truth began to argue, among other things, that this position is obscure, too narrow and self-indulgent or argumentatively circular. However, in the scientific field some contenders of certain realistic positions of science have considered that truth is the most important cognitive aim of scientific activity. This study was conducted to establish the plausibility of this realistic argument. By analyzing the validity of some ontological, semantic and epistemic arguments proposed by some defenders of different versions of the so-called ‘Scientific Realism’, with which an attempt is made to relate the empirical and predictive success of the best scientific theories with the truth, it is shown that, from a logical point of view, seems difficult to confirm that such theories provide us with a reliable knowledge of the natural world. It is suggested that scientists are not confirmatory agents; but rather probabilistic agents, that is, agents that seek to calculate the probability with which a truthmaker makes a truth-bearer true, with which science communicates its results.

Article Details

Issue
No. 31 (2021): (July-December 2021): The problem of truth in the sciences and in the pedagogical practice
Section
Monographic articles

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Author Biography

Damián Islas Mondragón, Universidad Juárez del Estado de Durango

Instituto de Ciencias Sociales

Área de Filosofía

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