The Significance of Verisimilitude

Abstract

This paper defends the thesis that the concept of verisimilitude is an indispensable tool for the fallibllist and realist epistemology. Part of my argument consists in suggesting that this concept has important applications within the history and philosophy of science (Section 6). But this is not enough to convince a critical reader who suspects that talk about “closeness to the truth” is perhaps meaningless - or “mumbojumbo”, to use Laudan's (1981) expression. Surely a necessary condition for the significance of verisimilitude is its existence. Therefore, I also have to outline in some detail a programme which, at least in my view, leads to a satisfactory definition of the degrees of truthlikeness for various kinds of scientific statements (Sections 3 - 5). But first I try to give a,diagnosis of the main reasons why Popper's theory of truthlikeness failed (Sections 1 - 2).

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