True Enough

Abstract

Epistemology standardly holds that there can be no epistemically good reason to accept a known falsehood or to accept a mode of justification that is not truth-conducive. Such a stance cannot accommodate science, for science unabashedly relies on models, idealizations, and thought experiments which are known not to be true. We ought not assume that the inaccuracy of such devices is a sign of their inadequacy. When effective, they are felicitous falsehoods that exemplify features they share with the phenomena they bear on. Inasmuch as works of art also deploy felicitous falsehoods, they too advance understanding. True Enough develops a holistic epistemology that focuses on the understanding of broad ranges of phenomena rather than on knowledge of individual facts. Epistemic acceptability on this account is not a matter of truth or truth-conduciveness, but of what would be reflectively endorsed by members of an idealized epistemic community – a quasi-Kantian realm of epistemic ends.

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