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Originally Posted by Remster  Can you explain what is involved in the truth of a statement about a scientific model? |
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Apparently the statement 'Evolution began billions of years ago' (taken as a statement about a scientific model) isn't true if and only if (using ordinary language) evolution began billions of years ago, or else it would be a description of the past. And apparently it isn't true if and only if (using ordinary language) there is and will be such-and-such a fossil record, or else it would be a description of the present and future. I'm not being awkward here: I really don't know what sort of beast a scientific model is supposed to be.
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I think I see what you are saying. One way to handle this is to refer to scientific models as correct/incorrect and statements within a model as consistent/inconsistent rather than as true/false. Then you can say the statement 'Evolution began billions of years ago' is consistent even if it isn't true that evolution began billions of years ago. Likewise, we can say that the theory of evolution is correct even if it isn't true that evolution began billions of years ago. To elaborate a bit, the statement is consistent if it does not contradict other statements within that model and the model is correct if it is the best fit to all the relevant observations available for consideration.
With this language we are reserving truth to refer to matters of fact e.g. whether it is the case that evolution really began billions of years ago. That is when we say "x is true" we are saying "it is the case that x".
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I take it for granted that truth is a prerequisite of knowledge.
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You might not want to take this for granted. If we do define truth as 'to be the case that' and truth was a necessary prerequisite of knowledge, then no knowledge of the natural world would be possible. Consider that every thing we refer to as scientific knowledge comes from inductive reasoning and that inductive reasoning is not truth preserving. From this we would have to discount all scientific knowledge as real knowledge. Furthermore, deductive reasoning while truth preserving can not tell us anything about the world around us. At least it can't tell us anything that we don't already know. Finally, all our direct observations about the world come to us through our senses and are also questionable. So while we may have beliefs and they may be justified we would never know if they were true and therefore could not claim anything as knowledge.
One way to avoid this problem is to use the pragmatic definition of truth; That is something is true if it is useful. With this language we can say the statement 'Evolution began billions of years ago' is true if and only if evolution began billions of years ago, since in both cases we are using a pragmatic definition of truth. Of course, with this language you can no longer refer to things as they actually are as is common in ordinary language. Then again you can consider truth a necessary part of knowledge and still use knowledge to refer to things that are commonly taken to be knowledge in ordinary language.
I'm sure there are many other ways to think about scientific models but I've probably rambled on enough and in the end it is best to just refer to scientific theories as descriptive explanations and leave the philosophies behind it to the individual.