Verisimilitude in the context of "Acatalepsy"

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⭐ Core Definition: Verisimilitude

In philosophy, verisimilitude (or truthlikeness) is the notion that some propositions are closer to being true than other propositions. The problem of verisimilitude is the problem of articulating what it takes for one false theory to be closer to the truth than another false theory.

This problem was central to the philosophy of Karl Popper, largely because Popper was among the first to affirm that truth is the aim of scientific inquiry while acknowledging that most of the greatest scientific theories in the history of science are, strictly speaking, false. If this long string of purportedly false theories is to constitute progress with respect to the goal of truth, then it must be at least possible for one false theory to be closer to the truth than others.

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Verisimilitude in the context of Acatalepsia

Acatalepsy (from the Greek α̉- 'privative' and καταλαμβάνειν 'to seize'), in philosophy, is incomprehensibleness, or the impossibility of comprehending or conceiving some or all things. The doctrine held by the ancient Skeptic philosophers, that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, but only to probability.

The Pyrrhonians attempted to show, while Academic skeptics of the Platonic Academy asserted an absolute acatalepsia; all human science or knowledge, according to them, went no further than to appearances and verisimilitude. It is the antithesis of the Stoic doctrine of katalepsis or Apprehension. According to the Stoics, katalepsis was true perception, but to the Skeptics, all perceptions were acataleptic, i.e. bear no conformity to the objects perceived, or, if they did bear any conformity, it could never be known.

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