Pursuit of Platonistic Tethering to the Truth

Hanti Lin (University of California, Davis), null, Hanti Lin

Hanti Lin (UC Davis) will present "Pursuit of Platonistic Tethering to the Truth" at 11 in Old Arts 209 on 27 July.

Abstract: I will start by doing some epistemology and philosophy of science, and the result leads to a new view about inductive logic and its relation to deductive logic. To be more specific, I will start by defending a certain epistemological tradition, which has two essential parts. (1) It takes seriously an ideal of learning that Plato praises in Meno---the ideal of coming to have one's opinions be "tethered" to the truth, aka convergence to the truth; (2) it employs this platonic ideal of learning to evaluate inductive procedures, as recommended by Peirce, Reichenbach, and Putnam. I will address some philosophical challenges to this tradition, and refine it into a clearly stated view in the epistemology of inductive inference and belief revision. It also leads to a view about inductive logic: that, while deductive logic studies perfectly reliable preservation of truth, inductive logic studies progressively more reliable preservation of truth---more and more reliable as evidence or premises accumulate.