TRUTH APPROXIMATION BY EMPIRICAL AND AESTHETIC CRITERIA

As he explains in the first note, Miller wrote the first version of his contribution on the basis of the version of my paper “Beauty, a road to the truth(?)”, as it was in July 2000. The final version (Kuipers 2002)1, is not only revised to some extent in the light of Miller’s comments but it is also substantially enlarged, in particular Section 2 (“Aesthetic induction and exposure effects”). This explains why Miller in his final version does not touch upon this specimen of “naturalized philosophy, ” based on results in experimental psychology. My reply will deal with our remaining disagreements regarding the nature and role of empirical and aesthetic criteria in the evaluation of scientific theories. But I would first like to express my appreciation for his exposition of four theories of truth approximation in his Section 1. Tables 0 and 1 are of course attractive from my point of view. They suggest that my approach is a kind of improvement not only of Popper’s original approach but also of the two parallel improvements of that approach by Harris and Miller. Technically, they represent a very informative structuring of the possibilities for “content theories ” of verisimilitude, as Zwart (1998/2001) calls them. However, although Miller apparently can appreciate my approach to truth approximation in general, he is rather reserved in two respects: the role I assign to empirical successes and my analysis of aesthetic considerations