quasi-truth

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Quasi-truth is RB3’s da Costa-and-French-derived account of truth relative to an acknowledged incomplete structure. Some relations are defined, others only partially specified or left open. The proposal preserves the local partial-structures meaning without equating incomplete knowledge with mere fiction, private coherence, approximate wording alone or a license to ignore what a model’s actual domain permits it to claim.

Explanation

The source introduces the term after rejecting the inference that partial representation makes scientific knowledge fictional. Its native references identify Science and Partial Truth as the antecedent. The entry supplies the manuscript’s conceptual use, not an invented formal semantics or a claim to have independently verified every theorem in that external work.

The author aligns partial structures with a process ontology in which descriptions remain open to extension, revision and refinement. That alignment is its philosophical application, not a proof that every incomplete model is true or that process ontology follows deductively from the existence of partial scientific representations.

AB and RB2 keep situated knowing exposed to a world capable of resisting and correcting it. These comparisons prevent quasi-truth from becoming whatever a community happens to agree upon. Incompleteness leaves questions open while disciplined inquiry still distinguishes supported relations from unsupported claims, rather than quietly filling gaps with invented certainty.

Scope and attribution

Keep partial-structure truth attributed and bounded; incompleteness is neither fiction, mere consensus nor permission to invent relations.

PB — The Possible Book

Source-verified occurrence; see the printed-page references below.

Occurrence locators: 146, 147, 148, 175.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

The developed account belongs to RB3 in the cited local scope, with antecedents and qualifications retained.

Occurrence locators: 340.

Background used in the editorial explanation

RB1 pp.126–128 discuss semantic and formal underdetermination. A da Costa/French citation alone does not establish quasi-truth there.