Criticism

A criticism is an explanation of why an idea does not solve its problem — why it fails at a goal or purpose. CF inherits from Popper the view that we learn by guesses and criticism, an evolutionary process of generating ideas and weeding out the ones with errors. But CF sharpens the role of criticism in two ways.

First, criticism is the only tool for evaluating ideas. CF rejects justificationism: there is no positive support that raises an idea’s status. We should accept and act on non-refuted ideas, since an idea we see nothing wrong with beats one we do. Positive arguments are not the mirror image of negative ones — the relationship is asymmetric. Five true positive points cannot rule out an idea being broken, while one true negative point can. Positive traits are also often shared by every option under consideration, so they fail to discriminate.

Second, a real criticism contradicts its target. A criticism and the idea it criticizes cannot both be accepted; you must take sides (see non-contradiction as failure to contradict). Arguments that merely tell you to raise or lower an opinion contradict nothing and are bad arguments. This is why CF holds that all genuine criticisms are decisive: relative to a clear goal, a criticism either shows the idea lands in the failure category or it does nothing.

Criticism is contextual — it shows failure at a purpose, so the same idea may survive for another goal. Demanding “proof” is not criticism; only an explanation of failure is. Refuting an idea need not exhaust your options, since a small change yields a new variant that may escape the refutation.