Non-Refuted Idea

A non-refuted idea is one that current knowledge does not refute: you know of no criticism explaining why it fails at its goal. In CF’s yes-or-no philosophy, this is the highest status an idea can have. Ideas do not earn positive justification or accumulate support; they start non-refuted (scored 1) and can only be knocked down to refuted (0), never raised. There is nothing between, and no rung above non-refuted to climb to.

This replaces justification with a purely negative criterion. CF says you should accept and act on a non-refuted idea, because the only alternative is acting on an idea you already know has an error. Strictly, evaluation attaches not to a bare idea but to an idea-goal-context triple: the same idea can be non-refuted for one goal and refuted for another.

Non-refuted is not a permanent endorsement. It is tentative and contextual: new knowledge, treated as a changed context, can refute what previously stood. A refuted idea cannot be rescued in place; editing it produces a distinct variant needing its own evaluation.

CF opposes degree-based views. It rejects credences and probability-of-truth, and also Popper’s “best survives criticism” and Deutsch’s “hard to vary” insofar as these grade ideas on a continuum. Number of refutations does not matter: one decisive criticism settles the verdict as firmly as twenty. The honest answers to a hard conflict are to solve a less ambitious goal or brainstorm a better idea, not to assign a middling score.