Truth

Critical Fallibilism is a realist philosophy: it holds that reality and objective truth exist independently of anyone’s beliefs, and that we can come to know about them. Truth is a matter of an idea matching the way things actually are. This realism is shared with Critical Rationalism, which states it directly, and with Objectivism, and it does real work in CF — it is what makes error a genuine failure to match reality, and what gives error correction a direction to move in.

The distinctive CF move is to combine this realism with thoroughgoing fallibilism. We can never guarantee the truth of any idea, double-check our way to a guarantee, or assign it a verified probability of being true. So truth is the aim of inquiry, not a possession we can certify. CF rejects infallibilism and the demand for certainty without abandoning the goal of getting things right.

This reframes what it means to pursue truth. We make progress not by accumulating positive support — CF, following Popper, denies that confirming arguments ever establish an idea as true or even probable, since this is the error of justificationism — but by criticizing ideas and eliminating errors, keeping non-refuted ideas over refuted ones. Each correction can bring us closer to the truth; CF does not, however, treat this nearness as a measurable degree or score of goodness, which would clash with its binary refuted/non-refuted approach. Note too that truth differs from knowledge: CF rejects “justified true belief,” holding that useful, error-containing ideas still count as knowledge even though they are not perfectly true.