CR terms

Fallibilism

This is the philosophical position that all human knowledge—every belief, theory, and observation—is conjectural, tentative, potentially incomplete, and potentially mistaken. It holds that there cannot be any conclusive justification or rational certainty for anything we might believe to be true (including observations).

Fallibilism is distinct from skepticism. Skepticism argues that because certainty is impossible, knowledge is impossible. Fallibilism agrees that certainty is impossible but denies that this invalidates knowledge. Fallibilism holds that people can and do possess real, objective knowledge, and that people can improve it through a process of error correction.