CF Dictionary · Evaluating Ideas & Arguments
Idea
In CF, an idea is anything that can succeed or fail at a goal — a hypothesis, a plan, a theory, a definition, an explanation.
In CF, an idea is anything that can be evaluated as succeeding or failing at a goal in a context. This includes:
- Hypotheses and theories
- Plans and actions
- Definitions
- Explanations
- Predictions
- Methods and recipes
- Statements, claims, and beliefs
An idea cannot be evaluated in isolation. The same idea can succeed at one goal and fail at another (and indeed all ideas do that). To evaluate an idea you always need three things — the idea itself, the goal you're evaluating it for, and the context in which it's being used. These three together form an IGC triple.
Because evaluation is bound to goals, ideas that seem vague or merely "true" or "false" need to be sharpened into something that does or doesn't solve a specific problem before they can be properly evaluated.
"Ideas are for something and can't be evaluated in isolation." — criticalfallibilism.com