Positivism

Positivism (in the strict logical-positivist sense) holds that only statements verifiable by sense-experience (or, later, only statements falsifiable by experience) are meaningful. Other statements — about God, ethics, metaphysics — are "meaningless" or "non-cognitive".

CF treats positivism as an error. CR replaced it with falsifiability (Popper's criterion of science), but CF goes further: even falsifiability is just one criterion, not a definition of meaning.

Why CF rejects positivism

1. Verifiability is too strong. Almost nothing is strictly verifiable.
2. Falsifiability is too narrow. Lots of meaningful claims aren't strictly empirical (e.g., logic, mathematics, ethics discussed as ideas-with-IGCs).
3. It hides the real issue — error-correction. CF doesn't care whether a claim is "meaningful" in the positivist sense; it cares whether the claim has a known error for an IGC.
4. It's fallibilist-incompatible. Positivism smuggles in an infallibilist standard for verification.

CF's replacement

CF says: evaluate any idea as an IGC. If it has a goal and a context where it could in principle fail, you can evaluate it. The question is whether it has a known error — not whether it's "meaningful".

"Many philosophers think knowledge requires justification, truth and belief." — criticalfallibilism.com