Abstract

Epistemological realism claims that it is possible to obtain knowledge about mind‐independent reality. Critical realism accepts fallibilism as a via media between scepticism and dogmatism: scientific knowledge is uncertain, incomplete, and truthlike. Against Kantianism, such knowledge is directly about reality, so that the Kantian idea of unknowable things‐in‐themselves is rejected. Epistemic definitions of truth are rejected, but epistemic probability and estimated verisimilitude are shown to be fallible indicators of truth and truthlikeness.