 Realism holds that the constitutive aim of inquiry is the truth of some matter. Optimism holds that the history of inquiry is one of progress with respect to its constitutive aim. But fallibilism holds that our theories are false or very likely to be false, and to be replaced by other false theories. To combine these three ideas, we must affirm that some false propositions better realize the goal of truth – are closer to the truth – than others. We are thus stuck with the logical problem of truthlikeness.