III. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM IN ITS RELATION TO PSYCHOLOGY. By W. R. Boyce Gibson, M.A., Queen's College, Lecturer in London University IV. THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION. By G. E. Underhill, M.A., Fellow and Senior Tutor of Magdalen College V. ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN ETHICS. By R. R. VII. THE FUTURE OF ETHICS: EFFORT OR ABSTENTION? By F. W. Bussell, D.D., Fellow, Tutor, and Vice- Principal of Brasenose College NOTE. Each writer is responsible solely for his own essay. I ERROR1 By G. F. STOUT SYNOPSIS of in the same way as the How is this possible? As question we must first deal besides those which There are two such 1. In Error, what is unreal seems to be thought real is thought of when we truly know it. an essential preparation for answering this with another. Do other modes of thinking exist can be properly said to be either true or false? modes. (1) Indeterminate or problematic thinking. (2) Thinking of mere appearance without affirming it to be real. 2 and 3. To think indeterminately is to think of something as one of a group of alternatives, without deciding which. The indeterminateness lies in not deciding which; and so far as the indeterminateness extends there is neither truth nor error. Whatever is thus indeterminately thought of belongs to the Intent of consciousness. The term Content should be reserved for what is determinately presented. In cognitive process, indeterminate thinking takes the form of questioning In the play of fancy, on the contrary, we do not seek to conform our Throughout this essay I am deeply indebted to the criticisms and suggestions of Professor Cook Wilson. In particular, I have substantially adopted his account of the distinction between abstract terms and adjectives, in place of a less satisfactory view of my own. B 4. Besides indeterminate thinking there is yet another mode of thinking which is neither true nor false. It consists in thinking of mere appearance without taking it for real. This happens, for example, in the play of fancy. Mere appearance consists in those features of an object of consciousness which are due merely to the special conditions, psychological and psychophysical, of its presentation, and do not therefore belong to its independent reality. 5 and 6. Error occurs when what is merely apparent, appears to belong to an independent reality in the same way as its other real features. The conditions under which this occurs may be divided under two heads. (1) Confusion. (2) Ignorance and inadvertence. Ignorance or inadvertence are present in every error, Confusion only in some. 7. It follows from the very nature of error that it cannot exist unless the mind is dealing with something independently real. Hence, some truth is presupposed in every error as its necessary condition. 8. There are limits to the possibility of error. There can be no error unless in relation to a corresponding reality, which is an object of thought for him who is deceived. Further, this reality must be capable of being thought of without the qualification which is said to be illusory. Hence, among other results, we may affirm that abstract objects cannot be illusory unless they contain an internal discrepancy. For, they are considered merely for themselves, and not as the adjectives of any other reality in relation to which they can be illusory. So far as the abstract object is merely a selected feature of actual existence, it is not merely not illusory; it is real. It is something concerning which we can think truly or falsely. 9. But the constructive activity of the mind variously transforms and modifies the abstract object, in ways which may have no counterpart in the actual. To this extent, the abstract object may be relatively unreal. None the less, such mental constructions, so far as they belong to scientific method, are experimental in their character and purpose. They serve to elicit the real nature of the object as an actual feature of actual existence. Thus abstract thinking, even when it is constructive, gives rise to judgments concerning what is real. These judgments may at least be free from the error of ignorance. For the mind may require no other data to operate on in answering its questions except those that are already contained in the formulation of them. Errors of confusion and inadvertence may still occur. But even these are avoidable by simplifying the problems raised. Thus, abstract thinking yields a body of certain knowledge. 10. Certainty, then, is attainable. It exists when a question is made to answer itself, so as to render doubt meaningless. When this is so the real is present to consciousness, as the illusory can never be. I. THE GENERAL NATURE OF ERROR SI. THE question raised in the present essay is fundamentally the same as that discussed in Plato's Theatetus. The Theatetus may be described as a dialogue on Theory of Knowledge. But the central problem did not take the same shape for Plato as it does for most modern epistemologists since the time of Descartes. What the moderns trouble themselves about is the nature and possibility of knowledge in general. How, they ask, can a particular individual be in such relation to a reality which transcends and includes his own existence as to know it. Can he know it otherwise than through the affections of his own consciousness which it produces? If it can only be known in this way, can it be said to be known at all? Are not his own mental states the only existences which are really cognised? Questions of this sort occupy modern philosophers, and they have given rise to the Critique of Pure Reason, among other results. But I cannot see any evidence that in this form they gave much trouble to Plato. The nature and possibility of knowledge would probably not have constituted a problem for him at all, had it not been for the existence of error. That we can know was for him a matter of course, and it was also a matter of course that we may be ignorant. But he was puzzled by the conception of something intermediate between knowing and not knowing. If an object is present to consciousness, it is pro tanto known; if it is not present to consciousness, it is not known. But in so far as it is known there can be no error, because the knowledge merely consists in its presence to consciousness. And again, in so far as it is not known there can be no error, for what is not known is not present to consciousness it is to consciousness as if it were non-existent, and therefore the conscious subject as such cannot even make a mistake concerning it. Hence we cannot be in error either in respect to what we know or to what we don't know, and there seems to be no third alternative. This is Plato's problem, and ours is fundamentally akin to it. For with him we must assert that, in knowing, the object known must be somehow thought of, and in this sense present to consciousness. The grand lesson of the history of Philosophy is just that all attempts to explain knowledge on any other assumption tumble to pieces in ruinous incoherence, and that from the nature of the case they must do so. The only form such attempts can take |