This slide presentation looks at the epistemological problem of error as addressed by Josiah Royce, John Peterson, and Kara Barnette.

1. The Problem of Error
As Considered by Josiah Royce
By Valerie Philbrick-DeBrava

2. Part I: Summary of the Problem

3. Josiah Royce summarizes the problem
of error in the following way:
Error, he says in The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, is
“generally defined as a judgment that does not agree with its
object” (396). “In the erroneous judgment,” he continues,
“subject and predicate are so combined as, in the object, the
corresponding elements are not combined. And thus the
judgment comes to be false” (396-37).

4. Setting aside error for a
moment…
We may recall that this presentation of
judgment agrees with Kreeft’s statements
that a judgment results in a proposition and
that a proposition, expressed as a declarative
sentence, consists of a subject and a
predicate (138-141). Royce’s presentation of
judgment also agrees with Kreeft’s statement
that “only propositions [not terms or
arguments] can be either true or false” (138).

5. False Proposition
An example of a false proposition would be,
“The moon is made of green cheese.” For
Royce, as for Kreeft, “the moon” is the
subject. And for Royce, who uses the term
“predicate” more loosely than Kreeft by not
distinguishing between the copula and
predicate, “is made of green cheese” serves
as the predicate.

6. TRUE FALSE
So why is error a philosophical problem? Can’t
we just accept that we sometimes make
propositions that do not agree with their object?

7. The moon is made of green cheese,
The star of Titanic was John Cleese,
Canada is slightly smaller than Greece,
Corn is closely related to black-eyed peas,
Honey comes from birds, not bees,
Elephants sometimes climb trees….
“The Moon is Made of Green Cheese” by Alexander Nderitu

8. Intention…
Part of the problem has to do with intention or volition. As Royce states,
“[a] judgment has as object only what it intends to have as object. It has
to conform only to that to which it wants to conform” (Aspect, 397).
The key words, here, are “only what it intends” and “to which it wants.”

9. …and Knowledge
And part of the problem has to do with the knowledge that
must accompany the intention. As Royce says, “judgments
err only by disagreeing with their intended objects, and they
can intend an object only in so far forth as this object is
known to the thought that makes the judgment” (Aspect,
398).

10. “Or, if we will have it in syllogistic
form…
Everything intended is something known.
The object even of an erroneous judgment is intended.
Therefore, the object even of an error
is something known” (Aspect, 399).

11. As John Peterson explains the problem
presented by Royce,
“…one only errs about what one chooses or picks out as the
subject of one’s judgment, and what is outside one’s mind or
consciousness is not so chosen or picked out. I cannot be wrong
about another book on another desk in another room of the
building that never enters my mind when I judge about this book
before me that I pick out as subject of my judgment” (“Holism,”
485).

12. Part II:
Possible Objections
To Royce’s
Formulation of the
Problem of Error

13. The Organic Unity of Judgments
Royce acknowledges that someone “may here… answer that we
neglect in this description the close interdependence of various
judgments.” In other words, a particular judgment may not agree
with its object. Yet, because thought or a series of judgments “is
an organic unity,” agreement may nonetheless exist between
another closely related judgment and that object. The implication
would then be that the non-agreeing judgment is a single
misalignment in a broader spectrum of agreement (Aspect, 405).

14. Royce’s response
to this objection
is that each particular judgment
“stands or falls” with its own particular
object. The judgment “stands” if it
agrees with its object, and it “falls” if it
does not agree with its object. This
response is consistent with our earlier
observation that any given proposition
may be true or false depending on
whether the judgment of which it is the
expression agrees with its object.

17. Partial Knowledge of the Object
Another objection to Royce’s formulation of the problem is that our
knowledge of the object about which we err is only partial
knowledge. In short, we know enough about the object to
appropriate it as the focus of our judgment, but we do not know
enough about it to judge of it accurately. Peterson adopts this
view, arguing that “any false judgment we make about anything at
all requires a… mix of knowledge and ignorance as regards the
object of judgment” (489).

18. Royce’s
response to this
objection:
Error is real but not because
we know only segments or
slices of an object and remain
ignorant of other segments or
slices. In each singular
judgment, we either know the
entirety of the object or we are
ignorant about the entirety of
the object.

19. All or Nothing
As Royce states, “it is hard to say how within this arbitrarily chosen
fragment itself [i.e., the specific object with which a judgment “stands”
or “falls”] there can still be room for the partial knowledge that is
sufficient to give to the judgment its object, but insufficient to secure to
the judgment its accuracy” (Aspect, 399).

20. No Partial Relation Either
Nor, says Royce, can we shift partiality to the judgment’s
relation to the object (given the object’s not being able to
accommodate ignorance). “Since the judgment chooses its
own object,” he writes, “and has it only in so far as it chooses
it, how can it be in that partial relation to its object which is
implied in the supposition of an erroneous assertion?”
(Aspect, 400).

21. Part III:
Other Theories about
Error
Taken from Royce’s 1912 Essay, “Error and Truth”

22. The Correspondence Theory of Truth and
Falsity
As Royce observes in “Error and Truth,” published in the posthumous
collection, The Logical Essays, the correspondence theory assumes
that a true proposition matches up with or corresponds to a particular
external fact. Likewise, the theory assumes that a false or erroneous
proposition fails to match up with or correspond to a particular external
fact. The key elements of this theory are the alignment of our ideas and
reality and the distinct, separate existences of those ideas and reality.

25. The flaw
that the distinction and mutual
externality of the judgment and the
object or of the proposition and the
fact excludes a common ground from
which to gauge the correspondence
or non-correspondence of the
judgment/proposition and object/fact.
with this theory of
truth and falsity,
however, is…

27. Pragmatism’s Theory of Truth
According to Royce, Pragmatists see truth as based on experience. That
which comes to be regarded as true is that which proves successful or meets
with our expectations. Summarizing the Pragmatists’ position, he writes, “our
propositions are hypotheses to the effect that certain ideas will, if tested,
agree with certain expected workings. If the test shows that we succeed,
then, just when and in so far as we succeed, our propositions prove to be
then and there true. If we fail, they prove to be errors.” It follows from this
position, moreover, that truth is a “dynamic process,” a process whose
successful outcome remains relative to the circumstances of its test (Logical,
113).

29. No
Archimedean
Point
The problem with the
Pragmatists’ view of truth
and falsity is that we have
no absolute standpoint
from which to determine
the truth of the very
criteria of a successful
(i.e., truthful) outcome.

31. Absolute Idealism’s Theory of Truth
A third theory of truth (and error) that Royce considers in his essay is
the theory proper to Absolute Idealism, specifically, Hegel’s Idealism.
That theory, according to Royce, is -- like Pragmatism’s theory --
experiential. It does not, however, suffer from the absence of an
Archimedean point. The experience by which our endeavors and
hypotheses prove successful or true is all of experience, not just the
experience of an individual or a certain time period. Specific truths and
errors are parts that fit into the whole of historical experience.

33. The Dialetical Process
Royce summarizes further, in connection with Hegel, and
observes that we necessarily inhabit a specific historical
moment and offer propositions tied to that moment. While the
propositions will ultimately be justified by the whole of
experience, we inevitably articulate them in the limited,
partial vocabulary of the present moment. Thus our
propositions are simultaneously true and false.

35. The problem
with this
Idealistic view
of truth and
falsity…
is that a proposition cannot
be simultaneously true and
false. Royce maintains that a
plausible theory of error must
abide by the rules of logic.
Therefore, a true proposition
must always be true, and it
must always contradict its
opposite false formulation.

36. Part IV: Royce’s Solution to the
Problem
Needless to say, Royce’s solution to the problem of error does not lie squarely
within the intellectual provinces of the Correspondence Theory, the Pragmatists’
Theory, or Absolute Idealism’s Theory. His solution does contain elements of
the Correspondence and Idealist Theories, however. For example, it shares the
former theory’s insistence on agreement between judgment and object – albeit
without that theory’s insistence on a complete separation of the two. (“Cognition
does not intend merely to represent its object,” Royce writes in “Error and
Truth,” “but to attain, to possess, and to come into a living unity with it” [111].)
And it does share Idealism’s triadic paradigm – though without that theory’s
temporal horizon.

37. The Third Being
Royce’s solution is that error can be
recognized as error – that is, as a mismatch
between judgment and object – by an observer
who perceives both the error and the correct
match between judgment and object that the
erring person fails to grasp. Royce introduces
this idea of a third being with the observation
that without such a being, there is no way to
gauge epistemological accuracy (“Error and
Truth,” 109-110).

40. The John-and-Thomas Scenario
On page 410 of The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, Royce introduces
the solution of a third being with two hypothetical people, John and
Thomas, who do not know each other directly or immediately but
through their ideas of one another. These ideas, which are called
“phantoms” in the following excerpt and referred to elsewhere in
Royce’s work as “representations,” are all that John and Thomas – and,
indeed, all people – can know of each other. In fact, Royce assumes,
“phantoms” or “representations” are all that we can know of any objects
we judge.

42. Royce reinforces
this argument…
(with its representationalist
assumptions) about the
necessity of a third
cognizant being on page
416 of The Religious Aspect
of Philosophy.

44. Two Women
and a Dog
Kara Barnette, in her essay
“Necessary Error: Josiah
Royce, Communities of
Interpretation, and Feminist
Epistemology,” provides a
variation on the John-and-
Thomas scenario, a
variation in which the third
being is a woman rather
than an unspecified source
of cognition.

47. The Link with Feminist Epistemology
Interestingly, Barnette links Royce’s argument for a third being to
feminist epistemology, maintaining that Royce’s solution to the problem
of error is consonant with “feminist standpoint theory,” which “relies on
the claim that those who are oppressed by structures of power can
communally develop epistemologically privileged perspectives because
they can learn to recognize the extent to which sexism, racism,
homophobia, classism, and colonialism play a role in what is considered
knowledge” (227-228).

48. The Role of Community
Moreover, Barnette argues, “Royce’s account of error provides a way of
understanding how even [these] epistemologically privileged standpoints can
contribute to limiting, and therefore error-generating, accounts if the community
is not continually striving for a larger perspective” (228). Those who recognize
how, for example, racism “plays a role in what is considered knowledge” may, in
fact, come into conflict themselves and require adjudication over their privileged
but internally fractious standpoint. Royce’s emphasis on a more encompassing
third being here takes on the form of one or more human communities, a form
consistent with much of Royce’s work on loyalty and community (Parker and
Pratt).

49. The Absolute Knower
Despite the insightful and productive way Barnette applies Royce’s
epistemologically necessary third being to feminist standpoint theory, and
despite Royce’s own work on human communities, we should acknowledge
that Royce’s philosophical consideration of error ultimately requires that the
third being transcend human identity. In other words, the act of cognition that
encompasses both the judgment and the (represented) object is, in the end,
infinite and absolute in nature… and no human judgement, whether individual
or communal, rises above finitude on its own. Royce makes the absolute
nature of the third being clear on page 423 of The Religious Aspect of
Philosophy as he is addressing the problem with temporally oriented dialectic
such as Hegel’s.

51. The Infinite
Royce insists on the
absolute nature of the third
being earlier in The
Religious Aspect of
Philosophy, too. On page
393 he notes, “[e]ither then
there is no error, or else
judgments are true or false
only in reference to a
higher inclusive thought…
which must, in the last
analysis, be assumed as
Infinite and all-inclusive.”

52. Royce’s Representationalist Assumption
In conclusion, we should note that much of the problem Royce examines in his
considerations of error is problematic because of his assumption that a person
judging an object is judging not the object itself but his or her idea of the object. In
other words, even while Royce recognizes as a difficulty the separateness of the
judgment and the object (as, say, in the Correspondence Theory of Truth), and even
as he argues toward an ultimate inclusiveness, he begins with that separateness as
though immediate knowledge of an object is not even on the table. As Kenneth
Gallagher points out, that assumption bears the imprint of Lockean empiricism, an
imprint that that we need not bear if we can get out from under Locke’s – and
Descartes’s – burdensome legacies.

54. Conclusion
Whatever the limiting effects of Royce’s representationalism, it is
clear that this philosopher’s considerations of truth and error offer
valuable epistemological insight. It is no wonder that, in the words
of Kelly Parker and Scott Pratt, “…recent years have brought a
revival of interest in Royce’s thought….Royce’s work is proving
especially fruitful for theologians and philosophers interested in
speculative philosophy and metaphysics, practical and theoretical
ethics, philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of community.”

55. Works Cited
Barnette, Kara. “Necessary Error: Josiah Royce, Communities of Interpretation, and Feminist
Epistemology.” The Relevance of Royce. Eds. Kelly A. Parker and Jason Bell. Fordham University
press, 2014. 227-245.
Gallagher, Kenneth T. The Philosophy of Knowledge. New York: Fordham University Press, 1986.
Parker, Kelly A. and Scott Pratt, "Josiah Royce", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall
2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL =
<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/royce/>.
Peterson, John. “Holism, Realism, and Error.” International Philosophical Quarterly 59.4 (December
2019), 485-492.
Royce, Josiah. “Error and Truth” (1912). Royce’s Logical Essays: Collected Logical Essays of
Josiah Royce, ed. Daniel Robinson. Dubuque, Iowa: W. C. Brown Co., 1951, 98-124.
Royce, Josiah. “The Possibility of Error.” The Religious Aspect of Philosophy. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin and Co., 1895, 384-435.