Seems to me you defend your notion of "imperfect replication" very well, Michael. You give some good examples. It sounds as though you feel there is a single cause for all those "errors", but maybe I have you wrong. For example, I would think of the forgetting that is so characteristic of old age to be a function of the normal atrophying of brain mass in the elderly.
Usually the early stages of such "senior" forgetting seems to stem from a failure of the brain's retrieving apparatus, as distinguished from an erosion of the inventory of memories. It's seems reasonable to conjecture that retrieving apparatus is in an area of brain tissue that is the first to "atrophy". It's not easy to see how that explanation of how "error comes to exist" will explain all error -- e.g. "errors" by someone who never knew the pertinent material to begin with. But I admit I feel out of my element in trying to grope my way through your question. I might be able to come up with more insight if I were prepared like psychometrician or a neurosurgeon, but I'm not. Do you suspect a sufficiently learned neurosurgeon could persuade you to accept the answer: all error is the result of a failure of brain tissue (and such failures have many different causes? As an answer there may (or may not) be some truth to it, but it seems like a dull answer. In a message dated 8/2/10 4:40:37 PM, [email protected] writes: > Cheerskep > > >> It does help, but I figured it would be pissy of me to say the likes of, > > > "Oho! So the only things you'd call 'errors' are "imperfect > replications"? > > Please don't be sloppy. > > > When a surgeon cuts off the healthy leg instead of the ailing one maybe > you > > wouldn't call that an error, or, if you would, I have to ask: where does > > imperfect replication come into it? Etc, etc." Since I am not a pissy > fellow, I'd > > never impute such things to you. Etc, etc. > > The surgeon looks at the X-rays from the wrong side and erroneously > identifies > it as the wrong leg. Why did he read the X-ray wrong? Why did his brain or > mental processes incorrectly interpret the reversed L? That is an error of > imperfect replication, i.e., he did not realize the L was backwards, or he > mentally reversed it again to its right-reading state, which amounts to an > imperfect replication mentally of the X-ray. > > I'm using the word "error" to designate every kind of deviation from an > exact > replica or perfect duplication of a previous state. Why does an opera > singer > occasionally sing a bad note? Why does a person dial the wrong number? > Errors > are well known, and there are a lot of disciplines and studies that > explain > such errors (dyslexia, cross-midline coordination errors, spoonerisms, > articulation errors, etc.). > > I suspect that every form of error or failure arises from the same general > fault, namely, an imperfect repeating of an earlier condition. Some are > mistakes (error in subtraction), some are judgment errors (the lion > underestimates the speed of the gazelle), some are faults of imperfect > knowledge (thought the door was open and walked into a glass panel--this > happened to me!) or ambiguity (the Nekker cube), some are errors in > interpreting sensory stimuli (famously, "Mondegreens") or fallacies. There > are > probably others, but I can't seem to call them to mind--which is another > error, namely, forgetting, and a related error, conflating. > > So: How do (or did) error come to occur and exist? > > > | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | > Michael Brady
