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Constructivism, Direct Realism and the Nature of Error

University Of Sydney

Many theorists have argued that the existence of error refutes the direct realist thesis that cognition is a relation between an organism and an external state of affairs. The constructivist view, widely preferred in contemporary-psychology, is that knowledge is pieced together by the mind from inadequate data (commonly termed `symbols', `representations' or `appearances'). Error occurs where these constructed cognitions fail to correspond to what is really the case. It is argued that constructivism fails on its own terms, since each one of its distinguishing characteristics is logically incoherent. It is only under a direct realist programme that the distinction between error and cognition becomes meaningful: error is not a variety of cognition `gone wrong', but occurs only in the absence of cognition. Realist attempts to accommodate error without due regard to this stricture fall prey to the same logical difficulties encountered by constructivism. A failure of cognition, it is proposed, occurs where either (i) the organism lacks the requisite cognitive capacity to cognize some situation (organismic inability to cognize); (ii) the situation is not accessible to the organism (lack of opportunity for cognition); or (iii) the situation acts upon the organism so as to block the organism's cognition of some fact (inhibition of cognition). Errors of omission, or first-order errors, occur where the organism fails to cognize some fact; errors of commission, or second-order errors, occur where the organism fails to cognize that it has failed to cognize some fact. Omission theories of error such as the hierarchical model proposed hold important implications for psychological theory and research.

Theory & Psychology, Vol. 3, No. 2, 147-171 (1993)
DOI: 10.1177/0959354393032001


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