My Adaptation of Josiah Royce’s “Argument from the Possibility of Error”

At the dawn of the 20th century, Josiah Royce was considered to be the greatest representative of Absolute Idealism in the United States. Royce was well-respected for his logical rigor, clarity, and insistence upon the need for a holistic account of the relationship between Knowing and Being. In 1885, Josiah Royce published his groundbreaking work, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, which tackled questions of Morality, Doubt, Religious Truth, and Idealism. In the most famous chapter of the work, “The Possibility of Error,” Royce presents a powerful and unique argument for Absolute Idealism. The argument culminates in the form of a dilemma: “Either there is no such thing as error, which statement is a flat self-contradiction, or else there is an infinite unity of conscious thought to which is presented all possible truth.” Royce’s argument undergoes a variety of alterations throughout his later publications; however, I have decided to adapt the 1885 version because of its clarity as well as the intuitive plausibility of the premises. (Furthermore, it is much easier to visualize than his later renditions of the argument. For this reason, I have included a diagram of the relationship between a finite subject’s erroneous judgments and the Absolute Mind’s true judgments.) What follows is my presentation of Josiah Royce’s “Argument from the Possibility of Error.”

P1) If erroneous judgments are possible, then all of the necessary conditions underlying this possibility exist.

“An unexpected result…springs from the very heart of skepticism itself....[Skepticism and] doubt assume this, namely, that error is possible. And so [skepticism and] doubt assume the actual existence of those conditions that make error possible. The conditions that determine the logical possibility of error must themselves be absolute truth....Since error plainly is possible in some way, we shall have only to inquire: what are the logical conditions that make it possible?” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 385-392)

P2) Erroneous judgments are possible.

If the judgment, “Erroneous judgments are possible,” is true, then erroneous judgments are possible. If the judgment, “Erroneous judgments are possible,” is false, then the judgment, “Erroneous judgments are possible,” is itself an erroneous judgment. Therefore, erroneous judgments are possible.

C1) Therefore, all of the necessary conditions for the possibility of erroneous judgments exist. [From P1 and P2]

P3) A necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment to fail to agree with that which the thought making the erroneous judgment has intended for its object.

“Logicians are agreed that single ideas, thoughts viewed apart from judgments, are neither true nor false. Only a judgment can be false....Error is therefore generally defined as a judgment that does not agree with its object. In the erroneous judgment, subject and predicate are so combined as, in the object, the corresponding elements are not combined. And thus the judgment comes to be false....The definition assumes as quite clear that a judgment has an object, wherewith it can agree or not agree….What then is meant by its object? The difficulties involved in this phrase begin to appear as soon as you look closer. First, then, the object of the assertion is as such supposed to be neither the subject nor the predicate thereof. It is external to the judgment. It has a nature of its own. Furthermore, not all judgments have the same object, so that objects are very numerous. But from the infinity of real or of possible objects the judgment somehow picks out its own. Thus, then, for a judgment to have an object, there must be something about the judgment that shows what one of the external objects that are beyond itself this judgment does pick out as its own. But this something that gives the judgment its object can only be the intention wherewith the judgment is accompanied. A judgment has as object only what it intends to have as object.” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 396-397)

“Royce points out that all judgment involves purpose in two essential respects. (a) What it shall select as its object is fixed by the purpose of the knower. Even the realist does not deny that I can within certain limits select whatever I please as the object of my investigation or judge about whatever known truths or matters of opinion I choose, this choice being determined by my purpose, whether the purpose be a mere momentary whim or have as its object the most vital interests of the human race. (b) The way in which my thoughts or cognitions shall correspond to their object and so the standard by which they are to be judged is also fixed by my purpose. A map, a verbal description and a book of photographs of typical scenery all correspond to represent the same country in a different way and so are subject to different standards, and I can choose which I shall produce and so by which standard my production is to be judged. Similarly with any judgment its truth or falsehood must be tested by and so depends on the standard the judger sets himself. When a plank is 2.9999999999999 feet long, to say this line is three feet long may be true if I am talking about carpentry and false it the context of my assertion is to be found in the subject-matter of an exact science. Again I decide whether it is more serviceable to use a mental diagram or to think in mathematical symbols, and if I adopt the latter course I cannot possibly be criticized on the ground that the shape of the symbols is not in the least like that of the real object.” (Ewing, Idealism: A Critical Survey, 149-150)

P4) But that which the thought making the erroneous judgment has intended for its object can only be that which is known to the thought making the erroneous judgment.

“A judgment has as object only what it intends to have as object. It has to conform only to that which it wants to conform. But the essence of an intention is the knowledge of what one intends. One can, for instance, intend a deed or any of its consequences only in so far as he foresees them. I cannot be said to intend the accidental or the remote or even the immediate consequences of anything that I do, unless I foresaw that they would follow; and this is true however much the lawyers and judges may find it practically necessary to hold me responsible for these consequences....Common sense will admit that, unless a man is thinking of the object of which I suppose him to be thinking, he makes no real error by merely failing to agree with the object that I have in mind….So, then, 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. Such, it would seem, is the consequence of the common-sense view. But in this case a judgment can be in error only if it is knowingly in error. That also, as it seems, follows from the common-sense suppositions. 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. Nor can we yet be content with what common sense will at once reply, namely that our syllogism uses known ambiguously, and that the object of an erroneous judgment is known enough to constitute it the object, and not enough to prevent the error about it. This must no doubt be the fact, but it is not of itself clear; on the contrary, just here is the problem. As common sense conceives the matter, the object of a judgment is not as such the whole outside world of common sense, with all its intimate interdependence of facts, with all its unity in the midst of diversity. On the contrary, the object of any judgment is just that portion of the then conceived world, just that fragment, that aspect, that element of a supposed reality, which is seized upon for the purposes of just this judgment. Only such a momentarily grasped fragment of the truth can possibly be present in any one moment of thought as the object of a single assertion. Now, it is hard to say how within this arbitrarily chosen fragment itself 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. If I aim at a mark with my gun, I can fail to hit it, because choosing and hitting the mark are totally distinct acts. But, in the judgment, choosing and knowing the object seem inseparable.” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 397-400) 

C2) Therefore, a necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment to fail to agree with that which is known to the thought making the erroneous judgment. [From P3 and P4]

P5) But an erroneous judgment cannot fail to agree with that which is known to the thought making the erroneous judgment unless the erroneous judgment is known as being in error with respect to its intended object.

“To illustrate here by a familiar case, when we speak of things that are solely matters of personal preference, such as the pleasure of a sleigh-ride, the taste of olives, or the comfort of a given room, and when we only try to tell how these things appear to us, then plainly our judgments, if sincere, cannot be in error. As these things are to us, so they are. We are their measure. But our present question is, How do judgments that can be and that are erroneous differ in nature from these that cannot be erroneous?....Since the judgment chooses its own object, 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?” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 400) 

“Yet again, to illustrate the difficulty in another aspect, we can note that not only is error impossible about the perfectly well-known, but that error is equally impossible, save in the form of direct self-contradiction, about what is absolutely unknown....[A]bout a really Unknowable nobody could make any sincere and self-consistent assertions that could be errors. For self-consistent assertions about the Unknowable would of necessity be meaningless. And being meaningless, they could not well be false. For instance, one could indeed not say that the Unknowable contemplates war with France, or makes sunspots, or will be the next Presidential candidate, because that would be contradicting one’s self. For if the Unknowable did any of these things, it would no longer be the Unknowable, but would become either the known or the discoverable. But avoid such self-contradiction, and you cannot error about the unknowable....Nonsense is error only when it involves self-contradiction. Avoid that, and nonsense cannot blunder, having no object outside of itself with which it must agree. But all this illustrates from the other side of our difficultly. Is not the object of a judgment, in so far as it is unknown to that judgment, like the Unknowables for that judgment? To be in error about the application of a symbol, you must have a symbol that symbolizes something. But in so far as the thing symbolized is not known through the symbol, how is it symbolized by that symbol? Is it not, like the Unknowable, once for all out of the thought, so that one cannot just then be thinking about it at all, and so cannot, in this thought at least, be making blunders about it?” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 400-402) 

“Truth cannot mean mere conformity of [judgment] to external object; first, because nobody can [determine the truth or falsity of a judgment] merely by asking whether it agrees with this or with that indifferent fact, but only by asking whether it agrees with that with which the knowing subject meant or intended it to agree; secondly, because nobody can look down, as from without, upon a world of wholly external objects on the one hand, and of his [judgments] upon the other, and estimate, as an indifferent spectator, their agreement; and thirdly, because the cognitive process, as itself a part of life, is essentially an effort to give to life unity, self-possession, insight into its own affairs, control of its own enterprises—in a word, wholeness. Cognition does not intend merely to represent its object, but to attain, to possess, and to come into a living unity with it.” (Royce, Logical Essays, 111)

C3) Therefore, a necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment to be known as being in error with respect to its intended object. [From C2 and P5]

P6) But an erroneous judgment is known as being in error with respect to its intended object only insofar as the erroneous judgment and its intended object are known to a thought which compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to its intended object.

“Thus, then, for a judgment to have an object, there must be something about the judgment that shows what one of the external objects that are beyond itself this judgment does pick out as its own. But this something that gives the judgment its object can only be the intention wherewith the judgment is accompanied. A judgment has as object only what it intends to have as object. It has to conform only to that which it wants to conform. But the essence of an intention is the knowledge of what one intends....[U]nless a man is thinking of the object of which I suppose him to be thinking, he makes no real error by merely failing to agree with the object that I have in mind.” (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 396-397)

C4) Therefore, a necessary condition for the possibility of an erroneous judgment is for the erroneous judgment and its intended object to be known to a thought which compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to its intended object. [From C3 and P6]

C5) Therefore, for every erroneous judgment that exists, there exists a thought which knows said erroneous judgment and its intended object, compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to its intended object. [From C1 and C4]

P7) There exists at least one erroneous judgment that had the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it) as its intended object.

C6) Therefore, there exists a thought which knows said erroneous judgment and the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it), compares them, and judges the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it). [From C5 and P7]

P8) A thought which knew the aforementioned erroneous judgment and the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it), compared them, and judged the erroneous judgment to be in error with respect to the Universe as a whole (and every aspect of it) would be an all-knowing, Absolute Thought.

C7) Therefore, there exists an all-knowing, Absolute Thought. [From C6 and P8]

“In The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885), ideas are taken to be representations of real objects. As images of what is perceived or thought, a man’s ideas are all that is present to his mind. These ideas are the only content of his thought, and the objects represented remain outside his thought. To this extent the position of subjective idealism is correct, i.e., “my mind can be concerned only with its own ideas.” But an immediate problem for a subjective idealist is to account for the difference between truth and error. If all I think about will be my ideas, and what they represent are but other ideas of mine, then to assert anything about them must be correct. In that case, sincerity and truth are identical, for when I assert anything there is no reference to anything outside of my own thought. As long as I honestly consult my own ideas, I cannot be in error. The truth of my ideas, however, is commonly taken to be their correspondence to the objects they represent. There is a “commonplace assumption” that error is possible, that an assertion can fail to agree with a real object outside of thought. But how is one to judge if this particular assertion is true or false? To answer that, Royce considers what role the judgment plays in human cognition. It is not an act distinct from that of understanding. That is, the judgment by itself has no intelligible object other than the ideas present to all thought. Royce concludes that the judgment synthesizes my ideas—a position he explicitly avows to be neo-Kantian. But if the judgment reaches no object beyond ideas, the common-sense belief in error must either be abandoned or supplemented. The former course is impossible, for in choosing it one would be admitting the common-sense knowledge had been in error. To state “error is impossible” as a remedy for a mistaken assumption is clearly contradictory. So that latter course alone proves viable. Since no single judgment can be an error (for it reaches no object beyond itself), there must be a higher thought that includes both the judgment and its real object. By comparing the two, this higher thought determines whether the first thought was true or false. Left to itself, the latter remains a fragment “neither true nor false, objectless, no complete act of thought at all.” This is a very brief sketch of Royce’s method of presupposition by denial. He begins with the fact of error in the world, and concludes to an Absolute Thought.” (Zanardi, Idea and Absolute in the Philosophy of Josiah Royce, 10-11) 

“What follows is a summarized version of Royce’s more lengthy argument. The fact of error is undeniable; to deny this is to contradict oneself, for how else can this fact be refuted if not by proving it erroneous? Each error implies a judgment whose intended object is other than my ideas and so lies beyond my judgment. Such an object will also be an object of a corresponding true judgment. Since the existence of error implies a higher thought, it will be this thought that contains the object of both the true and false judgments. Since the possibilities of error are infinite, the inclusive thought must be infinite. And since error is possible not only as regards objects but also as regards relations, all possible relations in the world must be present to this infinite thought. Finally, to know all relations at once is to know them in absolute rational unity, i.e., as one single thought….Even if one were to find fault with his argument, the error charged to Royce’s position is alleged to prove the existence of Absolute Thought. It alone knows the real and can compare a judgment with its intended object. Royce offers other arguments for the existence of Absolute Thought. The problem of knowing other minds is an instance of employing the already cited view of human understanding. My idea of another person can only be true or false if there is a third party to compare my idea with the real person. There is also a problem of relating a past idea to a present thought. The past idea was unique in its separate existence and in its view of the future. To determine the identity between its conception of the future and the present thought’s conception of what now has become reality requires an inclusive thought which compare them. How else could my past thought have made any assertion about a future moment? Royce refutes a response that rests on verifying a prediction only upon its fulfillment or failure to occur. My memory of an original thought differs from it and so is still in need of a comparison with that original thought. Again, Royce appeals to a higher thought to make a synthesis of what to the human knower are disparate ideas.” (Zanardi, Idea and Absolute in the Philosophy of Josiah Royce, 11-12) 

“In The Religious Aspect of Philosophy in 1885, Royce gave the basic proof of his Idealism. Does error exist?, Royce asked. It must, for consider the statement “There is error.” If the statement is true, there is error. If the statement is false, then there is error. Therefore, there is error. But what is error? A statement is in error if it does not correspond to its object. But what is the object referred to? A statement about a particular tree must correspond to that tree, not just to any tree. In other words, reference is intentional; the statement must correspond to its intended object. But for one to intend a given object, one must already know the object, and how can one be wrong about an object one already knows? Royce’s famous example is the case of John and Thomas, each of whom refers to the other. But when John refers to Thomas, it is to Thomas as John conceives him that he refers, and John can hardly be in error about his own idea of John. For error to be possible in this situation, a third knower is required who can compare John’s idea of Thomas with real Thomas, and Thomas’s idea of John with real John. But then we face a regress, for the third knower can only know his ideas of John and Thomas, and so we would need a forth knower to guarantee the third knower’s ideas, and so on. The solution, Royce held, is that John and Thomas are both ideas in the mind of the third knower, for about his own ideas the third knower cannot be in error. John and Thomas are therefore ideal; the third knower is the Absolute who knows not only what John and Thomas think but what they intended—namely, the real John and Thomas. This is possible in the same sense in which one can intend to recall a name one knows but cannot bring to mind. John and Thomas can intend each other as they really are, yet only be able to think of each other erroneously. But the Absolute, whose ideas John and Thomas are, knows their unconscious intentions, and so can compare the two. This argument led Royce to conclude that whatever we can be wrong about, and so whatever we can make true statements about, must be ideas in the mind of the Absolute. The world is therefore Ideal.” (Murphey, C.I. Lewis: The Last Great Pragmatist, 12-13) 

“For my next example I want to move forward only a few years and consider an argument from the existence of error put forward by the young Josiah Royce, in his book The Religious Aspect of Philosophy. That error occurs is undeniable, points out Royce, for if we deny it we commit at least to the erroneous belief that it does. But what is error? Error occurs when the thing we refer to is other than we say it is, when our judgement fails to agree with its intended object. It implies that there is a gap between what we judge about the world and what is actually the case. If they are to be in error ideas call for something other than themselves about which they err. And yet matters become more complex if we ask ourselves how this might come about, for on closer reflection it is hard to see how this gap might open up. How can our judgement fail to agree with its object if the only object it has it that which it describes? A paradox appears. By definition we are in error about what we don’t know, but how can we even speak about or refer to the unknown? “About a really Unknowable [writes Royce] nobody could make any sincere and self-consistent assertions that could be errors. For self-consistent assertions about the Unknowable would of necessity be meaningless. And being meaningless, they could not well be false.” He proposes an ingenious solution. If all reality is present to a single infinite thought in which, in our very limited and incomplete ways, we participate, then error may be explained as the phenomena in which, in our imperfect consciousness, we partially intend that which a wider thought successfully articulates. Our object of reference is given in the perfectly organized experience that completes it and which characterises the reality we meant, for if there is reference beyond our ideas there is no reference beyond ideas themselves. Reality just is ‘perfectly organised experience’. But Royce’s point is not merely that another sees fully what I grasp only in part, rather he is suggesting that the divine perspective fixes that which I intend but erroneously put, for it is a view in which I actually participate. The puzzling implication of this, that I somehow both known and do not know what I mean, Royce attempts to elucidate by reference to the familiar experience of finally hitting upon a lost name or idea—‘That’s what I meant all along’ we say.” (Mander, On Arguing for the Existence of God as a Synthesis Between Realism and Anti-Realism, 103)

“The centrality of epistemology in Royce’s work is evident in his earliest deduction of the absolute, the well-known argument from error. Royce developed this argument in The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, published in 1885, and it contains elements that were to reappear in later work. The argument begins with a concern with skepticism and relativism, that either truth is unattainable or that there is no truth independent of a perceiver or someone offering a judgment. Royce makes short work of the “relativity of truth” by asking us to consider the proposition that error exists. If the proposition is false then error exists, and if it is true then error exists. When we ask, however, how error is possible, or what are its logical conditions, an answer is less clear. A mistaken judgment, Royce says, is defined as one that does not agree with its object, in which subject and predicate are combined in a way that does not correspond with the object. On the face of it, this does not seem to present a difficulty, but the situation becomes problematic when we consider the nature of the supposed agreement or correspondence between a judgment and its object. A particular judgment is not about just any object at all, or any one set of similar objects, but rather it has a particular object. A judgment “picks out as its own” a particular object, and it does so by intending that object. A judgment is about an object, has an object, only when the individual making the judgment intends just that object. But to intend a particular object, the individual must to some degree know the object, and here is the dilemma. To judge, one must intend an object; to intend, one must know the object; thus, a false judgment can only be about an object which one knows. Error is only possible about that which is known. One may be tempted to resolve the dilemma by distinguishing between an object as intended by a judgment and the same object as it is independent of the judgment. But a judgment has as its object an intended object, so that the question still arises, how can one be in error about an object as one conceives it? It appears that one cannot be mistaken about an object as conceived, because however it is conceived, so it is. Error, then, must somehow be in the relation between the object as intended or conceived and the object as independent. But a judgment requires intention, so an object unintended bears no relation to a judgment. The only way this dilemma can be resolved, Royce argued, is through the presence of a third term in the relation. The agreement or disagreement of the intended object of a judgment with the independent object requires that both be present to, or observable by, a third, more inclusive consciousness that is able to compare them and to know whether the judgment is true or in error. With this idea in mind, consider the case of a judgment that concerns the future. Here the possibility of a judgment, true or false, seems even more remote because we assume that the future does not exist, which is to say, no object exists for such a judgment to intend. Yet we do make judgments, including false judgments, concerning the future, and they are possible only on the supposition that the judgment and its object, the future, are present to a consciousness that relates them. In the end this implies a single, all-inclusive absolute thought in which all reality, all past, present, and future, is realized as intended object. The existence of error implies, then, the reality of absolute consciousness.” (Ryder, Interpreting America: Russian and Soviet Studies of the History of American Thought, 228-229)