Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Fri, 18 Dec 1992 13:36:00 EST
From:         "Bruce E. Nevin" <bnevin@CCB.BBN.COM>
Subject:      awareness of error/ignorance

[From: Bruce Nevin (Fri 921218 13:24:41)]

I had posted (Thu 921217 12:25:14) the following so that we could
all affect proper learnedness when PCT goes establishment:

>        Melius invenitur veritas ex errore quam ex ignorantia
>
>"It is easier to arrive at truth from error than from ignorance."
>
>The communication quandary is how to get an audience from the
>comfort of vested ignorance (ignoring) to the productive
>discomfort of error.

        Bruce
        bn@bbn.com

Martin and I subsequently had the following exchange (lightly
edited):

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Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 14:34:01 EST
From: mmt@ben.dciem.dnd.ca
To: bnevin@CCB.BBN.COM
Subject: Re:  Melius ex errore

Bruce,

I think I would distinguish recognized error from erroneous belief.  It is
easier to arrive a truth when error is detected than from ignorance, but
harder to arrive at truth from a firmly held erroneous position than from
ignorance.

Martin

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 14:55:04 EST
From: "Bruce E. Nevin" <bnevin@ccb.bbn.com>
Subject: Re:  Melius ex errore
To: mmt%ben.dciem.dnd.ca@bbn.com

Or we could distinguish two forms of ignorance: erroneous belief and
recognition that one does not know.

The Latin maxim does seem to depend upon awareness of error, but
not necessarily awareness of ignorance.

I see a simple matrix:

        \  errore      ignorantia
         +--------------------------
known    | error       ignorance (pluck)
         |
unaware  | erroneous   ignorance (luck)
         | belief

It seems to me that an erroneous belief can be sustained only by
a combination of luck and ignoring error (probably through
imagination).

Thanks for the thought-provocation!

        Bruce

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 16:24:52 EST
From: mmt@ben.dciem.dnd.ca
To: bnevin@ccb.bbn.com
Subject: Re:  Melius ex errore

I like it! (the 2x2 matrix)

Awareness of ignorance is an interesting thing.  It means that one must
know something about the area about which one is ignorant.  I don't know
if I am ignorant about the social practices of the Bowumbi of Alpha
Centauri if I don't know of the possibility that the Bowumbi might exist
and might have social practices.  Aware ignorance is somehow focused,
and there might be a choice (pluck) to maintain the state of ignorance
in that resolving it is unlikely to alter one's ability to control
perceptions that matter.

Funny how throw-away comments can lead to expanding conceptual structures.
Magellan never expected the Pacific Ocean when he went through the little
straits that bear his name.

Martin

Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 08:44:00 EST
From: "Bruce E. Nevin" <bnevin@ccb.bbn.com>
Subject: ex errore veritas
To: mmt%ben.dciem.dnd.ca@bbn.com

Martin,

Here is how I understand the process:

The perceptions to which we pay attention are more clearly
defined and longer lasting in memory than those we disregard.  In
this way, we create reference levels for selected perceptions
(selected by having attended to them).  When we use these in
imagination, unforeseen perceptions come up as ramifications and
consequences.  By reasoning about these, we develop/impose order
and structure in them.  In these perceptions of order and
structure there are gaps.  A gap of this sort provides a context
for recognizing a perception ("real" or imagined) for what it
"really is," and by that I mean perceiving it as a filler of that
gap.  (Related perhaps to Gibson's notion of affordances.)
This we call intuition or insight.

The things we have conscious control over are:  what we pay
attention to, how well we pay attention to them, and how well we
reason about them.  The rest is on automatic pilot.

The part for which we have some conscious responsibility includes
how we interpret perceptions as to what they "really are" (what
they constitute at higher levels).  And of course how attached we
are to our conclusions as imagined perceptions.  We know that one
false premise puts the conclusions at random, but we often forget
or ignore this in practice.  When we use as premises conclusions taken
from prior lines of reasoning from premises based on authority,
etc., the house of cards looks pretty shaky.

Magellan provides a kind of example.  I just looked him up in my
Columbia Encyclopedia.  He was looking for a passage to the
"south sea" in five ships.  When he got three ships through the
strait named for him, he had no idea that his perception of a
large body of water before him constituted so vast an ocean.  In
the months to the next landfall they revised their conception of
the relationships of land and water on the globe.  When a few
survivors on one last ship got past the Portuguese at the
southern tip of Africa and back to Spain (Magellan died in the
Philippines), others began to revise their perceptions (in
imagination) of geography.  What motivated the whole thing was
consciousness of ignorance, in the form of a gap (passage to
trade with the Indies) in what turned out in the event to be some
erroneous beliefs about geography.

I suppose we could create a mini-digest of this exchange for the
net, one way to make off-line dialog more generally useful.

        Bruce

Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 12:02:06 EST
From: mmt@ben.dciem.dnd.ca
To: bnevin@ccb.bbn.com
Subject: Re:  ex errore veritas

I'll hold off on agreeing or disagreeing about "consciousness" and its
relation to PCT processes.  But given that, I have no quarrel with what
you say.

>I suppose we could create a mini-digest of this exchange for the
>net, one way to make off-line dialog more generally useful.

Yes, it turned out to be more interesting than I thought when I posted my
[ . . . ] come-back to your original comment.  But most off-line dialogues
don't turn out that way.  By all means post it if you want.

Martin

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        Bruce
        bn@bbn.com
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