Publication date:
14 June 2012Length of book:
142 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739167168
The aim of Thinking through Error: The Moving Target of Knowledge is to describe knowledge as it works in our everyday attitude and behavior. Often in life, when making decisions and choices, we do not need to test the truth of our beliefs, so there must be another way to guide ourselves. With this in mind, Antomarini presents ‘thinking through error’ instead of ‘excluding error’. That is, we act through a slow process of guess-work, followed by quick gestures. By using our own uncertainty and our exploratory abilities, we face unpredictable situations and at the same time we acknowledge the constant presence of error in our thinking. Every decision we make continuously determines and replaces an entire universe within which that decision is plausible. Our everyday knowledge is a balance between a feeling of the truth and its negation.
In Thinking Through Error, Professor Antomarini seeks to free our thought from self-pre-empting truths: truths that depend upon our making invidious comparisons with error. Antomarini redefines error as a mental act that is pre-requisite to our engaging experience as a compelling voyage of discovery. She makes a convincing case for claiming that the knowledge we gain by risking knowledge of the truth re-invigorates philosophical inquiry in general. Her 'risky' speculations enhance the prospects for human creativity both within and without the realm of the aesthetic. This is a book with broad interdisciplinary appeal for anyone who has contemplated the possibility that error might be a pathway to knowledge rather than an impediment to knowledge.