Thoughts
What, if any, is the value in being wrong? First it must be established what “wrong” is, in the first place. It is easy to be wrong about “external” things; things outside of our own mind. “The rock will fall,” one could say… and be wrong when, after throwing it up, finds that it has gotten stuck in a tree. We can make claims “internal” (and thus easier to defend) by qualifying them with “I think,” or “I feel.” What makes these qualifications so truth-granting? It might be that nobody has the ability to see into another’s experience. Lying is when some truth is believed yet the opposite is communicated; but how can claims about one’s own experience ever be called into question? We can only appeal to the very same one for evidence that what was thought or felt isn’t actually so; yet that second inquiry deserves a third inquiry, and so on. (“I think I thought that…”) Such qualifications can also be used to communicate uncertainty; where claiming “X” is to say “I am certain that X,” claiming “I think that X” is to say “I am not entirely certain about X.” So what does it mean to be certain of something? Perhaps one has some evidence, or some evidence as well as some method for interpreting evidence. (It would seem that evidence is, after all, just information with an interpretation.) Perhaps certainty is a construction. “My construction exists; look, it is right here.” Ideological constructions seem to have the property of multiplicity: what has been conceived may have consequences that we do not immediately understand. Truth about “nature” seems to reveal itself over time; ideological constructions may not reveal themselves at all. What is the process by which the consequences of an ideological construction reveal themselves? The rock falls in front of our eyes to show us gravity; but what happens to the natural numbers to show us that the sum of them up to and including n is n(n+1)/2? Perhaps argument, or “proofs”…