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But more positively, how can our position both account for
the possibility of error and also make the distinction therefore
between [[Page 85]] truth and falsity? This point will be expounded
at length in the following chapter; hence, only a brief
answer is presented here. (a) Error is possible because the categorical
structure may be mistakenly applied to the experiential
data. Such misapplication is possible from a great variety of
personal motivations. But its general ground is twofold: first,
the categories themselves may not be consistently correlated in
their applications: as when we accept as true a series of propositions
among which there are logical self-contradictions. In the
same way, we may add a column of figures and obtain a wrong
answer. But second, the application of the categories, while in
itself perfectly consistent, may be based upon insufficient experiential
data: as when I conclude from a burning fire that it must
have been started with a match.
(b) Considering these same points from an opposite point of
view, we may indicate how it is possible to distinguish truth
from falsity; here again, the test is the twofold one of systematic
coherence. A proposition is true or false depending on
whether or not: (i) it results from a self-consistent application of
the categorical structure; and if it be asked how this itself may
be determined, the answer is: by further analysis, just as a mistake
in arithmetic may be corrected or avoided by executing the
problem again to obtain an ultimately coherent result; i.e., a result
free from self-contradiction. (ii) It rests on sufficient data
of experience as systematically correlated by the categorical
structure of the mind itself. Thus, for example, I determine the
length of a desk by taking a number of measurements and
correlating the results in self-consistent fashion. Of course, in
any such problem I do assume that the desk at any given
moment has a determinate length. But this proposition can be
denied only by the self-contradictory skeptic.