Error

ERROR. - From the Latin errare, to wander, to stray, it is, in a broad sense, the departure from truth in thought and in action; in a proper and restricted sense, relative to knowledge, it is a judgment, or objectively false affirmation. Accepting the definition of truth as "conformity between thought and being," it is therefore the mental affirmation or negation positively at variance with reality. From this original subjective sense the objective one is derived, whereby e. sometimes stands as a synonym for a false proposition: thus one speaks, for example, of e. contained in a doctrine, in a system. As a mental affirmation positively at variance with reality, e., in the proper sense, must be essentially distinguished from the purely negative e. by which one is accustomed to indicate the simple inadequacy and incommensurability of human knowledge with the real.

The problem of e., because of its connection with that of truth and because of the embarrassing aporias to which it seems to give rise, has been from antiquity an object of interest and investigation on the part of philosophy. Protagoras, on the basis of the subjectivistic principle ("man is the measure of all things," Theaet., 152 A), denied the reality of e. (Euthyd., 286 C). Plato, who considered the problem extensively, bringing its difficulties to light, while affirming that e. consists in judgment, insofar as this can unite two notions that ought to be distinguished, nevertheless did not arrive at an adequate determination of the causes of e., whose explanation was made more arduous by the theory of knowledge as intuitive reminiscence of the ideas. This indeterminacy as to the genesis and causes of the erroneous assent remains in Aristotle, who is accustomed to consider judgment more as an objective composition of concepts than as a synthetic-perceptive mental act. In any case, Aristotle establishes the fundamental principle that the true and the false are found only in the proposition, insofar as this is an affirmation conforming or not conforming to reality, and therefore in the thought that expresses it (cf. Met., IV, 7, 1011 b 25). Moreover Aristotle emphasizes the illusions of the senses and also alludes to the influence that the will and temperament exert on right judg-

ERRICO, GAETANO, venerable - Portrait of the ven. G. E., by R. Spand, preserved in the Mother House of Secondigliano.

ment. Voluntarism in the problem of e., a very complex voluntarism, insofar as it is connected with the question of original sin and its consequences, is accentuated in St. Augustine: e., "falsi pro vero approbatio" (Contra Acad., I, 4, 11), is not chargeable to the intelligence; this, enlightened by the divine light, would not of itself fall into e., if the ill-inclined will and sensible impressions did not prevent the soul from the pure vision of truth (cf. De Gen. ad litt., XII, 14, 29; De vera rel., 33, 62). St. Thomas, having established the clear distinction between ignorance and e., takes up the Augustinian definition (De malo, q. 3, a. 7), and affirms with Aristotle that e. is not found in simple intellectual perception (simplex apprehensio) but only in judgment (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 17, a. 3), dependently on the illusions of sensible knowledge (De verit., q. 1, a. 11). Moreover the Angelic Doctor's doctrine on assent as a formally intellective act, and the determining power recognized to the will when the intrinsic evidence of the object is lacking (Sum. Theol., 1ª-2ª, q. 17, a. 6), leads to the conception of e. as assent to a non-evident proposition, determined by the influence of the will on the intelligence.

In modern philosophy the rigidly voluntaristic position of Descartes is well known: having affirmed assent as an essentially volitional act, e. is entirely charged to the will, which, broader and more extensive than the intellect, in assenting goes beyond the limits of intellectual perception (Med., IV, Ital. trans. by A. Tilgher, I, Bari 1928, pp. 124-133; cf. Princ. philos., I, 33). Bacon (v.) in the Novum organum (I, 39 ff.) makes a careful examination of the causes of e., reducing it to the innumerable prejudices and psychological propensities (idols), which disturb and impede the objectivity of judgment. Spinoza conceives e. in a purely negative sense, as a defect and limit in knowledge (Eth., II, 35). In Kant the problem is sharpened by the particular subjectivistic conception of truth inherent in his system: having affirmed truth as the agreement of the cognitive act with the laws of thought, the author of criticism asserts that e. is not, of itself, possible either in the intellect or in the senses; it, which is found only in judgment, comes from the unnoticed influence of sensibility on the intellect, whereby the subjective principles of judgment are mixed with the objective principles (cf. Critique of Pure Reason, Ital. trans. by G. Gentile and G. Lombardo-Radice, I, Bari 1940, pp. 277-78).

In post-Kantian absolute idealism, with the denial of reality as a transcendent positing to which thought must conform, one arrives logically at the denial of e. in its classical meaning of knowledge at variance with reality. In Gentile, e., as a positive act of the spirit, is impossible: the concept, insofar as it is realized in its eternal self-creative process, is necessarily true: nevertheless, insofar as in this its becoming process the concept has as its essential moment its own negation, it perpetually involves e. as its non-being, eternally surpassed in the act. Therefore not "e. and truth, but e. within truth" (Teoria gen. dello spirito, 5th ed., Florence 1938, pp. 233-37).

The problem of e., accepting it in its traditional value - the specific position of idealism shares the fortunes of the general principles of the system - presents two principal questions toward which historical investigation has also generally polarized: a) at what moments of knowledge it is realized; b) what the causes are by which it is rendered possible and intelligible. As to the seat of e., it is properly not found in the forms of essentially passive knowledge, such as pure sensation and simple intellectual perception. The senses are not, in the proper sense, subject to e. in the apprehension of their object: not in the sense that they always report or must necessarily report material reality as it is in itself, but insofar as the external object is always given to them as it necessarily determines itself in the relation between its objective conditions and the subjective structure of sense; and this both in normal and in abnormal cases. The same holds, analogously, for simple intellectual apprehension, if one grants that it can psychologically be realized without a judgment, at least implicit. E. is possible only where a spontaneous and active evaluation on the part of the knowing subject intervenes, that is, a judgment, whether initial and concrete (such is, in a certain sense, every perception and complex subjective construction of sensibility), or, principally, conceptual and pure (the judgment, in the proper sense, of the intelligence).

The possibility of error in these moments of human knowledge can easily be understood if one keeps in mind the nature of judgment and the various psychological factors it implies. Judgment, in fact, although formally an act of thought, very often nevertheless takes on the character of an integral psychological function in which the various psychic coefficients constitutive of the personality are engaged. In the choice and evaluation of the objective data for the assertive synthesis, man brings his temperament, his character, his habits, inclinations, tendencies, prejudices, passions, and all the particular conditions of mentality and culture in which his spirit has gradually been formed. If to this one adds the various illusions arising from the senses (external senses, imagination, memory), the limits of experience and the essential inadequacy of human knowledge, the ultimate metaphysical root of the possibility of error, it is not difficult to understand how judgment can frequently fail to correspond to the objective being of things. The set of factors enumerated contributes in fact, on the one hand, to the object's presenting itself under an inadequate and sometimes illusory aspect, or on the other hand to polarizing intellectual perception in a more or less partial and insufficient sense of the real, hindering the free and integral gaze of thought. And this all the more frequently the more complex the truth is, and the more it interferes with the tendencies, demands and commitments of the person and of life.

As regards the parts played by the will in error, the doctrine that makes the will directly responsible for the erroneous judgment does not seem acceptable, attributing to the free will the power to determine assent beyond the limits allowed by the reasons of a cognitive order present to thought. In fact, even granting that such an influence of the will is possible, in this case there would remain in thought the awareness of the possibility of error and therefore, by that very fact, error, as an absolutely negative attitude of the spirit, would fall away: one is not in error when one is aware that one's affirmation may be mistaken. The direct influence of the will, if it exists in error, requires, from the very nature of error, to be unnoticed and unconscious. The will, however, as a fundamental factor of the personality, retains in error a broad indirect influence, inasmuch as, through the general moral conditions it realizes in the human person, and through the particular determinations to action, it predisposes, in a positive or negative sense, the intellect to the knowledge of the truth. For this reason, error, like any other expression of human activity, remains sometimes, but only in a causal sense, voluntary, and therefore also, to the extent of the morality and freedom of the remote conditions that determined it, imputable.

Ugo Viglino

IN LAW

The divergences and contrasts that are perceived in philosophy concerning the concept and definition of error practically do not shift the terms in which the phenomenon must be considered from the juridical aspect, where the problem — directed essentially to the evaluation of the effects of error on human acts — is framed above all in relation to the positive provisions of the various legal systems. Juridically, by error is meant a false judgment or representation, that is, a judgment or representation that does not correspond to reality. Starting from this definition — reproducing in substance the more concise one according to which error is "the discordance between knowledge and reality" — we can, setting aside any different philosophical conception, see on the concrete plane of law what influence error exercises on human actions, operating both in the formation of a juridical transaction and in the activity productive of a crime. Error is in fact taken into consideration by law insofar as it determines the formation or the declaration of a will that would not have been formed or declared without the false judgment or the false representation of reality in which the error consisted.

It is customary to include ignorance as well within the juridical concept of error; but it seems more exact to say that, although these are concepts in themselves quite distinct (insofar as error is a positive discordance between thought or knowledge and its object, while ignorance is nothing but a negative discordance, or in other words the one is inexact knowledge, the other is lack of knowledge), such a distinction is juridically irrelevant, since with regard to the actions with which alone the law concerns itself, ignorance can exercise an influence on the will only insofar as an error is connected with it. And this because, as St. Thomas well explains, "actus voluntatis praesupponit aestimationem sive iudicium de aliquo in quod fertur: unde si est ibi ignorantia, oportet ibi esse errorem" (Sum. Theol., 3ª, q. 51, a. 1 ad 1).

Doctrine distinguishes error in juridical transactions from various points of view. While the traditional distinction between error of law and error of fact has lost importance, in regard to which the general principle of the irrelevance of error of law (in deference to the principle ignorantia iuris neminem excusat) ceases to have effect in the cases in which the fact itself of the due knowledge is considered, the distinction between proper error and improper error remains fundamental. Proper error is that which is by itself alone the efficient cause of the defect of the transaction, insofar as, presupposing the existence of all the essential elements of the act, it vitiates the consent, and for that reason, under given conditions, renders the act itself voidable, thus giving the erring party the right to challenge its validity. Improper error, on the other hand, is that which falls upon an essential element of the transaction: for example, on the existence of the object (I sell a ship, not knowing that it has perished in a shipwreck), or on its identity (I sell estate A while the buyer intends to acquire estate B), or on the juridical nature of the act (I give a sum by way of loan to Caius, who receives it as a donation). In the first case the sale is non-existent, because the object is lacking; in the other two there is a total lack of consent, and therefore here too the act is non-existent. It is obvious that in all these hypotheses the error is not the efficient cause of the non-existence of the transaction, but only the occasional cause.

Another more recent distinction, and only in part corresponding to the one just stated, is that between error of motive or accidental error, or error-vice (erreur-nullité), and essential or obstructive error (erreur-obstacle). The first is that which falls upon the motives determining the volition and vitiates the will insofar as it influences its motives; the second is that which determines a declaration different from the will, whereby one declares that one wills what in effect one does not will. A distinction has also been made between error caucum dunc (which falls upon the existence of the juridically necessary premises of acts and is the occasional and not the efficient cause of nullity) and error incident (the error of fact that falls upon the direct object of the juridical act, that is, upon the act considered in its constitutive elements); between excusable and inexcusable error, etc.; but obviously the practical utility of all these classifications, apart from their systematic value, is subordinate to the norms of the individual positive systems, to which, as we were saying, the juridical study of the phenomenon must be referred.

In the legislative systems of the various States, error is variously considered, both in the civil field, in regard to its influence in the various juridical transactions, and in the penal field, and it constitutes one of the most delicate and discussed themes of jurisprudence. In the law of the Church, moreover, the discipline relating to error presents particular interest because of the importance that the consideration of the voluntaristic element assumes in canon law, also in relation to moral theology. (v. IGNORANZA).

For the evaluation of error and ignorance (here practically equated) in relation to the activity of subjects in the juridical sphere, canon law first lays down certain fundamental norms. In these the legislator, after having established that no ignorance of invalidating or disqualifying laws ordinarily exempts from their application (can. 16), for the purpose of evaluating from the ethical point of view the state of mind of the subject, adopts the following legal presumptions: ignorance or error concerning the law or the penalty is not presumed, and likewise concerning one's own fact or the notorious fact of another; it is presumed, however, if it is a question of a fact of another that is not notorious. In every case proof to the contrary is admitted (can. 16 § 2).

Considering then in particular the disturbances of the will or of the intellect as to their effects on juridical acts, the general rule holds in this matter that error which bears on the substance of the act or falls upon a condition sine qua non juridically invalidates the act itself, except for peculiar provisions of law to the contrary. In contracts, however, error may give rise to an action for rescission in accordance with the law (can. 102). In other words, acts performed through error bearing on the substance of the act or on an essential condition are null, that is, both through error concerning the transaction and through error concerning the motives, provided it is such as to have determined the will. On the other hand, contracts stipulated through error whose rescindability is established either by canon law (as in the case of lesion ultra dimidium: can. 1682 § 2) or by territorial civil law (cf. can. 1529) are valid but voidable.

A particular discipline governs the matter of error in Marriage, which forms the object of a group of norms (cann. 1082-85) independent of the general principles set out above. In the evaluation of error in the process of formation and determination of matrimonial consent, the distinction between error of law and error of fact still has precise relevance.

The former is then a cause of invalidity of Marriage only when it falls upon the essence of the contract-Sacrament; that is, for its validity it is required that the contracting parties not be ignorant at least (but after puberty such ignorance is not presumed) that Marriage is a permanent society between man and woman for the procreation of children. On the other hand, error of law concerning the unity or the indissolubility of Marriage, or its sacramental dignity, even if it gives cause to the contract, does not constitute, according to canon law, a defect of matrimonial consent. This principle is of intuitive importance for the validity of the Marriage of unbelievers and non-Catholics. Likewise, error of law constituted by the opinion of the nullity of Marriage (for example, the erroneous belief in the existence of a diriment impediment) does not exclude matrimonial consent, just as, for that matter, knowledge of the actual nullity does not exclude consent.

Factual error can bear upon the physical identity of the person or upon his or her qualities. An error concerning physical identity, where there is properly a discrepancy between the manifestation of will and the actual will (one would see in it a typical instance of the case of obstructive error) and therefore an absolute defect of consent, renders the Marriage invalid. On the other hand, error concerning a quality of the person as a general rule does not affect the validity of the Marriage even if it gave cause to the contract, unless it is a matter of: a) error concerning a quality that redounds into error of person, that is to say a quality that serves to individuate the person and that was taken exclusively into consideration by the contracting party (but this is a concept difficult to pin down, and one much debated); b) error concerning servile condition, that is, concerning the state of slavery (servitus proprie dicta) of the other contracting party. It should be noted, however, that if error concerning other personal qualities (health, virginity, nobility, economic status, etc.) has in itself no influence on the validity of consent, the presence or absence of those same qualities, as of any other circumstance past or present, can be a determining element of the validity or invalidity of the Marriage, when consent has been subordinated to it, by deducing it as a condition (can. 1092, no. 4).

From the penal point of view, error (in its effects here too equated with ignorance; can. 2202 § 3) can be taken into consideration for the purpose of assessing imputability and of applying penalties. Canon law, departing here sharply from state penal codes which have adopted the maxim ignorantia facti, non iuris excusat, considers among the causes that exclude imputability — inasmuch as they remove moral imputability itself, the basis of penal imputability, because they suppress the subjective (voluntary) element — ignorance of the law, when it is inculpable; otherwise imputability is diminished more or less in relation to the culpability of the ignorance. Ignorance of the penalty alone does not remove imputability but diminishes it. The same rules hold for error (can. 2202). The causes that totally exclude imputability, and exclude its gravity — and therefore also error — likewise excuse from penalty (can. 2218 § 2). As for penalties latae sententiae (v. PENA) the law considers, besides invincible ignorance, which involves no imputability whatsoever on the agent's part and therefore excludes every penalty, three other hypotheses of ignorance: affected ignorance, that is, knowingly willed, which never excuses from penalty; vincible ignorance, crass and supine, which exempts from penalty only when the penalty is imposed by a law that in express words requires full and mature knowledge and deliberation; and vincible ignorance, but not crass or supine, and therefore involving a lesser degree of imputability (simpliciter: vincible), which exempts also (besides the penalties imposed by a law as above) from the medicinal penalties imposed by other laws, but not from the vindictive penalties latae sententiae (can. 2220 §§ 1, 3, no. 1e).

As regards error against the Faith, v. HERESY; for the theory of common error, v. JURISDICTION. For error in moral theology, v. IGNORANCE.

Arnaldo Bertola