Mistakes: A Philosophical Inquiry

Mistakes are an inevitable part of human experience. We jump to conclusions, confuse one thing with another and can simply get things wrong. We make such mistakes, and in that sense we are distinctively responsible for them. In this respect, we are quite different from most other things in the natural world. This is the first book to provide a sustained exploration of the philosophy of mistakes. Beginning with the distinction between mistakes and malfunction Kim Frost examines the idea that mistakes are a form of irrationality; whether there can be mistakes of sensation and emotion; the idea of mistakes as imperfect exercises of fallible powers; the seemingly paradoxical theory that mistakes seem accidental yet also explicable; and mistakes in the context of non-human animals, such as the Sphex wasp, human experience and taking responsibility for mistakes.