Phenomenology of Error and Surprise: Peirce, Davidson, and McDowell

This paper aims to show that error recognition, as Peirce conceives it, contains the same conceptual content that Donald Davidson argues is required for the normative judgment that one has erred. But, in contrast to Davidson, Peirce holds that the normative judgment of error can be experienced, as well as understood, through surprise. On this point, Peirce's view of surprise more closely resembles John McDowell's view of experience as conceptual. Surprise entails the judgment that one has erred, but that judgment is also forced on the inquirer as experience is forced on the mind. Such a view of surprise maintains a crucial element of empiricism in Peirce's philosophy since it is surprise that causes the individual and gives her reason to believe that there is a non-ego constraining her beliefs, to which she responds with abduction.