What really are mistakes?

General Philosophy
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If I put salt in the cake I’m baking instead of sugar, it will most probably be seen as an error. But if we consider this error instead as a much needed lesson for paying attention, is it really an error after all, or rather something good because I’ll make sure to read labels more carefully next time? What if the people to whom I serve the cake never find out I was supposed to put sugar and thought I deliberately baked a salty cake for dinner?

The way I see it, mistakes are when you do something you weren’t supposed to do, but doesn’t it not matter anyways since you did what you did and you can’t undo it? It’s the way it happened, the mistake happened because it did. We could go on about how we were supposed to do something (or not) but that something wasn’t done in that expected way anyways.

However, if we view that mistake with regret, shame, or any other negative feelings of the like, we’d want to keep it in mind so as to not repeat it again. We could take operant conditioning as an example. B.F. Skinner believed that consequence ensuing behavior was what would influence that behavior and increase its probability of happening or not happening again. Behavior that results in a negative outcome we most commonly term as mistake, and so we try our best not to repeat it. But I want to know how these “mistakes” came into our minds in the first place, and why it carries a negative connotation.

When and how is something really considered a mistake? Is there anything such as an objective mistake (I believe mistakes are born through human perspectives but I’ll be glad to hear otherwise)? Would it be considered futile to brood over something that didn’t happen?

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I expect mistakes are real enough because evolution has produced self directing animals with needs and motivations. We can’t afford too much error. However, having said that there is no single path for us to follow so if you choose to see some of those mistakes as an opportunities and spurs for growth you are probably going to be much happier.

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Well the people wouldn’t know you’ve made a mistake if you say something other then what you were going to say

(e.g you tell them you made a salty cake the mistake wouldn’t be a real thing)

I don’t think mistakes are real cause u can just flip what you were going to say/make

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Interesting topic. In response to “When and how is something really considered a mistake?”, I take Austin to point out that a mistake is when you go to shoot your cow (you, as you say, “do” something) and you shoot your neighbor’s instead. He contrasts this with an accident, which is when your gun goes off unexpectedly (without your “doing”) and kills your or your neighbor’s cow (sorry about all the cow-killing talk).

Now we could say these are “objective” or “real”—though those standards don’t apply here—in the sense of the identity of the practice/event. One is not the other (or anything else; say, an “error”) based on the criteria for identifying it. Austin’s point I think is that you are (more) responsible for a mistake, and, with an accident, you are not (as much/secondarily—maybe you should have kept your gun in good working order, kept it pointed at the ground, etc.)

Now I would say the cake incident IS a mistake, by category, however, we might agree that the identification of mistakes, as a practice, is meaningful to the extent there is (perhaps) a judgment and thus the determination of responsibility, afterwards (as Wittgenstein points out). The identity involves “expectations” as you put it, but the “needs and motives” that @Johnnywas brings up would not be casual (necessary, determinative–always or beforehand) but are (possibly) brought up as part of the judgment.

But I would claim that judging a mistake is not required (not done necessarily, inherently, “ontologically”). A mistake may be pointed out (or acknowledged to ourselves), as, for example, something like the question, “Did you intend to do that [unexpected act]?” or some other reason (imagine it was rat poison, and calling it a “mistake” becomes, not, say, warranting an apology, but mounting a defense).

So, I would think it is not that it did not "happen”, but, that part of what mistakes are (how they work), is our ability—depending on the nature, context, and outcome—to control our response to the process of judgment and responsibility, of and to ourselves, and how we take those acts from others, particularly, moralizing about “supposed to”, or good or bad (as Nietzsche wants to show is unnecessary, “weak”). We, and others, may not even care (so not even involve forgiveness at all), and here we see how there can be a “happy” mistake. Thus, also, apart from just learning from it or brooding over it, I would argue part of it is that we can deny it “happened”, as you say—-and here we could just be trying to shuck responsibility, or making an argument (“tell them” as @PhilosophistKE puts it) that it should be deemed an accident instead (it is mis-categorized), say, we did put sugar in but bumped the salt container with our elbow, or deny responsibility, saying my evil twin did it as a prank.

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Also interesting is the way mistakes can be desirable in an artistic process. I can’t tell you how many times a mistake has revealed something better than what I’d planned. So was it a “mistake”? Sometimes the unconscious knows best.

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I’m not quite sure how this might matter, but would we separate a mistake from just unintended consequences? Painting with blue instead of red on your brush is a mistake, but I would think drawing a cloud and having it look like an angel is something else. I would think we could ask whether you “intended” to do either, and the answer for both would be “no”, but a mistake I think is based on the specificity with which we can identify an act, and the second is something like the multiplicity of what can matter or is meaningful to us. And there is something about this with art, where it is maybe encouraged, or designed to elicit reading into it more than “is there” (even not explicitly, or “consciously”). But even literally, something like a warning can also be, as @heretolearn0 puts it, a learning opportunity.

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A discussion like this could take us almost anywhere, including into spurious psychological speculation of the sort that interprets mistakes as intentional expressions of unconscious motives.

In general, a mistake does not really take on a negative character unless it costs you in some way. If the consequences are serious, then a mistake may carry a particular resonance. and, perhaps a reason to brood.

There are personalities who appear unable to admit to making mistakes, and that probably says more about how they construct their identity than it reveals about the nature of mistakes.

Isn’t the current cognitive psych approach to mistakes to understand them as consequences of the limits of our sense making capacity; attention, memory, perception, decision-making, instead of the hidden intentions of a subconscious?

But for me, a more interesting question is: when is something a mistake, and when might it be a “failing” of virtue or morality? Is supporting a racist agenda a mistake, or is it something more? Or is introducing morality into this an antediluvian idea, a remnant of Greek and essentialist philosophy that no longer applies?

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Yes, that’s a good distinction. I had in mind the first sort of thing. I’m a musician; the equivalent of putting one’s brush into the blue paint rather than the red paint might be, for me, playing the wrong chord. I don’t know how often a painter is pleased by their mistake. I can attest that I’m often both pleased and enlightened by a “wrong” chord. (Not always, mind you; sometimes wrong is wrong.). I frequently write using an instrument I don’t play well, precisely because I will make mistakes, and these mistakes may be delightful and revelatory.

As to whether the unconscious is playing a role here . . .

Jeez, that’s a little strong, isn’t it? I assume this happens to you in ordinary life, as it does to all of us. Why not in creative life as well?

How often? It depends on how we describe the mistake. If the mistake is “playing a C#7 because my fingers slipped when I was going for something else,” I’d say that sort of mistake is rarely indicative of an unconscious choice. But suppose we describe it as “playing a different chord than the one I was intending to play”. Now I would maintain that this is often deliberate. The unconscious processes that are so vital to creativity might be telling me, “No, we’re not so sure about that chord you were intending to play. We’ll see if we can put a spoke in your wheels so you come up with something better.” I truly believe that happens all the time. An artist who refuses to pay attention to these hints and nudges is going to be stuck up there in their conscious mind – yikes!

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Subjective opinions are probably not mistakes. While baking a salty cake may not be a mistake as you can always dump it on your pets, it might be a huge mistake if you’re planning to give it to someone more important in your life. It is something to be an honest mistake though. Like thinking 0 = O. Are there other kinds of mistakes? Possibly, but I haven’t thought about them as much as I would like to. Yes?

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Depends on what you believe, right?

Yes, I could have been clearer. I’m not suggesting that the unconscious doesn’t exist or that it can’t influence our choices. My point was to question the idea that the unconscious operates as a separate agent making choices on our behalf. I see it more as a collection of unconscious processes that shape and influence our thinking and behaviour, rather than as an independent decision-maker.

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OK, that makes sense. We don’t have to adopt the psychoanalytic lingo that turns “ego”, “id”, “unconscious”, et al. into something like personified homunculi all living within us. “A collection of processes” is probably a good way to think about what’s happening below the conscious surface.

The only aspect I’d want to add, though, is the often purposive nature of what these processes are up to. Sometimes all that the unconscious reveals is random flotsam – I’m sure a lot of what I dream is like that. But other times (and this is what interests me in connection with “mistakes”) I can’t deny the directedness of what emerges – its pertinence to what my conscious mind is grappling with. This speaks to the Freudian idea of the unconscious as the home of repressed material, but it’s also central to a theory of how artistic expression or inspiration occurs. All I know is, I pay careful attention to everything in my musical processes that at first appear to be “random” or “mistaken”. In a high percentage of cases, they are not.

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A mistake is a result of our actions that does not meet our expectations.

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I have time to review a question today so here is my input.

If you use a model like a virtual world, you can consider it as being real, not real, and everything inbetween, among other things. From the perspective of the character in the virtual world, when they bake a cake and follow instructions considered as socially acceptable by their peers, they are following a specific ruleset considered as correct. Deviating from that formula, or recipe, is indeed a mistake as they are following a objective truth. In this virtual world, their could be factions, such as A to infinity, that have provided the correct standard for a cake. They are even calling other preversions of their recipe as being a mistake. These factions determine what those standards are. They are the leaders of destiny for their followers. It is the virtual character, our hero in this example if it possesses free will, to determine who to follow if anyone. If this virtual world supports fatalism, then the faction they are destined bound to join will determine that truth for them no different than how this truth may work for us today. If our virtual hero is fated to be with a faction, their are no mistakes because they have no real power compared to the faction leaders who decide everything for everyone within the community. Our hero then lives in a sandbox and is really experiencing and going through the illusion of thought.

Because we hold constructs such as the spirit, the soul, the mind, and so on some of us can move outside of the this paradigm and see things both from the perspective of the virtual character and also from the perspective of a observer who is not native to their virtual world. To us on the outside, their is no cake, their is no real, their is no real experience, their is no mistakes to be found, regardless if it is free will, fatalism, or so on, because they are following social constructs that are imaginary.

On top of this, most of our worlds have emotions that allow us to challenge the very definition of what a mistake really is as if I find joy in the mistake then my emotional intelligence is saying something different than my rational brain.

There are other schools of thought that would also raise other points, but for now I leave you with these thoughts.

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I play guitar, and I “noodle”, sometimes with music on, sometimes without, and sometimes even when I don’t have a song in mind, or even a chord structure. I am playing along the pentatonic (six-note) blues scale, but I’ve played long enough I can just “let my fingers go”.

Now I don’t think we can call this “habit” (because I’m not “practicing” the scale), but it would seem there is something I (me) am doing, and something I am not doing.

Part of this is situational, because we are in the arena of art; no one is asking Thelonius Monk if he “intended” a note, because we know this is improvised. But he is still applauded for the performance—as Tom even puts it—the “expression” (which Wittgenstein points out is not a sentence, of words, with definitions, but a sentence said by me, at a time, in a situation. It expresses me, not in that it came from (or refers to) something inside me (“me”), but that I am accountable for it and to it).

But Tom’s issue remains: how/whether expressions are “intentional”, and/or because of “unconscious motives”. Many times philosophy paints this as “psychological”, but this seems a mistaken extrapolation from psychology, which, yes, does describe forces that drive us, say, from insecurity or trauma, but it makes no claim that we are always forced (philosophy will call this “determined”, as if, say, there is something “within us” (inherent in us, or our nature or identity), or outside us (as Marx points out). I would offer that, here, “unconscious” is perhaps better understood as “unaware” or “not focused on”, but it remains whether there are “intentional” forces here, whether aware or not.

My claim is that intention (or motive, or “reason”) is not causal, i.e., there is not usually, at the very least not always, a “cause” for an act. And the issue of causes, and any reasons, comes up afterwards. We may ask whether there was a cause—although this is different than a motive or impulse or psychology—and I would venture this is judged as such because it is without/beyond control.

Now it seems that what makes a mistake a mistake is only possible with an expectation, even when we “miss”-“take” one thing as another. And, also, that whether it is met or not matters to someone (even just me); as Tom says, “it costs you in some way”. I don’t think all mistakes are the same, even in just circumstance and parties, but I don’t think we can necessarily judge the importance of a mistake by consequences unless the judgment is codified (like a crime), thus the possibility for moralizing about what is right as “good” or “bad”.

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Agree. They can be a complex confluence of events.

Is there a difference between a jazz improvisation genius and strumming a guitar using procedural memory?

I think this is fair. We use the term loosely, don’t we? I heard a man recently say that it had been a mistake to marry his wife. Ten years in, the couple hated each other. But does this count as a mistake? Was it a lapse in judgment or did they grow apart? The mistakes I’m most interested in are the ones where actions were carefully considered but backfired, versus those which involved more random, perhaps hasty choices. It also fascinates me how some mistakes metastasise gradually while others arrive with a bang,

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I would suggest that the possibility (characteristics) of a mistake, at all (a priori)—for the reason that it is only seen in light of expectations—does not necessarily have to be viewed as an internal (personal) issue, and more of a public practice. In the case of art, that would be the form; for example, with guitar, we are playing along a scale. If we expect “blues”, that is a particular set of notes; if I mistakenly play a B-flat, it will “sound” (be judged to be), more like flamenco guitar (but the difference here might not be “important” for identity, nor cause us to prosecute the “reasons” for it, such as whether I was aware of what I was doing or not). Now I do think it is helpful to distance myself as the origin of a mistake, as if it were coming from a muse (or my “unconscious”), as, if I take myself as the root of everything, my ego’s desire for control may overshadow the spring of creativity.

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Yes, it can work that way too, as in your example. The kind of mistake I’m focusing on would depend more on a personal expectation than a formal or cultural one. But that isn’t a clear line either. If I’m reaching for a Cm7 chord because that’s what I’ve written, but hit Eb7 instead, it’s “wrong” based on my intention and expectation – but why did I consider it “right” in the first place? That has to do with the more public aspects of music. It might be, for instance, that I chose the minor 7th chord because it was part of a circle-of-5ths chord progression, a very familiar trope, just like a pentatonic blues scale. So I kind of chose it, and kind of had it chosen for me. In either case, the Eb7 chord is arguably one of those “deliberate accidents” I’m talking about.

And yes, even if there were no muse and no unconscious, it remains extremely helpful to act as if there are! It’s horrible to be constantly judging yourself – “is this right or wrong, am I good enough” – you never let go.

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And here may be the difference between a mistake, and an error: that the outcome is judged as “wrong”, because of an aspect of equation, rather than just regrettable, thus forgivable, incidental, or even desirable.

I thought of this too; that we might say to our partner, “Yes, I slept with them, but it was a mistake.” And I thought we might be saying that I should have brought my resentment to my partner, but I “mistook” revenge for the honest and straightforward airing of grievances. And maybe this is not to say I was wrong, but sloppy, or, as you say, “hasty”, though it could be taken as careless or thoughtless. And it is interesting that here it is perhaps the confusion of, and then realization of, what I should have expected (of myself), rather than, in a sense, knowing the expectation, thus immediately being able to see the difference.

There is something moral about this; perhaps I simply have to address the mistake itself in the lesser case (knowing it was wrong but explaining it was not “meant”, if there is any judgment), whereas in the second case, I have to, in a way, become someone else to even realize the motive of the act.

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Yes, I like that. And it helps me realize that what we’re doing here is basically an attempt to nail down some terminology in a way that will prove useful. For philosophical purposes, there’s no dictionary we can consult that will tell us what the difference is between a mistake and an error. All we can do is notice and enumerate different instances within a “family resemblance” group, and then propose terms that are perspicuous.

That said, I’m happy with seeing my kind of mistake as characterized by a failure of equation, of commensurability, between an intention and a result. To be precise, it’s a failure that results from something I do, or fail to do, when I’d intended otherwise. It’s not that my intended action, which I carry out successfully, turns out not to produce the result I wanted. We could call that a mistake too, but the structure is different; it’s the (flawed) intention that gave rise to the mistaken result, not the carrying-out.

What about desirability of result? I still want to include the idea that a mistake can be “happy” or “desirable in retrospect” or something like that. The other way to go, would be to say that it “wasn’t really a mistake,” but I think that doesn’t do justice to the experience. When I hit a wrong note that turns out to be an excellent innovation, I definitely made a mistake! At least, from the point of view of my conscious contrivance. From whose point of view might it not have been a mistake? Well, if some less-conscious part of me was dissatisfied with the original choice of note, and spoke up, as it were, by making my fingers fumble, then that was no mistake at all. But again, I can only inhabit that point of view in retrospect.