Formal logic forms the framework by which we divide up the world into entities. It gives us the ability to classify and to use the resultant concepts appropriately for survival. At the same time it contributes to our forgetting that change over time makes our words and thoughts, our concepts and classifications, out of date and hence frequently in error. Dialectics focuses our attention on change but tends to pay attention primarily to the aspects of quantity, conflict, and force in the change process, forgetting that in many situations that it is not differences in quantity that produce differences in quality; and forgetting that the use of force, even in conflict situations, does not always produce the desired result.
Irrespective of how we react to failure, it occurs to most of us, when we meet it, to lament the weakness in our problem-solving armory. Almost inevitably, we find ourselves wondering if anything can be done to strengthen the problem solving methods at our disposal. And, whether we realize it or not, this is tantamount to wondering whether anything can be done to identify and remove errors in our thinking. The message of this article is that if error is at the root of all our problems, then it is high time that theorists started looking at the nature and genesis of error more carefully. They might even discover that, in the final analysis, the problem of error is the only problem there is.
The analysis of traps should lead us to review the question of what to expect from our conceptualization of any situation.
There is perhaps an ultimate underlying trap in the belief that our verbal models are ever precise, accurate, or general at the same time. Perhaps our common belief could be called the Words Describe Reality Trap or the Words Can Do It Trap.
It might be better to say that we move in a verbal world of more or less error. In an important sense, we almost always have at least one foot in one or more of the traps. Perhaps the best we can do is to work together to help each other to experience moments of less error.
