On the Nature of Mistakes in Nature

Some things happen of necessity, others merely happen to occur – but are there things that happen to occur, but should not have? The latter constitute mistakes and, prima facie, they are everywhere – from our setting the wrong cutlery at the dinner table to young turtles crawling in the wrong direction to the safety of the sea. As obvious and ubiquitous as they may seem, the question of whether mistakes are real is not an unfounded one. For inherent in the nature of mistakes is the core concept of normativity, as mistakes imply the existence of states of affairs that are supposed to occur, but which unfortunately do not. Whether normativity is a feature of the ontological fabric of our world, rather than an epistemological by-product of the heuristic framework we use to comprehend its denizens and their activities, is a question at the centre of a long-standing debate in the philosophy of science. In this paper, we will ask: what must the world be like if mistakes are really out there? In answering that question, we will highlight some central aspects of the nature of mistakes that any ontological foundation which purports to include them must somehow accommodate. After showing that even the most promising ontological framework that might do so – namely, a powers ontology – is seemingly not up to the task, we will propose a novel refocusing of the analysis of the nature of mistakes, one centred on the metaphysics of causal feedback and the concept of organismal flourishing.