category mistake
{{for|the fallacy|fallacy of composition|fallacy of division}}
{{short description|Ascribing an impossible property to a thing}}
A category mistake (or category error, categorical mistake, or mistake of category) is a semantic or ontological error in which things belonging to a particular category are presented as if they belong to a different category,{{cite book |last=Blackburn |first=Simon |author-link=Simon Blackburn |date=1994 |title=The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=58}} or, alternatively, a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property. An example is a person learning that the game of cricket involves team spirit, and after being given a demonstration of each player's role, asking which player performs the "team spirit".{{cite book |last1=Lacewing |first1=Michael |title=Philosophy for A Level: Metaphysics of God and Metaphysics of Mind |date=14 July 2017 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-351-67460-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KAkqDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA208 |language=en}}
History
Al Martinich claims that the philosopher Thomas Hobbes was the first to discuss a propensity among philosophers mistakenly to combine words taken from different and incompatible categories.Martinich, A. P., Philosophical Writing: An Introduction, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1989; third edition, Blackwell Publishers, 2005, page 2
The term "category-mistake" was introduced by Gilbert Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind (1949) to remove what he argued to be a confusion over the nature of mind born from Cartesian metaphysics.Philosopher Ofra Magidor writes, "As far as I can tell, this is the first time the concept of a category mistake is referred to using this label." (Category Mistakes, Oxford University Press, 2013, [https://books.google.com/books?id=v35pAgAAQBAJ&q=the%20first%20time%20the%20concept%20of%20a%20category%20mistake%20is%20referred%20to%20using%20this%20label page 10, footnote 21])Ryle consistently hyphenates "category-mistake". See [https://archive.org/details/conceptofmind00gilb/page/330/mode/2up?q=%22category+mistake%22 the index]. Ryle argues that it is a mistake to treat the mind as an object made of an immaterial substance because predications of substance are not meaningful for a collection of dispositions and capacities.{{cite book | chapter-url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ryle/ | title=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | chapter=Gilbert Ryle | year=2022 | publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University }}
The phrase is introduced in the first chapter.{{cite book |last=Ryle |first=Gilbert |author-link=Gilbert Ryle |date=1949 |title=The Concept of Mind |page=16 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=9780226732961 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ryl-ezY6Mn8C&pg=PA16}} The first example is of a visitor to Oxford. The visitor, upon viewing the colleges and library, reportedly inquires, "But where is the University?" The visitor's mistake is presuming that a University is part of the category "units of physical infrastructure", rather than that of an "institution". In his second example, a child witnesses the march-past of a division of soldiers. After having had battalions, batteries, squadrons, etc. pointed out, the child asks when the division is going to appear. He is told that "the march-past was not a parade of battalions, batteries, squadrons and a division; it was a parade of the battalions, batteries and squadrons of a division" (Ryle's italics). His third example is of a foreigner being shown a cricket match. After being pointed out batsmen, bowlers and fielders, the foreigner asks: "who is left to contribute the famous element of team-spirit?" He goes on to argue that the Cartesian dualism of mind and body rests on a category mistake.{{page needed|date=October 2024}}
Application
Massimo Pigliucci, Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York, argues that the "hard problem of consciousness", as expressed by David Chalmers and others, rests on a category mistake, in that explaining "experience" is being incorrectly treated as different from explaining the underlying biological processes which generate experience.Pigliucci, M., [https://philosophynow.org/issues/99/What_Hard_Problem What Hard Problem?], Philosophy Now, 2013, accessed on 5 February 2025
See also
- {{annotated link|Apples and oranges}}
- {{annotated link|Catachresis}}
- {{annotated link|Colorless green ideas sleep furiously}}
- {{annotated link|Not even wrong}}
- {{annotated link|Synecdoche}}
- {{annotated link|Type error|Type error (computer science)}}
References
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Category:Philosophy of language