Category mistake

For the fallacy, see fallacy of composition and fallacy of division.

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,^[1] 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".^[2]

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.^[3]

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.^[4] 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.^[5]

The phrase is introduced in the first chapter.^[6] 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". Ryle's second example is of a child witnessing the march-past of a division of soldiers. After having had battalions, batteries, squadrons, etc. pointed out, the child asks when is the division going to appear. "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?"^[6] He goes on to argue that the Cartesian dualism of mind and body rests on a category mistake.^{[page needed]}

See also

• Apples and oranges
• Catachresis
• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
• Not even wrong
• Synecdoche
• Type error (computer science)

References

1. Blackburn, Simon (1994). The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford University Press. p. 58.
2. Lacewing, Michael (14 July 2017). Philosophy for A Level: Metaphysics of God and Metaphysics of Mind. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-351-67460-7.
3. Martinich, A. P., Philosophical Writing: An Introduction, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1989; third edition, Blackwell Publishers, 2005, page 2
4. 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, page 10, footnote 21)
5. "Gilbert Ryle". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2022.
6. Ryle, Gilbert (1949). The Concept of Mind. University of Chicago Press. p. 16. ISBN 9780226732961.