Category mistake

 ( Informal Fallacies ) 

A category mistake (or category error, categorical mistake, or mistake of category) is a semantic or ontology error in which things belonging to a particular category are presented as if they belong to a different category, 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".

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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 Descartes 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, page 10, footnote 21)Ryle consistently hyphenates "category-mistake". See 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.

The phrase is introduced in the first chapter.

The first example is of a visitor to Oxford. The visitor, upon viewing the colleges and Bodleian 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.

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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., What Hard Problem?, Philosophy Now, 2013, accessed on 5 February 2025

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See also

Categories: Informal Fallacies, Philosophy Of Language, Arguments In Philosophy Of Mind, Error

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