"It was alleged to be 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." What in the world does this mean? Could someone explain this in plain English please? Also, avoid passive voice.
- I think this is saying that it's meaningless to apply the predicates that would apply to a substance to a collection of dispositions and capacities. If the mind just is a set of dispositions and capacities, then different predicates would apply to it than if it were an immaterial substance. I'd change the wording, except it attributes a position to Ryle that he probably didn't hold, so if I knew how, I'd just rewrite it to reflect what Ryle actually thought.JustinBlank (talk) 03:05, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Making a "category mistakes" can also be said about other areas of life.
I could've sworn the term was "category error."Shaggorama 01:41, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I've certainly heard "category error" far more often than "category mistake". Change it? Artichoke84 18:39, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Ryle's 1949 paper "The Problem of Mind" (the origin of the term) refers to this subject as "category mistake." Hence the entry name should remain the same. I can't find an online copy of the paper, but you may consider:
- I didn't know there was a paper. I've got a book by Ryle here called The Concept of Mind. The copyright date for the book is 1949. Would this be what you mean? He uses the phrase 'category-mistake' with a hyphen.--Publunch (talk) 21:18, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
Also, the article contained an erroneously overbroad definition of category error:
- "In philosophy and formal logic, and it has its equivalents in science and business management, Category Error is the term for having stated or defined a problem so poorly that it becomes impossible to solve that problem, through dialectic or any other means." Suggested here.
I have removed this because (a) I can find no other source for the definition of the term, (b) the web site cited is a fictional story with many factual errors and cannot be considered an authoritative source, and (c) the definition given is quite imprecise, a quality that is rarely found in definitions written by logicians and much more frequently found in definitions written by amateurs.
For these reasons, it seems safe to say that the definition provided is an error by Dan Simmons which should not be replicated in Wikipedia. User:JoomTory
I have removed this portion because the Chinese Room argument contains no explicit reference to any category mistakes, as the issue has to do with syntax and semantics as well as belief and content, and not reification or other ontological fallacy.
Other examples of category mistakes
1) On the Ghost in the machine page, this example of a category mistake (by Ryle) is given:
"One paradigm set forth by Ryle that is exemplary of an archetypal category mistake, is that of a foreign student visiting a university. As the student is shown the various campuses, buildings, libraries, fields, et cetera, the student asks, "But where is the university?" This is to equate the level of existence of the university with that of buildings, libraries, and campuses. However, the being of the university exists above such a level, as an encompassing whole or essence of such things, extending beyond mere plant and buildings (to include staff, students, curricula, etc.), and not among them (i.e., on the same categorical level). The student commits a category mistake, by presupposing that the university exists on the same level as the buildings, when the university certainly exists on a quite different level." HeWasCalledYClept (talk) 06:42, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
2) I can remember another one from university. It would be a category mistake to go to the ballet and then ask afterwards "Who won?" It's a category mistake to think that the ballet is like a football game.HeWasCalledYClept (talk) 06:42, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Examples
This article could use more examples. It's hard to understand. Stifle (talk) 10:11, 21 October 2008 (UTC)