Talk:Category mistake

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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:

 http://www.philosophyprofessor.com/philosophies/category-mistake.php

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.

[edit] Chomsky Reference is Unmerited

Why is "Colorless Green..." mentioned under "See Also"? Chomsky used that phrase when arguing for the generativity of language. Its only connection to category mistakes is that it is a nonsensical phrase, and even then, many phrases exemplifying cattegory mistakes need not to be totally unintelligible. So really there is no connection.

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7249.html http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/categories/

Agondie 13:14, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

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