Category error

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A category error is committed by a speaker when he uses a linguistic expression in a way that does not correspond to the logical type of the expression. The logical type of an expression is the class of its logically correct uses. This class can be seen as a set of sentences that form a framework for setting up linguistic expressions. Such a frame can have the form: "Aristotle was a Greek ...". Possible entries in the space marked with "..." are e.g. B. "Philosopher", "Poet", "Sculptor", "Politician" etc. Even if not all of these substitutions result in true sentences, they are meaningful sentences. Entitlements like “planet”, “syllogism” or “thought” lead to nonsensical sentences. Expressions that result in meaningful sentences when placed in related sentence frames belong to a category , they are of the same logical type. A category error can be recognized by the fact that the insertion of an expression produces a nonsensical sentence.

Ryle's category error analysis

The term "category mistake" or "category confusion" ( category mistake ) leads Gilbert Ryle in his major work The concept of mind as a research tool in support of his thesis one that philosophical problems that appeal to concepts like mind, will or consciousness socialize, wrong from a Use of these terms result. A prominent example of this is the mind-body problem . With his analysis, Ryle wants to show that such philosophical problems, on closer inspection, are not problems at all. Ryle therefore sees the task of philosophy in "replacing category habits with category discipline".

In The Concept of Mind , Ryle gives numerous examples with the help of which he tries to explain the concept of the category error. For example, he speaks of a visitor to Oxford University, who is shown the various facilities such as lecture halls, seminar rooms, laboratories, cafeteria or library. The visitor is dissatisfied after his tour because he wanted to see the university and instead is shown different rooms and places. If the visitor asks the question: "Where is the university now?", He is making a category error. He uses the term “university” as if it belonged to the same category as “lecture hall”, “laboratory” or “cafeteria”. Another example is the following: Suppose someone reports that they have bought a new pair of gloves and the answer is: “I see you are wearing a left and a right glove, but where is the pair of gloves you are talking about? “The questioner makes the mistake of putting the phrase“ a pair of gloves ”in the same category as“ right glove ”and“ left glove ”.

background

Ryle gives no formal definition of the category error in The Concept of Mind itself. In his definition of the category as a logical type of linguistic expression and the proposal to define categories as a set of sentence frames, however, clear borrowings from Bertrand Russell's research can be seen. This designates predicative sentences of the form "x is a φ" as sentence functions. Substitutions for the proposition function φx result in either true or false statements according to the bivalence principle of classical logic . The set of all substitutions in x for which φx becomes a true statement is called the extension domain. Russell defines the extension range of a proposition function as a logical type. Even before Ryle, Russell stated that the problems that arise from concepts such as mind, matter, consciousness or will are due to the vagueness and vagueness of these concepts. He, too, saw the task of philosophy in the “criticism and clarification of terms that can easily be viewed as fundamental and accepted uncritically”. Ryle's concept of category error is therefore, in a sense, an analog of Russell's concept of type error. However, Russell believed that none of the problematic terms could be made type-specific and thus were of no importance in any exact science. On this point, Russell and Ryle differ. As much as Ryle himself still stands in the tradition of neopositivism and his borrowings from Russell's logical atomism are unmistakable, Ryle's “ over- logical approach” leads back to the same misery from which it should actually lead. He accuses the logicians of making a category error themselves. Linguistic expressions cannot be “entered in a ready-made register of logical classes or types”, which also applies to philosophical terms. For Ryle, the logicians' category mistake is that they used the concept of analysis as well as the concept of sight. However, analyzing in the philosophical sense means arguing. "But the fact that the ability to use an argument brings with it the ability to 'see' the implication [...] does not mean that it is [...] causally necessary, just before or during [the] use of the argument to carry out such an act of 'seeing'. ”With his suggestion of informal logic as the field of work of the philosopher, Ryle therefore disputes the philosophical claim of formal logic . The concept of the category error is thus a good example of the turn that the philosophy of normal language made within the turn to language .

criticism

Ryle has self-critically admitted that he uses the term category “amateurish” and “inexact” and without any explanatory claim. His approach of looking for a definition of category errors in language logic alone is inadequate, and attempts at improvement by other authors can be regarded as having failed. There are no criteria for whether a sentence is meaningless or not.

"The syntax as a criterion for determining categories is by no means sufficient, but must be supplemented by the criterion of semantic significance or absurdity."

Ryle did not deal with Nicolai Hartmann's category research and its methodology. Hartmann analyzed the new and independent categories ("categorical novelty") required on different organizational levels ( system theory ) for an adequate description of the processes, for example the consciousness processes ( consciousness ) versus the neural processes ( neurophysiology ). Fundamental category errors arise when, for example, the concept of substance in the sense of a transcendent soul is introduced into empirical psychology or the concepts of value and morality are transferred to natural science instead of just to the thinking and acting of natural scientists.

In a countermovement to Ryle's interpretation of category errors, which is limited to the logic of language, Hartmann's investigations into “categorical transgressions” in a “post-analytical” philosophy could become topical again. Biology and psychology in particular are dependent on a thorough discussion of which independent categories are appropriate for these areas of science in order to counter a one-sided reductionism , ultimately the reduction to the categories of physics.

literature

Primary

  • Nicolai Hartmann: The structure of the real world. Outline of the general theory of categories. 2nd Edition. de Gruyter, Berlin 1949.
  • Bertrand Russell: The logical atomism , in: Philosophical and political essays . Stuttgart 1971.
  • Bertrand Russell: Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy . Hamburg 2004.
  • Bertrand Russell / Alfred North Whitehead: Principia Mathematica . Cambridge 1910-1913.
  • Gilbert Ryle: "Categories", in: Collected Papers , Vol. 2. London 1971.
  • Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind . Stuttgart 1969.
  • Gilbert Ryle: Conflicts of Terms . Goettingen 1970.

Secondary

  • Anthony Clifford Grayling: An Introduction to Philosophical Logic . Brighton [u. a.] 1982.
  • Andreas Kemmerling: "Category error", in: J. Ritter and G. Founder (ed.): Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Vol. IV. Basel 1976. P. 781–783.
  • Eike von Savigny: The philosophy of normal language . Frankfurt / M. 1969.
  • Peter Prechtl / ​​Ansgar Beckermann: Basic concepts of analytical philosophy . Stuttgart 2004.
  • Thomas Zoglauer: Introduction to Formal Logic for Philosophers . Göttingen 2008. 4th edition.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ G. Ryle, The Concept of Spirit , p. 5.
  2. ↑ Ibid., P. 14 ff.
  3. ↑ See G. Ryle, "Categories".
  4. ↑ See B. Russell / AN Whitehead, Principia Mathematica .
  5. ↑ T. Zoglauer, introduction to formal logic for philosophers , S. 76th
  6. ^ B. Russell, "The Logical Atomism," 47.
  7. ↑ Ibid.
  8. ^ B. Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy , 153.
  9. ^ AC Grayling, An Introduction to Philosophical Logic , 19.
  10. ^ G. Ryle, Conceptual Conflicts , 17.
  11. ^ G. Ryle, The Concept of Mind , 417.
  12. ↑ Gilbert Ryle: Dilemmas (repr.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1954/1976, p. 9.
  13. ↑ Kemmerling: Category Errors, 1976, pp. 781–783.
  14. ^ Hartmann: Structure of the real world , 1940, p. 92.