Page 36 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Language, Metaphysics, and Ontology
Because these names do not attach to entities of the same logical type no straightforward comparison can be made between the entities as different kinds of institutions. Confusion on this point can lead, so Ryle believed, to describing the British Constitution as 'a mysteriously occult institution,' just as the person who thinks of the Average Taxpayer as a fellow-citizen might suppose him to be 'an elusive insubstantial man, a ghost who is everywhere but nowhere.'
On Ryle's view, it is precisely a mistake of the latter kind that Descartes, and subsequent Cartesian dual- ists, made in proposing that the mind is a non-material substance existing in parallel to material substance and defined for the most part negatively in contrast to it: not in space, not in motion, not accessible to public observation, etc.; 'minds are not bits of clock- work, they are just bits of notclockwork,' as Ryle mockingly puts it. On his own theory, Ryle develops the idea that terms applied to mental life ('knowing,' 'willing,' 'feeling,' 'imagining,' and so forth) do not describe mysterious inner occurrences or processes but rather dispositions in a physically observable person. Mental terms are thus restored to their proper logical category.
2. Categories and Category-differences
Whatever the merits of Ryle's concept of the mind, there is no doubt that his conception of a category- mistake enjoyed considerable influence among phil- osophers, particularly in the movement known as 'ordinary language philosophy.' However, the value and clarity of the conception depended in the end on the precision that could be attached to the idea of a category and it was probably on this point that Ryle's conception ultimately foundered. Everyonecan recog- nize intuitively striking differences between kinds of entities—trees, Wednesdays, the number seven, a musical note, the Battle of Hastings. Such differences can readily be labeled 'category-differences.' Likewise, certain kinds of sentences seem to involve not just factual errors but something more fundamental which could be called 'category-mismatch': 'The number five is blue,' 'Wednesdays are in B minor,' "The Battle of Hastings fitted into his pocket,' and so forth. Theories of metaphor sometimes make use of such an idea of category-mismatch. However, when an attempt is made to state precisely what makes an entity belong to one category or another difficulties abound. Yet if no such account is forthcoming then more con- troversial applications—like the idea that minds and bodies belong in different categories—can only rest on vague intuitions.
In an early and important paper on categories (Ryle 1938), Ryle did attempt to give some precision to the concept, though without following either Aristotle or Kant in supposing there is some fixed number of cat- egories into which all human thought must fall. He
offered the following definition: 14
Two proposition-factors are of different categories or types, if there are sentence-frames which are such that when the expressions for those factors are imported as alternative complements to the same gap-signs, the result- ant sentences are significant in the one case and absurd in the other.
(Ryle 1938:203)
The problem with this criterion is that it relies on a unexplained notion of 'absurdity.' P. F. Strawson (1971) has shown that as it stands Ryle's criterion produces anomalous results: '[o]ne should try import- ing first "27" and then "37" as complements to the gap-sign in "She is over... and under 33 years old"; or first "mother" and then "father" into "It's not your...but your father"; or first "Green" and then "Red" into "... is a more restful color than red"' (Strawson 1971:187). Clearly only a special kind of absurdity—indeed a category-absurdity—is pre- supposed in Ryle's definition but one has not advanced very far if to explain category-differences one must appeal to category-absurdity. Another suggestion might be that category-absurdity is a species of analytic falsity, that is, falsity determined by meanings alone, but the sentence 'Some bachelors are married' while analytically false does not seem to involve any category-mismatch. Thus it remains to be said what kind of analytic falsity underlies category- mismatch.
3. Category-mistakes and Philosophical Method
Although Ryle gave prominence to the idea of a category-mistake in The Concept of Mind, even suggesting that '[p]hilosophy is the replacement of category-habits by category-disciplines' (Ryle 1949:8), he came to think that no precise definition can be given to the concept of a category, which conse- quently can never be used as a 'skeleton-key' which will 'turn all our locks for us' (Ryle 1954:9). Never- theless, the idea that philosophy is centrally concerned with identifying the logical categories of its key terms—where necessary exposing category- mistakes—and undertaking what Ryle called 'logical geography' to find the proper location for problematic concepts was a powerful driving-force in conceptual analysis and produced some of the most valuable work of the 'ordinary language philosophers.'
See also: Ordinary Language Philosophy.
Bibliography
Ryle G 1938 Categories. Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society 38: 189-206
Ryle G 1949 The Concept of Mind. Hutchinson, London Ryle G 1954 Dilemmas. Cambridge University Press, Cam-
bridge
Sommers F 1963 Types and Ontology. Philosophical Review
72: 327-63
Strawson P F 1971 Categories. In: Wood O P, Pitcher G
(eds.) Ryle. Macmillan, London