Abstract

In this work I present an account of category-mistakes. In large part I explain the views of Gilbert Ryle on that subject and defend those views against arguments which are to be found in the literature. At the end, however, I make original claims about category-mistakes which supplement Rylean theory. Those claims give a basis for an account of the fact that certain issues have been the focus of unresolved tensions in the literature to date and they are the basis for a reasonable resolution of those issues. ;The work is in five chapters. The first is a presentation of Ryle's account of category-mistakes and the place of that account in his philosophy of language. The second chapter examines whether modern grammar provides precise criteria for determining category-mistakenness and category-heterogeneity. Facts about the relations of category-mistakes and metaphors are deployed to show that it does not. In Chapter III, I first examine the arguments adduced in the literature to the desirability either of calling category-mistakes false or of calling them meaningless, showing that no argument or set of those arguments gives a preponderance of evidence to either thesis; second, I present an account of meaninglessness which allows category-mistakes to be both false and meaningless; and last attribute that account of meaninglessness to Ryle. ;In the fourth chapter, I evaluate J. J. C. Smart's criticism of Ryle's criterion of category-heterogeneity and give a description of the role of that criterion in Ryle's category-mistake theory. In Chapter IV, I make original claims about the relation of category-mistake theory and the theory of definite descriptions. The full elaboration of those claims is the subject of Chapter V where this relation is shown to provide a powerful criterion for category-mistakenness, which I use to give an account of compound category-mistakes and to category-mistaken questions and commands. Last, I show that if a free description theory is adopted then the issue of the third chapter can be resolved