UKC

There are several things wrong with this argument but is it one of them a category mistake?

Grapes are good for you.
Wine is made from grapes.
Therefore wine is good for you.

Obviously we'll need to lay aside the notion that wine IS good for you in moderation!

I think it is a category mistake as it ascribes properties of the part (grapes) to the whole (wine) and the whole clearly does not possess those properties.

Thoughts?

In reply to DaveHK:

No, I think that's correct.

In reply to DaveHK: No, because wine may have those properties. Your statement that wine clearly does not possess those properties is not necessarily true.

In reply to Sir Chasm:

Lets assume that then for the sake of argument. Or assume that the argument is being used to justify excessive consumption.

In reply to DaveHK:

Oxygen is good for you
Uranium oxide is made from oxygen.....

In reply to DaveHK:


You want to say it's a category error IF you make some assumptions about whether or not various statements are true or false? Nah, I'm out.

In reply to DaveHK:

I think SirChasm nailed it, wine may be good for you but not for the reason given.

'being made from' is not sufficient to transfer all the properties to the new entity but mis-transferring the properties doesn't mean it's a category error, it's just false.

In reply to Sir Chasm:

Lots of good thinking comes out of setting aside complications for the sake of argument. It's an aid to reasoning not a rule.

In reply to winhill:


As I understand it a category error is a way of being false so being false doesn't rule it out from being a category error.

In reply to DaveHK:


Irn-Bru is made from 'Girders'...but so is the Forth Rail Bridge...

In reply to DaveHK:

From Wikipedia:
"To show that a category mistake has been committed one must typically show that once the phenomenon in question is properly understood, it becomes clear that the claim being made about it could not possibly be true."

The claims being made about both grapes AND wine *might* be true, and even if wine isn't good for you that can't be deduced by logic alone from the statements presented.

In reply to Ron Rees Davies:




From the wikipedia quote above it isn't necessary that the claims be deducable by logic alone.

In reply to DaveHK:


But you're not really setting aside complications.

If whether or not a statement is true depends on whether some other statement is true then it's not a category error even if it's false. A category error involves ascribing something to a broad philosophical category to which it doesn't belong.

A classic example is material / nonmaterial things - so saying "laws are green" would be a category error, because laws aren't material things and hence can't possibly have a colour. You don't have to say "yes, but suppose laws were actually blue" to justify it being wrong.

Animate / inanimate is another one - if I say that "my teacup is angry today", you don't need to check whether it's actually fairly calm to know that it's a wrong statement.

In reply to DaveHK:

Let me rephrase the argument to try and answer some of the criticisms about assumptions:

Eating lots of fruit is good for your health.
Wine is made from fruit.
Therefore drinking lots of wine is good for your health.

In reply to DaveHK:





It still isn't a category error.

In reply to Ramblin dave:
>>A category error involves ascribing something to a broad philosophical category to which it doesn't belong.

In Ryle's classic example of the University it involves confusing the whole with the part which is why I thought my original argument was a category mistake.

In reply to Sir Chasm:


Why? I think I've answered your objections about assumptions?

In reply to DaveHK:

I'm going to have to dip out of this or I'll get no work done. I'll be back later...

In reply to DaveHK:

NO - still no different. I understand how wine is made from fruit, but nothing in the process makes it impossible for wine to be good for health (whether or not it actually is).

On the other hand if you said:

Grapes are a type of fruit
Wine is made from grapes
Therefore wine is a type of fruit.......

In reply to DaveHK:



The point of the University example isn't that the University is a collection of buildings not one single building - it's that it's actually an institution, a nonmaterial thing. It happens to own buildings, employ people and engage in activities, but it isn't identifiable with any of those things. Hence the question "where is the University" is asking something which can't be sensibly answered any more than "what colour are your thoughts".

In reply to Ramblin dave:

Ok that's making a bit more sense now and explained like that my example is not a category error however I frame it. I think.

In reply to Ron Rees Davies:






This.

Although AIUI, the sort of statement that the term was originally coined for wasn't "X is in category Y", it was "X has property A" where A is a property of things in category Y. It was more a way of saying "you can't even ask that question" than a way of saying "that's the wrong answer".

So an even better example would be
grapes are of the genus Vitis
wine is made from grapes
therefore wine is of the genus Vitis.

In reply to DaveHK:


The syllogism is false, not the statement, a syllogism can't itself be a category error.

All men are bastards may be false but it isn't a category error because all men could be bastards.

All men are unicorns is false but it is a category error because it is not possible for men to be unicorns.

In reply to DaveHK:

This probably won't help much, but is quite funny:
http://www.thinking-approach.org/index.php?id=2143

In reply to winhill:

That statement is false a priori. For a statement to be a category error does it have to be false a priori?

In reply to DaveHK:


That's a very good question.

I think I'd go for a good fudge. Not everyone thinks that category definitions are meaningful, so it may depend on your views on categories and what constitutes a category.

That could be very broad, at the far end of the scale then no, I don't think it needs to be knowable a priori, a mollusc, for example has no visual faculty, so if you describe it as having the property of sight, it's true but contingently so and not knowable a priori.

So the question then is if your category definitions allow for simple physical properties to be sufficient for you to place things is different categories.

Some people might have a category identifier as 'object', so the mollusc example would just be making a factual mistake as all objects fall into that category without differentiation. Or you could say 'object' was a type and contained different hierarchies of categories, so animal was a category which then had sub categories. If you had to do a test to find out if something was an animal or a specific type of animal to put it into a category then it wouldn't be a priori.

In reply to winhill:

Yes, the notion of a "category" isn't obvious, and you have to be careful: any incorrect statement "X is Y" becomes a category error if your definition of category is broad enough to include "things that are Y", in which case it's not a particularly useful concept!

Personally I'd tend to say that categories should relate to fairly fundamental concepts like "sentient things" or "physical objects" and that the sort of category error that will arise from that will tend to be a priori false rather than empirically false.