Category mistake for Ryle

For Ryle what is the category mistake?

Gilbert Ryle’s concept of a category mistake (or category error) is one of the central ideas in his 1949 book The Concept of Mind.

🧠 What a “Category Mistake” Means

A category mistake occurs when someone treats something as if it belongs to one logical or conceptual category when it actually belongs to another. In other words, it’s a misclassification of the kind of thing something is.

Ryle coined the term as part of his critique of Cartesian dualism — the view that the mind and body are two distinct substances. He argued that talking about “the mind” as if it were a separate “thing” (like the body) is a category mistake.

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🧩 Ryle’s Classic Examples

1. The University Example

   A visitor is shown the colleges, libraries, and laboratories of Oxford and then asks, “But where is the University?” → The mistake is that the visitor expects “the University” to be another building or physical object — but the University is not another entity in addition to the colleges; it’s the organization or way in which the colleges are arranged and function together.

2. The Parade Example

   Someone watches a military parade, sees the battalions, artillery, and officers, and then asks, “But where is the Division itself?” → Again, the “Division” isn’t something over and above its parts; it’s the structured whole formed by them.

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🧩 Applied to the Mind–Body Problem

Ryle argues that Cartesian dualists commit a category mistake when they treat the mind as a separate, ghostly substance in the same category as the body (a physical object). He calls this the myth of “the ghost in the machine.”

• The body belongs to the category of physical processes.
• The mind belongs to the category of behavioral dispositions and capacities (how people act, respond, and think).

To treat the mind as a thing like the body is to miscategorize it — hence, a category mistake.

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💬 In Summary

• Definition: A category mistake is when something is represented as belonging to a logical type or category to which it does not belong.
• Ryle’s Target: Cartesian dualism (mind-body separation).
• Purpose: To show that the mind is not a “thing” alongside the body but a way of talking about behavior and abilities.

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Would you like me to show how this connects to Ryle’s broader theory of logical behaviorism?