Single Idea 18017

[catalogued under 2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / c. Category mistake as semantic]

Full Idea

Two sentences are synonymous if they have the same meaning, suggesting that they must both be meaningful. On the face of it the English 'two is green' and French 'deux est vert' are synonymous, suggesting meaningful category mistakes.

Gist of Idea

If a category mistake is synonymous across two languages, that implies it is meaningful

Source

Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.3)

Book Reference

Magidor,Ofra: 'Category Mistakes' [OUP 2013], p.58


A Reaction

I'm fairly convinced already that most category mistakes are meaningful, and this seems to confirm the view. Some mistakes could be so extreme that no auditor could compute their meaning, especially if you concatenated lots of them.