Single Idea 18032

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

Full Idea

No sense experience shows that 'two is green' is true or false. But neither is 'two is green' analytically true or false. So it fails to have legitimate verification conditions and hence, by the lights of traditional verificationism, it is meaningless.

Gist of Idea

Category mistakes are neither verifiable nor analytic, so verificationism says they are meaningless

Source

Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.6.2)

Book Reference

Magidor,Ofra: 'Category Mistakes' [OUP 2013], p.77


A Reaction

If a category mistake is an error in classification, then it would seem to be analytically false. If it wrongly attributes a property to something, that makes it verifiably false. The problem is to verify anything at all about 'two'.