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Full Idea
To ask whether man's will be free is as improper as to ask whether sleep be swift, or virtue square.
Gist of Idea
Asking whether man's will is free is liking asking if sleep is fast or virtue is square
Source
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.21.14)
Book Ref
Locke,John: 'Essay Concerning Human Understanding', ed/tr. Nidditch,P.H. [OUP 1979], p.240
A Reaction
Beautiful illustrations of category mistakes, long before the actual phrase was coined.
| 11034 | The differentiae of genera which are different are themselves different in kind [Aristotle] |
| 12491 | Asking whether man's will is free is liking asking if sleep is fast or virtue is square [Locke] |
| 8632 | You can't transfer external properties unchanged to apply to ideas [Frege] |
| 8468 | The sentence 'procrastination drinks quadruplicity' is meaningless, rather than false [Russell, by Orenstein] |
| 6437 | The theory of types makes 'Socrates and killing are two' illegitimate [Russell] |
| 18002 | As well as a truth value, propositions have a range of significance for their variables [Russell] |
| 21561 | 'The number one is bald' or 'the number one is fond of cream cheese' are meaningless [Russell] |
| 18706 | Words of the same kind can be substituted in a proposition without producing nonsense [Wittgenstein] |
| 18004 | We can't do philosophy without knowledge of types and categories [Ryle] |
| 17998 | Category mistakes are either syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic [Magidor] |
| 18019 | People have dreams which involve category mistakes [Magidor] |