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Full Idea
Metaphors must have literal meanings. …Since many metaphors involving category mistakes manage to achieve their metaphorical purpose, they must also have literal meanings, so category mistakes must be (literally) meaningful.
Gist of Idea
Category mistakes are meaningful, because metaphors are meaningful category mistakes
Source
Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5)
Book Ref
Magidor,Ofra: 'Category Mistakes' [OUP 2013], p.67
A Reaction
Hm. 'This guy is so weird that to meet him is to encounter a circular square'.
| 18009 | Chomsky established the view that category mistakes are well-formed but meaningless [Chomsky, by Magidor] |
| 18015 | The normal compositional view makes category mistakes meaningful [Magidor] |
| 18016 | Two good sentences should combine to make a good sentence, but that might be absurd [Magidor] |
| 18017 | If a category mistake is synonymous across two languages, that implies it is meaningful [Magidor] |
| 18021 | Category mistakes are meaningful, because metaphors are meaningful category mistakes [Magidor] |
| 18031 | If a category mistake has unimaginable truth-conditions, then it seems to be meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18030 | A good explanation of why category mistakes sound wrong is that they are meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18032 | Category mistakes are neither verifiable nor analytic, so verificationism says they are meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18034 | Category mistakes play no role in mental life, so conceptual role semantics makes them meaningless [Magidor] |
| 18037 | Maybe when you say 'two is green', the predicate somehow fails to apply? [Magidor] |
| 18039 | If category mistakes aren't syntax failure or meaningless, maybe they just lack a truth-value? [Magidor] |