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Single Idea 18056

[filed under theme 2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / d. Category mistake as pragmatic ]

Full Idea

I am assuming that even in those contexts in which the presupposition of 'the number two is green' fails and the utterance is infelicitious, it nevertheless receives a bivalent truth-value (presumably 'false').

Gist of Idea

Category mistakes because of presuppositions still have a truth value (usually 'false')

Source

Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.4.1)

Book Ref

Magidor,Ofra: 'Category Mistakes' [OUP 2013], p.132

A Reaction

It seems to me obvious that, in normal contexts, 'the number two is green' is false, rather than meaningless. Is 'the number eight is an odd number' meaningless?

The 5 ideas with the same theme [category mistakes as result of confusions in a context]:

18041 Category mistakes suffer from pragmatic presupposition failure (which is not mere triviality) [Magidor]
18056 Category mistakes because of presuppositions still have a truth value (usually 'false') [Magidor]
18055 In 'two is green', 'green' has a presupposition of being coloured [Magidor]
18057 'Numbers are coloured and the number two is green' seems to be acceptable [Magidor]
18058 Maybe the presuppositions of category mistakes are the abilities of things? [Magidor]