Category Differences

8/4/2019 Category Differences

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Category Differences

Author(s): R. C. CrossSource: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 59 (1958 - 1959), pp. 255-270Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Aristotelian SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4544614 .

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Meeting of the AristotelianSociety at 21, BedfordSquare, London,W.C.1,on 25th May, 1959, at 7.30 p.m.

XIlI-CATEGORY DIFFERENCESBy PROFESSOR . C. CROSS

The idiom of " categories ", " category differences", "cate-gory mistakes" is familiar in recent philosophy. There havetoo been signs of dissatisfaction with it. Mr. Hampshire, in hisreview of The Concept of Mind, refers to " such notoriouslyobscure expressions as ' logical category ' ", and Mr. Warnockin his recent book English Philosophy since 1900 after a briefdiscussion concludes that "it is not ... unreasonably over-scrupulous to be ill at ease with the use of an idiom which hasnone at all of the precise backing which it naturally implies ", andhe suggests that it can be dispensed with. My present purpose isto consider again the use made of this idiom. Most of the groundis well-trodden, and I shall in the end come to a conclusion littledifferent from that of Mr. Warnock; but the idiom itself ispersistent, and what lies behind it important, and this is reasonenough for further study.I begin with a brief historical excursus on the traditionalAristotelian use of the " category " terminology, not, to use aphrase of Ryle's, for purposes of philosophical paleontology,but to elicit some points in the Aristotelian tradition that may beuseful in what follows. In the Categories a distinction is madebetween " things said without combination " (i.e., terms) and" things said in combination" (i.e., propositions), and in referenceto the former a list of " categories " is then given-substance,quantity, quality,relation and so on, and these are thenillustrated-"to sketch my meaning roughly, of quantity, such terms as'two cubits long ' or ' three cubits long', of quality, suchattributes as 'white ', ' grammatical'. ' Double ', ' half',' greater' fall under the category of relation ... .". Thecategories then, as the Greek word implies, seem to constitute alist of all the different sorts of predicates that can be predicatedrespectively of the various terms we use,1 and thus provide an

1 Cf. W. D. Ross, Aristotle, p. 23.2 F


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256 PROFESSORR. C. CROSS

inventoryof the different ypes of terms. As Ryle has pointedout,2Aristotleappearso havearrived t his listby considering llthe possible kinds of questionsthat can be asked in ordinaryspeech-" what is it ?", " what like is it ?", "whendid it happen?"etc., and classifying erms as of different ategoriesaccordingothe interrogative o which they are the appropriate esponse.Thus " yesterday" fits the " when" question,as "white " or" grammatical could not; and equally " white or " gram-matical"fitthe" what ike"question,as" yesterday"couldnot.Thus " yesterday" on the one hand, and " white" or" grammatical on the other, are predicates of differentcategories.This is perhapsenoughto recall the Aristoteliandiscussion;and now, ignoringmany other thingsthat mightbe said, let usnotice four points. (1) There is the point alreadyindicated.Aristotle seems to have arrivedat his list by an analysisof theway we talk, by considering he possiblesorts of question thatcan be ordinarilyasked, and differentiatinghe termsused inresponse to these questions into their appropriatecategoriesaccordingto the questionsto which they are sensible replies.So far then Aristotle seems to be concerned with the waylanguageworks, and so far in this sense we might say the cate-gorieshave a purely ogical aspect. But (2) at the sametimeitseems quite clear that for Aristotle his categorieshad a meta-physical significance nd that he regarded hem as a list of thedifferentmodesof existence hattheworlddisplayed. Theywerea list of thedifferentmodesof being,an indicationof the structureof the universe. Hence Ross's remark: " In its earliest formthe doctrine(of categories)was a classification f the meaningsof i.e., of the thingsmeant by, ' uncombinedwords , in otherwords an inventoryof themainaspectsof reality, o far atleast aslanguage akesaccountof them."3 Hence oo what Robinsays:" Elles (the categories) seraient donc dans l'Aristote'lisme e lienqui unit le point de vue logiqueet le point-de vue ontologique,carelles sont des realite'spar soi. Ainsi 'I 'etre en tant qu'etre' se

2 "Categories ", P.A.S, 1938-39. Reprinted in Logic and Language(Second Series), ed. A. G. N. Flew.3 Ross, loc. cit. p. 23. For the following quotation, see L. Robin,Aristote, p. 101.


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CATEGORY DIFFERENCES 257connaltpar les ' categories' qui en sont les aspectsreels, comme,chez Spinoza,es Attributsontceque 'onconnaft e a Substance."Robin goes on to suggest hat the table of categoriess in the endestablished ysomekindof intuition,however mportant prelim-inaryrolemaybeplayedbytheanalysis f language. Atanyrate,for our immediatepurposes t is clear that in this Aristoteliantradition anguagewouldbeonlyaclue, assistingusin thegraspofthesefundamental spectsof reality. (3)The list of categoriess alimited list. In fact, in different places in the Aristotelianwritings helistvaries n detail,butit is alwaysa short ist, i.e., thevariousmodesof beingcanbe allocated o a quite imitednumberof pigeon-holes. (4) On categorymistakesI cannot find thatAristotlehas anything o say. If one were asked" how tall isSocrates" and answered" in the Peirmus , this would presum-ably be a categorymistake. But then one would hardly belikely to answer in this way, and little that is philosophicallyexcitingappears o emerge. WhatAristotledoes indicate s thatcategorydifferences re irreducible:" Thosethingsare saidto be' other in genus' whose ultimate substratum s different,andwhicharenot analysed he one into the othernor both into thesame thing (e.g., form and matterare differentn genus);andthingswhichbelong to differentcategoriesof being; for someof the things that are said to 'be' signify essence, others aquality,others he othercategorieswe havebeforedistinguished;thesealso arenot analysedeither nto one anotheror into someone thing."4So much then for the Aristotelianbackground. When weturn now to consider the use of the notions of categoriesandcategorydifferencesn recentphilosophy, t is of courseparticu-larly with Professor Ryle that these are associated. I shallthereforereferlargelyto his use of these notions and what hehas to say about them. My purpose s not howeverpolemical,and thereforeI am not concernedto trace historically anydevelopmentsheremayhavebeen in hisviews,nor to ensure hata fair and complete picture of them is given. For example,Ryle might want to modify some of the things he says in hisearlypaperon " Categories"; or againwhenhe says n the much

4 Arist. Met. 1024b 10 foll. (Oxfordtrans.).2 F 2


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258 PROFcSSOR R. C. CROSS

later Dilemmasin talking of categories " this idiom can behelpfulas a familiarmnemonicwith somebeneficialassociationsIt can also be an impediment, f creditedwith the virtuesof askeleton-key , this seems to indicate hat the idiom ashe usesitshouldnot be pressed oo hard. For presentpurposeshoweverthisis in a sense rrelevant; or we are not primarilynterestednRyle'sviews as such,but only in them in so faras theyareusefulin askingmore generalquestionsaboutcategoriesand categorydifferences.

Having hus,I hope,justified he useof Ryleas a sourcebook,I wish first to recall the very familiarexampleshe gives at thebeginningof TheConcept f Mind,when he is explainingwhat hemeans by the expression " category-mistake. One of theexamples is enough, for instance that of the foreignerwho,watching ricket or the first ime, earnsabout he jobsofbowlers,batsmen,and so on, andthen askswho is left to contribute heelementof team-spirit. Theforeigner n this case is committinga category-mistake,ailing to recognize that the concept ofteam-spiritbelongs to a different ategory romthe conceptsofbowling and so on. Now about this and the other examples(the University and the division)which Ryle uses two thingsmaybenoted. First, n thecontexts n which hey arepresented,5it is clearin all of them that somethinghas gone wrong. It iscertainly queer to suppose that e.g., team-spirit s an extraoperation,additional o bowlingand fieldingand so on, and tospeakof e.g., a fielderas eitherfieldingor displayingeam-spiritRyle's explanationof what is wrong is in terms of categorymistakes. To say that a memberof the side was eitherfieldingor exhibiting eam-spiritwould be to show that one had failedto recognizea categorydifferencebetweenthe two conceptsoffieldingandteam-spirit. " Themistakes", he says," weremadebypeoplewho didnotknowhowto wieldtheconceptsUniversity,divisionand team-spirit. Theirpuzzlesarose from inabilitytouse certain items in the Englishvocabulary."'6But secondly,whatexactly s meantbysaying hat heconceptsntheseexamplesbelong to different ogical categories,and that the queerness

But f. Professor Popper, " A note on the Body-Mind problem",Analysis, Vol. 15, No. 6, p. 135.6 The Concept of Mind, p. 17.


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CATEGORYDIFFERENCES 259

arisesfrom failing to realizethis categorydifference? We feelthe queerness, ut whatexactly s happeningwhenwe do? And isit helpful, .e., genuinely xplanatory,o account or the queernessin termsof differing ategories? It should be noted that Ryle isin the main content, in TheConcept f Mind,to explainwhat hemeans by a category-mistakey meansof illustrationsike thoseabove, and to let one feel the mistake,the queerness hatarises,withoutgivingany further heoretical ccountof what liesbehindthe queerness. His earlier paper, " Categories ", to which Ihavealready eferred,eeksmoredirectly o explain natheoreticalwaywhat he meansby " categorydifferences and how theyaredetected,and I propose thereforeto look for help from thatquarter.In this earlierpaper Ryle proposes a test for discriminatingconcepts nto different ategories. Whathe says,at any rate tobegin with, is this: " Two proposition-factors re of differentcategoriesor types,if there are sentence-framesuch that whenthe expressionsfor those factors are imported as alternativecomplements o the same gap-signs, he resultantsentencesaresignificantn the onecaseandabsurdn theother."7 An examplewillmakewhat s meantclear. " - was all out for two hundred"would be a sentence-frame,he dash being the gap-sign. Wecan put into the blank indicatedby the dash an expression(i.e., proposition-factor)uch as " England" or " The Englishside", andthe result s a significant entence; but if we attemptto put in the blank an expression like e.g., " Cowdrey ", theresultingsentenceis absurd. In such a case we can say thatan expressionike " Cowdrey"is of a differentogicalcategoryfromanexpressionike " TheEnglish ide ". It shouldbe notedthat Ryle is not claiming hat the fact that two expressionswillboth go significantlynto the same blank in the samesentence-frameshowsthattheyare of the samecategory-e.g., both " TheEnglishside" and " Cowdrey" can go into the blank in "-isbatting now "-compare his own exampleof " I " and " thewriterof this paper." The claim is that if a sentence-frameanbe foundsuch that of two expressions ne can go into the blankin it to producea significant entence,while the other cannot

I ogic and Language (Second Series), pp. 77-78.


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go into the same blank without producingabsurdity, he twoexpressionsbelong to different categories. It is also worthnotingthat,as Rylehimselfpointsout, there s a certain imilaritybetween his method of detectingcategorydifferencesby thisdeviceof a gap-sign n a sentence-frame,nd that of Aristotle,since interrogativesentences, if one ignores their practicalpurpose,arelike sentence-frames,nd the interrogativewords nthem like gap-signswhich,for senseto result,must be filledbythe appropriateype of response. In both cases then, to revertto thefirstpointI made n discussingheAristotelian ackground,we are concernedwith the way languageworks,and so far, inboth cases we mightsaythat the categorieshave a purely ogicalaspect.Now therearedifficultiesn thissuggestedmethodof detectingcategorydifferences. First,let us considera criticismProfessorSmart has made.8 He suggests that this test, if pushed farenough,mightshoweveryexpression o be of a different ategoryfrom everyother, in whichcase, he adds, " we should be wisenot to take it too seriously". Thus, to use one of his ownexamples, given the sentence-frame" the seat of the - is hard ",weobtaina significantentence f " chair or" bench"is put intothe blank, but an absurd sentenceif "table " or " bed" isinserted nstead. This would seem to show that "chair and" bench" belong to a differentcategory from "table and" bed ". But, as Smartsays," if furniturewordsdo not form acategory,we may well ask what do."It mightbe, however, hat this criticism s not so formidableas it looks, for it leaves out of accountsome other importantthings that Ryle says. In particular, t seems clear from thelatterpart of Ryle'spaperthat he does not regardhis test forcategorydifferencesmerelyas a simplematterof insertingwordsin the gap-sign n an isolatedsentence-framend lookingat theresult. He has his eye not simply on the individualconstituents(proposition-factors)n a proposition,norsimplyon theproposi-tion itself as a unit, buton thepropositionn its possiblerelationsto other propositions. He insiststhat the logical typesof thevariousconstituentsn a propositionare in the end determined

8 B.J. for Phil. of Sc., Vol. IV, pp. 227-28.


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CATEGORY DIFFERENCES 261by the logicalrelationsof the propositiontself to otherproposi-tions. It is theserelations hat revealthe formalpropertiesbothof the propositionand of its constituents. Thus he says: " Letus give the label 'liaisons' to all the logical relations of aproposition,namelywhatit implies,what it is impliedby, whatit is compatiblewith, andwhat t is incompatiblewith. Now anyrespect n whichtwo propositionsdiffer n formwill be reflectedin differences n their liaisons. So two propositionswhichareformally similar in all respectssave that one factor in one isdifferentn typefroma partially orrespondingactor n theother,will have liaisonswhich are correspondingly issimilar." Andhe goes on to add " The operationof extracting he type of afactor cannot exclude the operationof revealingthe liaisonsof propositionsembodying t. In essencethey are one opera-tion."9It might then be arguedagainstSmartthat this helps in the"chair" and " bed" example. For, it mightbe said,whatevermaybethoughtaboutthesentence"Theseatof thebed is hard"" bed" propositions and " chair" propositions have similarlogical liaisons, and thus from this we can recognize hat theirconstituentactorsare not of differentogicaltypes. Thetroubleabout this however s thatrightfrom the start the sentence" theseat of the bed is hard" seemsin some sense absurd. We tendto be stopped immediately by a response like " that's nonsense ",or " I don't understand what you are talking about " or " whatdo you mean? Bedshaven'tgot seats." And giventhis initialcheck, t is not easyto go on to argue hatthoughthe sentencesabsurd,still, for purposesof placingthe logical categoryof itsconstituents,we can see that its logicalrelationswould be likethat of the respectable entence" the seat of the chair s hard".From the beginningthe propositiondoes seem in some senseabsurd, and therefore t looks as though, since this is so, itsatisfies Ryle's test, and " bed" and " chair" are words ofdifferentcategories.The word " absurd" however is a difficult one. WhenRyle is discussingwhat complementcan go into the gap in agiven sentence-frame, e observes that there are two sorts of

'ogic and Language (Second Series), pp. 79-80.


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262 PROFESSORR. C. CROSS" can" involved. There s a grammatical can", where, o usehis own example,"- is in bed" grammaticallyequires n theblanka noun or noun-equivalent. Thus in this senseof " can"" Saturday" can go into the gap, i.e., " Saturday s in bed" isgrammaticallyorrect. Yet, he says, this sentence s absurd-in the sense of " can" in which he is interested" Saturday"cannot go into the gap. To put it in is to commit a logicalabsurdity-it logically cannot go in. The question ariseshoweverwhethertwo sorts of " can" are enough. If we lookat Smart's example again, grammatically he sentence-frame" the seat of the - is hard" requires n the blank a noun ornoun-equivalent-grammaticallyverboradjective annotgo in.But again " bed" cannot go in, because to put it in producesabsurdity. Yet, as Smarthas pointedout, we would not wantto saythatthis is the sort of absurdityhatis a clue to a differenceof categorybetween" chair", which will go into the blank,and" bed" which will not. One is temptedto say that " bed"cannotgo into the blankbecausebedsarenot in fact thingswithseats. If anyonetried to put " bed" in the blank,his mistakewould arise because beds are not made that way; and one isthusfurtherempted o saythatthis kindof " can" or" cannot",if thesewordsareappropriate ere,has a directly mpirical asis.On the other hand, if we consider the sentence-framewe hadearlier-" was all out for two hundred", the sense in which" England" can, and " Cowdrey" cannotgo into the gap feelsdifferent. If weput" Cowdrey"in the gap,thesentences againabsurd,but this time, one wantsto say, logicallyabsurd. It istruethat wemaysaythe mistakearises rom gnorance f cricket,asin the former asethe mistakearose rom gnorance f furniture,but it seemsequally rue thatin the endthis is a different ortofmistake, which reveals that " England" and " Cowdrey"express proposition-factorsof different logical types-onelogicallycannotuse the expression" Cowdrey" in that sort ofway.It may help to illustrate the point if we consider a differentset of examples, for instance the sentence-frame" He - the bookcarefully ", and tryinsertingn theblank he threeverbs" spliced"," read" and " saw ". " He spliced the book carefully" isabsurd in the sense that books are not like that-one splices


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CATEGORYDIFFERENCES 263ropes or fishing rods, but books are constructeddifferently." He readthebook carefully is impeccable. Onthe otherhand" He saw thebook carefully is againabsurd,but again, t seems,in a differentway from the first sentence. Here we want tosay one logicallycannotuse " see" in thissort of sentence-framewhichcontainsan adverb ike " carefully", whereasone can useboth " splice" and "read" in such a frame. It is true thatthere is an absurdity n using " spliced" here, but a differentsortof absurdity, nd not thesortthatRyle is interestedn. Thedifficultywith the adverb" carefully" in the " see" sentencepoints to a logical difference etween"see" andeither"splice"or " read"; for one can both splice carefullyand readcarefullybut one can never see carefully. Grantedhoweverthat " Hesaw the book carefully" is absurd n the sense in whichwe areinterested,t is still not easyto be clearwhat the senseis. Rylesays he adopts the word ' absurd ' in preferenceto " nonsensical "or " meaningless " partly because it " has helpful associationswith the reductiodabsurdum,ndeven ts nuanceofridiculousnessis useful ratherthan the reverse, or so many jokes are in facttype-pranks."10This is not over-helpful,nor does recoursetothe OxfordEnglishDictionaryhelp mucheither-" incongruous,unreasonable,llogical. In modernuse, esp. plainlyopposedtoreason, and hence, ridiculous, silly ", leaves us wide scope. Inthisdifficultyabout" absurd" we musthoweverrememberhatthough we seem on occasion to recognizethe logical sort ofabsurditywe are ooking or atoncewithinan isolatedproposition,and thoughindeed earlierRyle seemedto be suggestinghat wedetect categorydifferencesn just this sort of way, presumablynevertheless he absurdityis in the end connected with thenormalbehaviourof the concept n questionas exhibitedby theliaisonsof propositionsn which t normallyoccurs,as contrastedwith its presence in an alien proposition. But here again itwouldseem that there s no logicallyexactstandardavailable ordetermininghe possibleliaisons of a proposition tself, such aswould reveal in a once-for-all way the type-featuresof itsconstituents.In The Concept of Mind Ryle says, " I try to use reductio

10 Loc. cit. p. 76.


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ad absurdumargumentsboth to disallow operations mplicitlyrecommendedby the Cartesianmyth and to indicate to whatlogical types the concepts under investigation ought to beallocated."11 But it is clear that many of the argumentsused inthe book are less rigorous han this, as Ryle himselfrecognizeswhenhe goes on to say " I do not however hinkit improper ouse from time to time arguments f a less rigorous ort". Thusit does not seem that there s any simple, ogicallyexact standard,suchas for examplecontradiction,o provide he crucial est forrevealingcategorymistakeswhen one is examining he liaisonsbetweenpropositions. Thus whether within a propositionorbetween propositions here does not appearto be any preciseandsimple est of absurdity;and Rylehimselfof courserecognizesthis both when he stressesthe importanceof " ratiocinationorargumentation" n formulating he liaisons of a proposition,12andbythequestionwithwhichhe ends hepaperon " Categories':"But what are the tests of absurdity?"At any rate,whatever he difficultiesmay be, it will be notedthatthroughoutheearlypaperon " Categories Ryle'sapproachis a logical approach. To revert for a moment to my secondpoint aboveconcerning he Aristotelian ackground,t was notedthere that for Aristotle the categorieswerefeaturesof the realworld. Languagewas a usefulclue to their discovery, n thatit reflected hese differencesn the real; and behindthe logicaldifferences evealed n languagewere the modes of being whichmade language what it was. Ryle's approach on the otherhand begins and ends in logic-category differences re deter-mined by the behaviourof concepts within propositions andby the relationsbetweenpropositions. I wish now to developthis point, but beforeI do so two notes shouldbe added. First,it has been pointed out13 hat there are places in The ConceptofMindwhereRyle seems o ask himself the questionwhethersomepuzzling xpression oes or does not" stand or " or" designate"something. Thiswayof talkingwouldsuggest hatitwaspossibleto havesomesort of priorknowledgeof the natureof thingsandto assessanddiscriminateanguagen the lightof that knowledge.

"The Conceptof Mind, p. 8.12 " Categories", LanguageandLogic, p. 80.13 E.g., by Hampshire,Mind,1950 p. 241 foll.


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CATEGORY DIFFERENCES 265Categorydifferenceswould be differencesn the real, which weresubsequently eflectedn language; and thiswouldbe reminiscentof the Aristotelian raditionwe have discussed. But in fact it isclearthat Ryle does not wish to suggest his,and there s certainlyno such suggestion in the earlier paper on " Categories".Secondly, t may perhapsbe addedhere hatgranted he investiga-tion into categoriesand categorydifferencesies within anguage,it would not at all follow that no light was thrown therebyonthe natureof things, n some sense or otherof the latter phrase.I should entirely agree with Ryle's remarkthat " If a child'sperplexitywhy the Equatorcan be crossedbut not seen, or whythe CheshireCat could not leave its grinbehind t, is perplexityabout the ' nature of things , then certaincategory-propositionswill give the required nformationabout the nature of things.And the samewill holdgoodof less frivolous ype-perplexities.14To returnnow to the point that, in contrastwith Aristotle,Ryle's " categories" lie wholly within logic, I wish to referbriefly to a recent paper by Professor Manley Thompson.15In this paper Thompson defends the traditionalAristotelianpositionconcerning ategorydifferences ndthe problemsarisingtherefrom against various modern views. He thinks that inunderstandinghe use of conceptssomethingike theAristoteliannotion of category differences s indispensable. Thus we haveto usean ontologicalas wellas alinguisticdiom,andconsequentlywe cannot evade the traditionalproblemsconcerning he sensesof " existence" or the making of some form of ontologicalstatements. In his developmentof this general hesis therearetwo points that are perhapsparticularly elevant o the presentdiscussion.First, there is the way in which Thompson detects acategory-difference.Take, for example,a fox and a crow. Wecan use a commonpredicateof both of these-a fox anda croware both animals. The predicate" animal" separatesboth offfrom a wide range of other things e.g., from a cruiserand adestroyer,whichareboth ships,and opensup a wholegroupofquestionscommon to both, just as in the second case there s agroupof questionscommonto ships, andso on. Suchgroupsof

14 6 Categories", Logic and Language SecondSeries)p. 81.15 " On CategoryDifferences". Phil. Review, 1957, pp. 486 foll.


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category difference. To use our example again, some mightsupply for "reading" and " seeing" the common predicate" processes or " activities ", taking this as a genuine commonpredicatedemarcating commonfield,while otherswould saythat to do this was to obliterate a category differenceandgeneratespuriousproblems. At any rate it looks as thoughhere too, as in the case of Ryle's sentence-frames,here is acertaindifficultyabout this apparently imple, immediate est.I do not howeverwish to discussthis furtherhere,but to cometo my secondmainpoint fromThompson'spaper.Theway of talking hatwe havejust beendiscussingeadstothe traditionalproblemsabout" existence", and theseproblemshaveproved ntractable. The question husariseswhether hereis somethingwrongwiththeproblemshemselves, ndThompsondiscusses severalmodern attempts to avoid them. I confinemyselfto one of theseattempts,which seemsdirectlyrelevant oour earlierdiscussion,and to threepointsin it. (a) First, thereis the attempt tself. It begins romtheview that theerror n thetraditional ositionarises romanover-simplifiediewoflanguage,namely he viewthat all commonnouns(" entity" etc. of courseincluded)are names of kinds of things, and differencesn theuse of wordsmust be explainedby a difference n the things towhichthe wordsapply. Positively, t argues nstead,-and here,sinceThompsonputsthe positionadmirably, use his words-" As with most adjectives,verbs,adverbs,and prepositions,weexplainthe meaningof common nouns by exhibitingdiscoursein whichthe wordsare usedfar morethanwe do by exhibitingthings to which the words apply.... One thus learnsto asksensiblequestionsabout animalsandinstitutions nd to recognizethe absurdityof seekingtheir commongenuseven though onehas neverthoughtof tryingto express he latterpointby sayingthat ' animal' and 'institution' apply to differentkinds ofentities. Such a statementwould add nothing to what onealreadyknows about the use of ' animal' and 'institution'."And he lateradds,still of coursesimplyputting he casefor thisview, " once we have got rid of the principle hat a differencein the use of commonnounsis alwaysdue to a differencen theentities signified, traditional problems about the senses of' existence are of courseno longerto be taken as theoretical.


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While it is true that when we say ' Animals and institutionsexist' we are to some extent using ' existence ' in different senses,this fact is not subject matter for a theory distinct from theoriesabout animals and institutions."'16

(b) Thompson himself is unable to accept this as all that needbe said. He thinks there also comes a point at which we have tosay in addition, if the talk is for instance of institutions, thatthese are abstract entities. We must know this as part of theminimal knowledge requiredfor the correct use of " institutions ",i.e., we must have this minimal theoretical information about theobjects of discourse. In this way we are back to the entitylanguage, which we have seen is part of the traditional view ofcategories, modes of existence, and, though Thompson himselfdisplays much wariness about this, of ontology.Hereagain there aremany interesting points in whatThompsonsays on which one would like to comment-for example hishandling of the question, " Why is it legitimate to operate onlythus and so with ' number ' and ' institution '?"17 And again,against Thomspon's point that we requiresome minimal informa-tion about the subject matter in addition to what we collectfrom examining the logic of our discourse, one might follow theline suggested by Waismann in " Language Strata "18 when hesays " It was hitherto the custom to refer to what I have called' strata ' by indicating their subject matter ... What I nowsuggest we do ... is to reverse the whole situation.... If wecarefully study the texture of the concepts which occur in a givenstratum, the logic of its propositions, the meaning of truth, theweb of verification, the senses in which a description may becomplete or incomplete-if we consider all that, we may therebycharacterize the subject matter." But detailed discussion wouldnot be appropriate here, and for present purposes I proceed tomy third point, in which I agree with Thompson.(c) He observes that by the attempt to dispose of thetraditional problems that we have just been discussing " we notonly dispose of the traditional problems as theoretical problemsabout kinds of entities, but we also get rid of the idea of category

16 Loc. cit. pp. 498 and 499.17Loc. cit. p. 502.18 Logic and Language (Second Series),p. 30.


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differences .19 This arises in the following way. The viewrecommends hat we keep clear of ontologicalinvestigations,and that we explainthe meaningof words by exhibiting heiruse in discourse, .e., it arguesthat we should confine ourselvesto logical investigations,n a broad sense of logical. Now inexhibitingand examininghe usesof words n thisway,we shallfindsomewordswhich n certainaspectsof theiruse differ romother wordsin a way whichthe traditionalviewputs by sayingthat the one group refers to abstract,the other to concreteentities. If we like, we can still use this idiom,providedwe areclear what we mean, and in particularprovidedwe recognizethatin so doingwe areindicatingonlyoneamongmanypossiblyimportantdifferencesn use. On the traditionalview the usesreflecteddifferentcategoriesof being, and the categoriesofbeing themselvesprovideda limitedlist. They also could, asstudied n ontology, providea theoryof why the uses of wordswere limited as they were. On the new view howeverthereisno separateontological nvestigationof subjectmatter,and thefact that words like, for example," fox " and " number arenever used to distinguish peciesof a commongenus,mightbeone of many possibly important differencesbetween them.Thompsonsumsup the positionneatlywhen he says " In sum,a phrase ike 'categorydifference is neededonly in the contextof a theoryabout differencesn the use of words,and yet theimpossibilityof any such theory is preciselythe point beingurgedagainstthe traditionalpositionr."20Now theview,directedagainst hetraditionalAristotelianism,which we have just been discussing bears a considerableresemblanceo theactualpracticeof certainmodernphilosopherslike Ryle, who neverthelessdescribeshis practice n the idiomof " categories"-detecting " categorymistakes", showing hatconceptsare of " different ategories" and so on. But if this iscorrect,the corollary would seem to be that the " category"idiom is misleading. Of course other philosophersbesidesAristotlehaveused the idiom. There s, if one likes,a Kantiantraditionas well as an Aristotelian radition,and thereare notraderightsabout its use. But it does have strongAristotelian

19Loc. cit. p. 500.20Loc. cit. p. 501.


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associations. For that reasonit is misleading, n so far as itsuggestsextra-logicalassociationswith the world as it reallyisas revealed to ontologicalinvestigationor insight (the secondpoint in our earlierhistoricalexcursuson Aristotelianism); r alimitedlist of nameablecategories the third point earlier);oragain that as the categoriesare irreducible o one another thefourthpoint earlier), o the words we use oughtalways to keepto clearlydefinedpaths. If wecanforget hesesuggestions,t is amere matterof terminologywhetherwe keep the idiom or not.What s importants patiencentracingouttheactualsubtleties flanguage. One shouldnot expectthat in theirbehaviourwordswillalwaysall intosharp ndclearlydefined ndexclusive atterns,orthat here s someeasyandsimpleest o determineheirpatterns.A crossingof patternsmay not alwaysproducenonsense-as atrivialexample,while we mightwant for most purposesto dis-tinguish he logical patterns f colour wordsand soundwords,aphrase ike " loud colour " makesgood sense; and somecollo-cationsof this sort can be highlystrikingandilluminating.Andagainwhile" categorymistakes" maygeneratemyths, t mightbethatsometimes mythso generatedouldbe lluminatingn ts ownright;thatis, it mightbe that not all " categorymistakes" weremistakes,howevermuchit may be true that most of them are.Ryle himself has noted the connexion between "categorymistakes" andjokes (" so many okesare in fact type-pranks );and it is not uninteresting, houghno doubt the point cannotbe pressed, hat Koestler n hisbookInsight ndOutlook ttemptsto account not only for the comic, but also for discoveryandinvention, by what he calls the " bisociation" of two fieldsof experiencewhich had not been connected togetherbefore.

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Category Differences