Descartes Myth- Gilbert Ryle

Name: Scott Lorimor

Question: In 'Descartes' Myth', p. 35, Ryle gives some examples of what he calls 'category
mistakes'. In particular, he discusses a 'child's' mistake about the nature of a division, and a
'foreigner's' mistake about the nature of team spirit.
What are these mistakes, and are they the same?
The division and foreigners mistake example are two separate mistakes used to illustrate
the category error by Gilbert Ryle. Although they both do a fine job at pointing out the nature of
a category mistake, we should be aware that both of these mistakes have subtle differences
making them each effective at pointing out a specific sort of category mistake.
In the division example, a young child watches a large group of soldiers walk by him, and
has the different units, battalions, brigades, etc. pointed out to him by another person while the
soldiers walk by the child. The child then asks when he will see the division, failing to realize
that the division is simply another level of organization of the soldiers he has just seen (and thus,
he has likely seen the division or several divisions). In this example, the child makes a category
mistake by assuming that the division fit into another group (or category) apart from the unit,
battalion, brigade, etc. when in fact it is simply another level of organization of soldiers.
The foreigners mistake is a bit different. In this example, a foreigner watching a cricket
game has the different positions and roles of the players explained to him in order to help him
understand the game. Out of confusion, the foreigner enquires that there is nobody left on the
field to exercise team spirit. In this example, the foreigner has committed a category mistake
because he has put team spirit in the same category as the players roles. The roles cricket players
are involved in are nonexclusive with team spirit (although say, a lazy athlete could be said to
have poor team spirit for example), so they can exist together, and the property of having team
spirit is unrelated to the roles the players hold.
These two examples are subtly different. In the division example, the child simply
confuses which set of soldiers are considered a division, with the child viewing the division set
as separate from what he already had seen, when in fact it was embedded in the set of soldiers he
already had seen. As such, the child simply confused a subgroup for a distinct group.
In the foreigners mistake, the foreigner had confused a property expressed by the team as
a novel role held by a player on the team. This is actually quite an important distinction to note
for this class, as a reductionist approach can often miss higher level properties that are not seen
when examining the parts of the whole (whatever those may be) if not done carefully. The
relationship between the players roles, and their expression of team spirit is interesting, as there
appears to be a degree of dependence between the groups, with team spirit acting as an emergent
property of sorts, relying on the players to play their roles (and play them well and with great
effort one may argue).
To conclude, although both of these examples display category mistakes, we must note
that they are subtly different and point to the different sort of errors that can fit into the umbrella
of a category mistake.