Tag: Category mistake
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Category mistake: Mental illness
Today, I begin to inquire into this strange, fascinating, and mistaken argument: 5.) Because the human mind, like the human body, tends to be sickly and ill, it seeks healing or cures. Here, we have a classic example of what the late philosopher Gilbert Ryle called a ‘category mistake’: the misattribution of the properties that…
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On a category mistake: ‘Human beings are weak’
Here are three questions that fascinate me: 1.) How did we go from being creatures who above all ‘desire to know’ (Aristotle, Metaphysics I)–let us say: to understand our place in the world–to being creatures who want most of all to be helped (modernity)? 2.) How did the accidental property of weakness (e.g., feeling weak on Tuesday)…
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Savoring–not saving–the world
Thoughts that arose during a recent philosophical conversation with one philosophical friend: I The world is not to be saved, for such is a category mistake. It is instead to be savored, its way manifested through our perceiving rightly, acting well, and expressing something properly. II 1 When one learns to take care of things,…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 