Ideas of Ofra Magidor, by Theme

[Israeli, fl. 2009, At Balliol College, Oxford.]

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2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / a. Category mistakes
17998 Category mistakes are either syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic
18019 People have dreams which involve category mistakes
2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / b. Category mistake as syntactic
18011 Category mistakes seem to be universal across languages
18012 Category mistakes as syntactic needs a huge number of fine-grained rules
18013 Embedded (in 'he said that…') category mistakes show syntax isn't the problem
2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / c. Category mistake as semantic
18016 Two good sentences should combine to make a good sentence, but that might be absurd
18015 The normal compositional view makes category mistakes meaningful
18017 If a category mistake is synonymous across two languages, that implies it is meaningful
18021 Category mistakes are meaningful, because metaphors are meaningful category mistakes
18031 If a category mistake has unimaginable truth-conditions, then it seems to be meaningless
18030 A good explanation of why category mistakes sound wrong is that they are meaningless
18032 Category mistakes are neither verifiable nor analytic, so verificationism says they are meaningless
18034 Category mistakes play no role in mental life, so conceptual role semantics makes them meaningless
18037 Maybe when you say 'two is green', the predicate somehow fails to apply?
18039 If category mistakes aren't syntax failure or meaningless, maybe they just lack a truth-value?
2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / d. Category mistake as pragmatic
18041 Category mistakes suffer from pragmatic presupposition failure (which is not mere triviality)
18055 In 'two is green', 'green' has a presupposition of being coloured
18056 Category mistakes because of presuppositions still have a truth value (usually 'false')
18057 'Numbers are coloured and the number two is green' seems to be acceptable
18058 Maybe the presuppositions of category mistakes are the abilities of things?
2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / e. Category mistake as ontological
18059 The presuppositions in category mistakes reveal nothing about ontology
4. Formal Logic / E. Nonclassical Logics / 8. Intensional Logic
18040 Intensional logic maps logical space, showing which predicates are compatible or incompatible
6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 5. Definitions of Number / e. Caesar problem
17997 Some suggest that the Julius Caesar problem involves category mistakes
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / c. Statue and clay
18060 We can explain the statue/clay problem by a category mistake with a false premise
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 2. Propositional Attitudes
18020 Propositional attitudes relate agents to either propositions, or meanings, or sentence/utterances
18. Thought / C. Content / 1. Content
18035 Two sentences with different meanings can, on occasion, have the same content
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 4. Structure of Concepts / b. Analysis of concepts
18018 To grasp 'two' and 'green', must you know that two is not green?
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 1. Syntax
18008 Generative semantics says structure is determined by semantics as well as syntactic rules
18010 'John is easy to please' and 'John is eager to please' have different deep structure
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 2. Semantics
18053 The semantics of a sentence is its potential for changing a context
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 4. Compositionality
17999 Strong compositionality says meaningful expressions syntactically well-formed are meaningful
18000 Weaker compositionality says meaningful well-formed sentences get the meaning from the parts
18014 Understanding unlimited numbers of sentences suggests that meaning is compositional
19. Language / D. Propositions / 2. Abstract Propositions / b. Propositions as possible worlds
18001 Are there partial propositions, lacking truth value in some possible worlds?
19. Language / F. Communication / 5. Pragmatics / a. Contextual meaning
18036 A sentence can be meaningful, and yet lack a truth value
18051 In the pragmatic approach, presuppositions are assumed in a context, for successful assertion
19. Language / F. Communication / 5. Pragmatics / b. Implicature
18042 The infelicitiousness of trivial falsity is explained by expectations, or the loss of a context-set
18043 The infelicitiousness of trivial truth is explained by uninformativeness, or a static context-set
19. Language / F. Communication / 5. Pragmatics / c. Presupposition
18047 A presupposition is what makes an utterance sound wrong if it is not assumed?
18048 A test for presupposition would be if it provoked 'hey wait a minute - I have no idea that....'
18049 The best tests for presupposition are projecting it to negation, conditional, conjunction, questions
18050 If both s and not-s entail a sentence p, then p is a presupposition
18054 Why do certain words trigger presuppositions?
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / d. Metaphor
18022 Metaphors tend to involve category mistakes, by joining disjoint domains
18024 One theory says metaphors mean the same as the corresponding simile
18027 Metaphors as substitutes for the literal misses one predicate varying with context
18023 Theories of metaphor divide over whether they must have literal meanings
18025 The simile view of metaphors removes their magic, and won't explain why we use them
18026 Maybe a metaphor is just a substitute for what is intended literally, like 'icy' for 'unemotional'
18028 Gricean theories of metaphor involve conversational implicatures based on literal meanings
18029 Non-cognitivist views of metaphor says there are no metaphorical meanings, just effects of the literal