Overview
A category error is a logical error in which some phenomenon is labeled as part of one category when it belongs to another. Children make category errors constantly when learning about the world, which can lead to nonsensical questions like “what color is the number 6?” or “why is the sky angry?” when observing a storm.
History and Etymology
The term was specifically popularized by Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind (1949) as a challenge to Rene Descartes mind-body duality that assumed the mind was a type of invisible formless substance that was independent of the empirically-observable substance that composed the body. Instead, Ryle argued that the mind was not a separate entity from the body at all. What we call the “mind” is simply the cumulative observations that a human body has abilities and states that something like a plant body does not. Thus, Ryle argued that Cartesian dualists were wrong in treating the mind as a category of object rather than a category of behavior that stems from the body.
Within the world of psychology, this disagreement about category errors is the foundational distinction between behaviorists who prioritize the empirically observable and psychodynamic cognitive scientists who propose internal models for the human mind. Behaviorists might argue that cognitive scientists make a category error in assuming the mind has a separate set of processes through which behavior can be redirected. Instead, they might argue that what we call the mind is a construct produced through observing behaviors, so we should measure the behvaior directly rather than speculate about the model and state of mind.