Category Error

On Convenient Fictions and the Utility of Creating your Own.

Consider the questions:

“What is the weight in grams of Catholicism?”

Or

“What is the marital status of the Number 5?”

These would be an examples of a category error and seem reasonable enough from a grammatical sense. It would make sense to any English speaker but… hang on… In what sense can you ask about a number’s marital status? Or the weight in grams of a system of religion.

We are confounding two aspects not in the same category.

Credit to David Albert, an eminent Philosopher of Science, for coming up with these examples.

Though contrived, these questions are suggestive.

In what other aspects could we be making gross category errors, not so obvious perhaps, but equally nonsensical?

Might there be a continuum in which these kind of errors lie, going from Gross to Subtle?

And if so, what are the implications?

Let’s start with an age old question, a question every child asks but has no one answer:

“Why is there anything at all?”

Or

“Why is there something rather than nothing?”

No one has ever really answered it. The most popular answers being:

A) because of the laws of Physics (read: I am so clever, here are some equations to confound you)

B) because God loves you (shut up and follow)

Followed by,

C) he works in mysterious ways (I have no clue at all, now really please do shut up)

Finally followed by,

D) excommunication or death. (Can’t shut up? We’ll remove you…)

But is the question a category error, in the first place?

“Why”, presupposes a reason. “anything / something”, actually means everything in this context. “there”, supposes a place. “at all?”, supposes an option to not be.

None of which actually makes any sense, except it’s a grammatically correct English sentence that screams for an answer.

How can something that IS have an option to NOT BE. Being and not being are in the same category, but having an “option” is not. If something IS, it cannot be with reason. Like the Number 5, which cannot be married, something that IS, cannot have a “reason”.

That’s what concept of Conservation is. Energy, whatever it is, is neither created nor destroyed, it only takes different forms (unless your a cosmologist). A rabbit hole we will not enter.

The same goes of a place. Everything… Can everything be anywhere but where it is? Which is kind of nowhere, if you think about it deeply. Where is Space? You can be “in” space “somewhere”, but Space can’t be in space. It can’t be anywhere. It is a category error.

More rabbit holes.

Every word in the question is an error. It’s an error that easy to make. That Mercedes Benz out on the street has a place and a reason for being. A factory put it together. Even the atoms it’s made from are theorized as coming from some proto-sun. But the energy embodied within it and the space itself that it occupies, don’t belong in this category. It would take energy to create energy. Same goes for Space. Creation ex-nihlo, is creation without reason. So, the question itself doesn’t make sense, except in a grammatical sense.

It appears, the best answer to the above question is:

“Fuck off!”

or,

“It just is”,

which is about as informative as “because God loves you”, but not as soothing on the young soul and definitely not as satisfying.

What about Freewill?

“Do you have it and does it exists?”

Category error extraordinaire.

A Will cannot be Free but it cannot be Bound either. Free of what? Bound to what?

Your body is bound to the physical and the laws that govern it. The Will is non-physical. What might it be bound to? Or what is it free of?

To the extent you consider your Will to be physical, if that’s your position, it doesn’t actually exist. It’s just a manifesting phenomenon, determined by other factors. An animated hologram. Worse, a mirage you can’t see.

Yet you choose… don’t you?

What about Money? Can you own it?

It doesn’t make sense. More Category errors.

Money is a relationship to the extent that someone else agrees to participate with you.

That’s why the government can cancel a note and it becomes worthless the next minute (unless exchanged for a new note at the bank).

When people agree to embody certain items with the status of money (whether it is printed pieces of paper, a metal or bits of code), it becomes money.

But you can’t own an agreement, except at the end of a gun. (In which case we aren’t agreeing). And everyone knows agreements can be rescinded at a moments notice. It takes two to tango.

Lot of people are going to find out about this soon. They are in a dance with somebody that never ever intended to keep their side of the agreement. (Your tango partner has a gun)

Have you worked that out yet?

Ask the farmers in South Africa or Zimbabwe what a piece of paper with Land Ownership means.

Can you make Money?

Well obviously not. You’ve never made a dime. Category error.

People have given you money.

It’s called earning, to the extent it is given to you voluntarily.

To the extent you take it through coercion, it’s called theft.

(Even if a middleman is doing the coercing for you)

To the extent you fooled them into giving you their dosh, it’s a fraud.

Now some people can “make” money. They are called conventionally called governments and banks. The process is quite complicated and we won’t go into it here, but it’s also quite simple when we strip away all the ritual. They just update a database on their computers. Voila, money is made.

But if money is an agreement, who are the agreeing parties here? And what’s the relationship with your money (another entry in the same database)? Did you agree to it? Is updating a database really creating money? Is the money even yours, if it’s in someone else’s computer? Last time I checked, updating a few memory cells in a computer isn’t “making” anything at all.

If so, is money, money? Or are we making a very subtle but absolutely massive category error?

Is it all so bad?

When you look around, you will find that most of life is a convenient fiction, replete with category errors and at first, it all feels very negative. You feel out of control, that your whole life is a lie. I think that’s why most people avoid thinking as much as they can.

But it needn’t be that way…

The positive side of all of this, a realization that comes slowly, is that you are also the Author, co-Author at the very least.

As Author, you can write your own fictions, it’s fun, meaningful and even profitable, as long as you don’t start believing your own BS too strongly…

As a piece of uplifting homework, I leave you with the following video. It’s a interview with James Tour, a living category error. The guy is Bible Thumping advanced Synthetic Chemist with a background in Nanotechnology. He has caused a storm by writing his own story. He may, along with other visionaries, create History.

You could too…

And that’s,

The Vikid Truth

(ps this article is riddled with Category Errors. Can you find them?)