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mistaking kind for degree (and vice versa)?
I have made an error in judment; I thought people in this city were X, and people in that city were Y, but as it turns out, people in both cities are X, though in varying degrees. Is there a philosophical term for this, i.e., mistaking degree for kind? (It's not a category mistake, from what I can tell.) And also, what is it called when you do it the other way and misidentify a difference of degree, when it really is of kind?
edetwi, thanks for your response. I should not have used "people" as my subject. It could me mice, computers, chess pieces, whatever. There is quite a substantial bit of philosophical literature on the difference between degree and kind--W. v. O. Quine comes to mind first--and thought maybe in the history of philosophy someone had given names to these mistakes in judgments, like all of the logical fallacies people learn in school and are easy to find in a list form on the internet. You are right, however, that it's not always easy to tell the difference and people often do it unknowingly and sometimes spitefully.
Mr_Philosophy_Guy, after searching and looking around, mostly on the internet, the closest thing I have found is category mistake, though it appears category mistake happens when the claim couldn't possibly be true. I guess I'm talking more about an error in judgment, which may be too mundane and gray to have worked itself into professional philosophy.
2 Answers
- Anonymous1 decade agoFavorite Answer
I think it actually is a category mistake. You have two categories labeled "x" and "y". You have assigned members of set "x" to category "y". The fact that you did it by way of mistake is irrelevant. And I don't think that there is a particular term in philosophical jargon to pinpoint precisely the move you've made.
Hope that helps.
- edetwiLv 51 decade ago
In some aspect you are describing bigotry. People see differences as degree up to a point, and then from there on consider it kind. There is often debate on where that line should be drawn, with the people with liberal standards called liberals, and people with tight standards called conservative.
Survival and success require fashioning your own set of guidelines on what is degree and what is kind. As you master a subject, you become a quick judge of how to do it.
When we really look at each other, we realize we are all just degrees. The distinctions by kind are arbitrary and only made to serve some purpose. Mostly it is instinctual and we don't really know why we do it the way we do.
Usually the purpose is self-serving, but not always. Sometimes it can also be altruistic and caring. Maybe altruism and bigotry are just opposite sides of the same coin, but both describe your ALL P ARE X premise.
