  However, it seems fair to trace the contemporary debate on category mistakes to the first half of the 20th century, and most notably to the work of Gilbert Ryle (who also coined the term ‘category mistake’). Influenced by the work of Edmund Husserl, Ryle argued that category mistakes were the key to delineating ontological categories: the fact that ‘Saturday is in bed’ is a category mistake while ‘Gilbert Ryle is in bed’ is not, shows that Saturday and Ryle belong to different  ontological  categories.[2]  Moreover, Ryle maintained that distinguishing between categories was the central task of philosophy: “The matter is of some importance, for not only is it the case that category-propositions (namely assertions that terms belong to certain categories or types), are always philosopher’s propositions, but, I believe, the converse is also true. So we are in the dark about the nature of philosophical problems and methods if we are in the dark about types and categories” (Ryle 1938, 189). Section 3.2.1 below treats developments of the view that Ryle’s held, namely,  that category  mistakes are grammatical but meaningless.