When Your Body Ages Too Fast

...

https://slate.com/technology/2019/05/werner-syndrome-speeds-up-aging-search-for-a-cure.html

 

"Could treating it help us all age more slowly?"

We all know what the author is getting at here. But what grammatical error is this? It's not a tautology. It's not an oxymoron.

It's not right but for the life of me I cannot recall what it is called and I used to teach this shit.

Clearly, my brain can relate to the article.

 

It is stated that cell repair damage could be a cause to this. But @duncan I am not sure most poeple die out of aging, pretty much anything could cause death and aging being a possibility.

 

Sorry, @Dudden , I did not explain myself well. I was trying to figure out what error it is to say someone can "age more slowly". Age and time go hand in hand. You cannot age more quickly or slowly. Your body can show signs of aging more rapidly or slowly - there are diseases that do this. But in an absolute sense, you age as the clock ticks.

I suppose I am cutting hairs. I was just trying to identify the fallacy. Didn't mean to detract from the thread. And technically "age" can be used to mean deterioration, it's just a secondary meaning, but nonetheless...

So never mind.

 

No apology necessary @duncan .

 

If it was an error it might be a category mistake as defined by Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind (1949ish).

But maybe 'to age' in the sense of to deteriorate is the primary meaning. Primary meanings of verbs often do not track logically from the noun. Do we ever use 'to age' meaning just to exist later?

We say 'but she has not aged at all', 'the Book of Kells is finally beginning to age', ...
We do not suggest that a hydrogen atom has aged - because it never changes its composition.

Of course things get complicated when you start constructing complex verbs like 'he has aged well' - which I guess again demonstrates how meanings do not track the way we think they should. I spent a merry year in a philosophy department discovering that philosophers tend not to cotton on to this - as Wittgenstein said about 'language going on holiday'.

 

I thought he was not to be mentioned.

 

Wittgenstein's saving grace was that towards the end of his life he realised that he was a phoney.
He actively discouraged others from taking up academic philosophy - which he rightly considered as chiefly 'therapy' for those who had got lost in a word muddle.

 

Oh, but they have - they always mention Descartes, although it seems they have not read him.

And the mentioning of Descartes via allusion to Ryle, who seems to have got Descartes back to front too.

No doubt they are fans of Kant.

 

It cannot be so. All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

 

For the best but the guy did say that on the way there things can get a bit grubby - even in the best possible world.