Does 'Advertising' really exist?
A lot of articles, I have noticed, say things like, “Advertising needs to go under a revolution ” Or, “when will advertising evolve?” Or, “When will advertising realize what’s wrong?” Such a situation is called a category error. It is an error in the thinking process. Because, in the actual world, there is no such thing called “advertising”. “Advertisements” is the word. Advertising is the main thing and the people who make them as in advertising agencies in Delhi . But advertising, which is a grouping of all this, is only a concept in our heads. It does not exist in the actual world. Gilbert Ryle explains this error as follows. A student’s mother tells him she wants to see his university. The student takes his mother to the Science building, the Arts building, the English literature building, cafeteria, administration offices. Still, at the end of the tour, his mother says, “the buildings are all very nice but I still haven’t seen your university.” Gibert Ryle the category error is categorizing physical things into a category/concept and assuming that the category/concept actually exists in the actual world. But obviously it doesn't it is just a concept, not something tangible.