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What is an example of a magical category being used in philosophy? (That is, a convenient handle that I can use to represent the term, 'magical category' when I read it).
Yudkowsky gives some good examples. Or, consider "objectification." Really, they are ubiquitous in philosophy.
I'm not sure that it's fair to apply the "magical categories" critique to philosophers who discuss "objectification".
Nussbaum would have committed the fallacy of magical categories if she had thought that her discussion would suffice to teach an AI to recognize instances of objectification. But the most that she would purport to have done is to teach humans in her intellectual community how to recognize instances of objectification. So she is allowed the "anthropomorphic optimism" that would be fallacious if she were trying to train an AI. And probably, after reading her article, you could do a very reliable job of categorizing (what she would call) instances of objectification.
Fair enough; it's a magical category in one sense, and not a magical category in another sense.
In what sense is it a magical category?
Would it qualify as ironic if "magical categories" turned out to be a member of the set of all sets that contain themselves as members?
I'm not sure I believe in non-magical categories.
I guess what is ironic is that if "magical categories" are themselves magical, we could never know that they are.
Further, not knowing the meaning of a magical category (not even knowing if the meaning is knowable) it is possible that the set of all sets that contain themselves is magical.
I'm trying to guess from the context, but I think that being a magical category means that there is no universal algorithm that could be applied to determine if an object x is contained within it. Suppose that this is the definition and that being a magical category strongly means that there is also no algorithm to determine if an object x is not contained within it.
All this to quip that if magical categories are magical, then they are contained in the set of all sets containing themselves. If magical categories are strongly magical, they are contained in and contain the set of sets containing themselves. (Since using the property of strongness, it would be impossible to determine if the set-of-sets-containing-themselves are magical or not, making the set-of-sets-containing-themselves magical.)
Those examples don't have citations.* I would like to see how magical categories actually appear in an argument in a philosophy article.
This is how I like to handle assimilating generalizations.. I will accept a generalization as true, but I tie it to an actual example. That way, if the generalization is later challenged I can look to see if the context/meaning/framing is different.
I am also curious as to whether there is any self awareness of this problem of magical categories in philosophy.
* I see now that your post did. However, I still haven't studied enough of your post to gather the details of the magical category there.