To categorize is to determine reality

[coberst]

To categorize is to determine reality

 

It is standard practice to categorize things in accordance to what they have in common. We normally think of a category as being a container in which things that are essentially the same are contained. This represents our common folk theory of category and it is also our principal technical theory of category.

 

These theories are not entirely incorrect but SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) has shown this theory to be far too simple in its comprehension of this important aspect of human thought.

 

SGCS has introduced a new theory of categorization; it is called prototype theory.

 

There is perhaps no aspect of thought more important than that of how a creature categorizes kinds of things. The life of the tadpole and the banker is often at risk because the creature has failed to categorize properly. All creatures must at least distinguish eat from no eat and friend from enemy.

 

Categorization is primarily automatic and unconscious. Humans categorize all things both concrete and abstract. A traditionally Western philosophical view of categorization was a priori and given little thought. But now, since the empirical studies of Eleanor Rosch, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in cognitive psychology, all domains of knowledge have begun a more serious study of this matter.

 

Rosch argues that if all members of a category share the same common properties then none can be a better example of the category than any other. Secondly she argues that if categories are defined by the properties inherent in each member then categories must be independent of those who do the categorization.

 

Rosch and others observed that empirical evidence clearly demonstrates that categories have best examples, i.e. they have prototypes. Furthermore human capacities play a role in categorization.

 

“Prototype Theory, as it is evolving, is changing our idea of the most fundamental of human capacities—the capacity to categorize—and with it, our idea of what the human mind and human reason are like.”

 

In this century philosophy and others have viewed reason as a mechanical manipulation of abstract symbols which are meaningless in them self. This has led the first generation of cognitive science to adopt the Artificial Intelligence mode of thinking; thinking that the mind emulates in some fashion the computer.

 

Since we reason not only about individual things but also about generalizations and abstract ideas categorization is crucial to all aspects of reasoning. The accepted view of reason as being disembodied, i.e. not affected by bodies, comes with an implicit theory of categorization. “It is a version of the classical theory in which categories are represented by sets, which are in turn defined by the properties shared by their members.”

 

Contemporary prototype theory challenges this classical view. Prototype theory hypothesizes that “human categorization is essentially a matter of both human experience and imagination—of perception, motor activity, and culture on one hand , and of metaphor, metonym, and mental imagery on the other…To change the very concept of a category is to change not only our concept of the mind , but also our understanding of the world.”

 

Quotes from “Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind” by George Lakoff

[jedaisoul]

To change the very concept of a category is to change not only our concept of the mind , but also our understanding of the world.”

Quotes from “Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind” by George Lakoff

Hi Coberst, good to see you are still around. I found this an interesting post. What I do not understand is how you got from the quote (which I agree with) to your title "To categorize is to determine reality" (which I do not agree with)?

 

Are these two statements equivalent to you? Does the one imply the other? To me they are very different claims. Lakoff appears to claim that categories determine our understanding of reality. That is very different from determining reality. So if you'd entitled it "To categorise is to understand reality" I'd agree.

[coberst]

Jedaisoul

 

I will need a few days to develop a response which will give SGCS's definition of meaning, understanding, truth, created realities, and knowledge; all of which I essentially agree with.

[HydrogenBond]

Since we reason not only about individual things but also about generalizations and abstract ideas categorization is crucial to all aspects of reasoning. The accepted view of reason as being disembodied, i.e. not affected by bodies, comes with an implicit theory of categorization. “It is a version of the classical theory in which categories are represented by sets, which are in turn defined by the properties shared by their members.”

 

Contemporary prototype theory challenges this classical view. Prototype theory hypothesizes that “human categorization is essentially a matter of both human experience and imagination—of perception, motor activity, and culture on one hand , and of metaphor, metonym, and mental imagery on the other…To change the very concept of a category is to change not only our concept of the mind , but also our understanding of the world.”

 

I am just thinking out loud to see if I understand this correctly. Stereo-types are a type of category or container. At some level, there is something in common with all the members within this container or else they would not be in that mind container. But at another level there is the stereo-typical example which best represents that category, at least in the mind of the person who forms it. If we reason using this container based on the stereo-type the peripheral may not follow from the line of reasoning. There is spillage as we carry the bucket. This can't be reality.

 

If we wanted to carry this container, using the same line of reasoning, so there is no spillage, the container needs to start with more parameters so all the members in the category are much closer to the stereo-typical. Or we need to pour some out of the original container, before it spills on the path of logic. This way we will not lose a drop.

 

Another approach is, start with the original container that contains the stereo-type and all the extras. To be able to move this entire container around a path of reason, and not spill anything, requires choosing a better line of reasoning. There are certain paths a,b,c,d that can't work without spillage. These are not real. But maybe there is a path z. But that path has to based on the most common parameters and not on the stereo-typical.

 

Let me try to give a silly example. Fluffy is a cat who belongs in the container called cats. He is at the top of the cat container, since when I think of cats, I think of Fluffy. Each morning Fluffy wakes me at 6 am. Since fluffy is a cat, and he wakes me at 6 am, then maybe all cats wake their owner at 6 am. There will be a lot spillage, because all cats don't do this. However, there will be some cats left in the container, because some cats do this. So we look in the container and see what is left. Empirical sort of allows for some spillage but typically only a few drops.

 

To retain this 6 am train of logic, while making it as accurate as possible with my container, so it reflects logical reality; zero spillage, I need to interview other cat owners to find only the cats who do exactly what my logic says. I sort of pour some cats out of the container before I start walking. This way they don't make a mess of my logic, as I reason along the trail. Now the container based on stereo-typical fluffy can be carried the entire way making my logic valid and consistent. At that point, my logic now reflects reality.

 

The last way uses the original big container but leaves all the cats in. I now have to place this on a logic train without any spillage. It is quite heavy because it is a large container full to the brim. One needs to be careful about the logic path. Fluffy has whiskers therefore, all the cats have whiskers. The approach here is one can't make their logic conditional on the stereo type. If you wish to use the biggest container, one has to find a natural common link. Einstein's E=MC2 sort of can carry the universe, in a bucket, without spilling a drop. Simplicity is required to move the biggest containers, which appears to be the way the brain sets it up.

[coberst]

Hydrogen

 

I think that you give a good example of "prototype theory" which is the theory that SGCS proposes as a better substitue for the classical theory of categorization, i.e. necessary and sufficient conditions.

 

A quickie from wiki on prototype theory:

Prototype Theory is a mode of graded categorization in cognitive science, where some members of a category are more central than others. For example, when asked to give an example of the concept furniture, chair is more frequently cited than, say, stool. Prototype theory also plays a central role in linguistics, as part of the mapping from phonological structure to semantics.

 

As formulated in the 1970s by Eleanor Rosch and others, prototype theory was a radical departure from traditional necessary and sufficient conditions as in Aristotelian logic, which led to set-theoretic approaches of extensional or intensional semantics. Thus instead of a definition based model - e.g. a bird may be defined as elements with the features [+feathers], [+beak] and [+ability to fly], prototype theory would consider a category like bird as consisting of different elements which have unequal status - e.g. a robin is more prototypical of a bird than, say a penguin. This leads to a graded notion of categories, which is a central notion in many models of cognitive science and cognitive semantics, e.g. in the work of George Lakoff (Women, Fire and Dangerous Things, 1987) or Ronald Langacker (Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. 1/2 1987/1991).

 

The term prototype has been defined in Eleanor Rosch's study "Natural Categories" (1973) and was first defined as a stimulus, which takes a salient position in the formation of a category as it is the first stimulus to be associated with that category. Later, she redefined it as the most central member of a category.

[jedaisoul]

I will need a few days to develop a response which will give SGCS's definition of meaning, understanding, truth, created realities, and knowledge; all of which I essentially agree with.

Hopefully I may be able to save you some effort. If the gist of what you are intending to say is that "to categorise is to determine your subjective reality" then I would agree anyway.

 

My only concern with that is that I personally dislike the use of the word "reality" in the term "subjective reality". To my simplistic way of thinking, if it is subjective then it is not reality. However, I acknowledge that this term is in common usage, so I just have to accept it!

[coberst]

Hopefully I may be able to save you some effort. If the gist of what you are intending to say is that "to categorise is to determine your subjective reality" then I would agree anyway.

 

My only concern with that is that I personally dislike the use of the word "reality" in the term "subjective reality". To my simplistic way of thinking, if it is subjective then it is not reality. However, I acknowledge that this term is in common usage, so I just have to accept it!

 

 

 

I had intended to make a more encompassing answer but discovered that I am not prepared now for such a heavy job.

 

Ontology is about determining what is real in the world. Epistemology is about how we can know what is real in the world. SGCS informs me that epistemology can and does create ontology.

 

Common sense intuition and objectivist philosophy says that everything is a kind of thing and that every thing has essential characteristics; we can categorize what is in the world by consciously determining the necessary and sufficient characteristics of all things and to place together those things that have the same essential characteristics.

 

SGCS informs us that the common sense and objectivist view of categorizing what is in the world is far too limiting; also this view is dependent upon a mind/body dichotomy.

 

SGCS informs us that they have discovered, through empirical means, that we know categories both consciously, as objectivism dictates, and unconsciously as objectivism denies. We know categories often unconsciously based upon how our body interacts with the world. We also form categories of abstract ideas and many of these display their presence through the words that we speak.

 

We almost always think and speak of abstract ideas via metaphor and it is by examining our standard metaphors that we can discover many categories that do not at all fit within the conscious categories of objectivism.

 

How categorizing creates reality: a good example is the metaphor WAR ON TERRIORISM, or the framing of abortion as either a woman’s choice or as killing a baby. Framing the response to the destruction of the towers as a war on terror and framing abortion as killing a baby has both lead to realties that include killing and destruction.

 

I quote from sections of Lakoff’s book:

“One of the major inadequacies of objectivist metaphysics is that it has no room for such humanly created realities as “wasted time”…If we live in a society that is constructed on the TIME IS A RESOURCE metaphor…then it can be true that someone wasted an hour of my time this morning…Many of our most important truths are not physical truths, but truths that come about as a result of human beings acting in accord with a conceptual system that cannot in any sense be said to fit a reality completely outside of human experience…Since we act in accord with our conceptual systems and since our actions are real, our conceptual systems have a major role in creating reality. Where human action is concerned, metaphysics, that is, our view of what exists and is real, is not independent of epistemology…”

 

One of the things that SGCS does is take the sting out of subjectivity and objectivity by showing that our normal sense of these two expressions is erronious. We think that truth must be objective and free of the body whereas SGCS shows us that such truth does ot exist. Truth is embodied truth and does not exist independent of the thinking organsm.

 

New paradigms become quickly exploited or dumped in the natural sciences because there is often money-in-it. Alas such is not the case with the human sciences. New paradigms take generations to become carefully exploited or dumped because such actions generally must come from the academic community. Few professors want to dump their class notes that they have used for years and prepare new ones on matters that they must learn from the bottom up.

[jedaisoul]

How categorizing creates reality: a good example is the metaphor WAR ON TERRIORISM, or the framing of abortion as either a woman’s choice or as killing a baby. Framing the response to the destruction of the towers as a war on terror and framing abortion as killing a baby has both lead to realties that include killing and destruction.

Having an effect on reality is not the same as determining reality.

 

One of the things that SGCS does is take the sting out of subjectivity and objectivity by showing that our normal sense of these two expressions is erronious. We think that truth must be objective and free of the body whereas SGCS shows us that such truth does ot exist. Truth is embodied truth and does not exist independent of the thinking organsm.

I'm having a similar discussion on another site, and I'll put to you what I've said there...

Light illuminates a tree. Some of the light is absorbed, giving the light reflected a particular range of hues and a shape. The reflected light enters my eye, it is focussed on the retina and converted to electric stimuli. My mind/brain is capable of recognising shapes, and adds the concept "tree" to the image I see in my mind.

 

Firstly, I'm not seeing a tree, I'm seeing light reflected off a tree. We know this is true, because when there is no light reflected off the tree, I cannot see it. E.g. If it is solely illuminated from behind, all I will see is the light that is not obstructed by the tree. But I may interpret that as a dark shape of a tree.

 

Secondly, the light enteing my eye does not contain the concept "tree". That is added by my mind, based on previous experience.

 

Thirdly, if I looked more closely, I might realise that what I was seeing was actually a cell phone transmitter mast poorly disguised as a tree (we don't like ugly cell phone masts in England).

 

How can I claim to directly perceive a tree, when it turns out to be a cell phone mast? That is why I believe there is something separate from my perception of a tree. Which, in this case turns out to be a cell phone mast. Not a tree at all.

 

That thing I call the thing-in-itself, to distinguish it from my perception of it, which may, or may not be an accurate image of the thing-in-itself.

As you may realise that was a discusion about Direct Realism, but it is relevant to your claim that "Truth is embodied truth and does not exist independent of the thinking organsm".

 

I think that the truth is that what was standing there was a cell phone mast, whether I perceived it as such or not. And even if I never looked at it in the first place.

[coberst]

Jedaisoul

 

Since we act in accord with our conceptual systems and since our actions are real, our conceptual systems have a major role in creating reality.

[REASON]

Jedaisoul

 

Since we act in accord with our conceptual systems and since our actions are real, our conceptual systems have a major role in creating reality.

 

As Jedai has previously stated, I think a more accurate statement would be, "Since we act in accord with our conceptual systems and since our actions are real, our conceptual systems have a major role in creating our perception of reality.

 

I am also in the camp that believes it is important for us to recognize that what we perceive as reality, may not be consistent with what is actually real. Our perception is limited by the amount and depth of knowledge we possess about the real world around us, which is determined by our individual experiences, education, and the ability we have to employ our senses. In other words, someone who has never had the abilty to see or hear is going to have a markedly different perception of reality than someone who's senses are fully functional.

 

The same goes for knowledge, education, and experience. My perception of reality is significantly more advanced than my young son's because his knowledge, education, and experience is not as vast as mine, with the caveat that the information that each of us have retained may yet be in err compared to actual reality.

 

Categorization is a way in which we try and determine what is real and define reality for ourselves. But what we have come to understand through the scientific method is that our categorizations may be significantly mistaken. Ideally, if we are to advance our consciousness, we are willing to adjust our perception to a current understanding of reality and not succomb to dogmatic thinking.

[coberst]

We lack the vocabulary required to discuss this issue of reality cogently. Our views in this matter are undergoing a dramatic change; common sense views of the world, supported by objectivism philosophy, are being challenged by SGCS. It will probably take a few generations before this matter is sorted out and therein we can see the weakness of a culture that places great value on technology but little value on intellectual sophistication.

 

Darwin informs us that when a species fails to adapt to its environment that species is in danger of extinction. Such is the case for the human species. We have created a technological capacity to rapidly change our environment but we have not the intellectual sophistication to comprehend the problems created by this rapid change, the evidence of this problem can be seen in this particular matter.

[jedaisoul]

We lack the vocabulary required to discuss this issue of reality cogently.

No. We have the vocabulary. The problem lies in ensuring that everyone is defining the terms they use in compatible ways. We fail to communicate when pople use the vocabulary to mean different things. So it occurs to me that we may be using the words "define" and "create" in different ways. For example:

Since we act in accord with our conceptual systems and since our actions are real, our conceptual systems have a major role in creating reality.

I interpret your statement as meaning "physical reality is created by our concept of it", which I disagree with. However, you may mean "decisions we make are dependent on our concepts and have real effects upon the physical reality". I would agree with that. But if that was your intent, I would suggest that saying "...our conceptual systems have a major role in shaping reality" would mean the same, whilst minimising the likelihood of misintepretation.

 

Another example:

Darwin informs us that when a species fails to adapt to its environment that species is in danger of extinction. Such is the case for the human species. We have created a technological capacity to rapidly change our environment but we have not the intellectual sophistication to comprehend the problems created by this rapid change, the evidence of this problem can be seen in this particular matter.

Now that could be taken to be a subtle way of saying that people who do not agree with you are intellectual throw-backs. Which, if it was your intent, would be offensive. I trust that was not your intent, but I struiggle to grasp what was your meaning. Who are the "we" who "have not the intellectual sophistication to comprehend the problems created by this rapid change"?

 

Are you including me and/or Reason in that statement? Are you including yourself? If so, how would you be able to distinguish whether others did, or did not, comprehend the problems? What is the meaning of "the evidence of this problem can be seen in this particular matter"?

[coberst]

Jedaisoul

 

It has become obvious to me that our culture has a great and unhealthy anti-intellectual bias. This bias makes it impossible for us to take affective steps to significantly improve our intellectual sophistication. Every one of us fails to reach our potential as a result of the this and other attitudes toward learning.

 

If we do not take drastic action to correct this problem I suspect our civilization will not survive the next 200 years.

[coberst]

Jedaisoul

 

I copied this article from yesterday's Washington Post that, I think, supports my view.

 

Susan Jacoby is the author of “The Age of American Unreason.”

 

PITY the poor word “elite,” which simply means “the best” as an adjective and “the best of a group” as a noun. What was once an accolade has turned poisonous in American public life over the past 40 years, as both the left and the right have twisted it into a code word meaning “not one of us.” But the newest and most ominous wrinkle in the denigration of all things elite is that the slur is being applied to knowledge itself.

 

Senator Hillary Clinton’s use of the phrase “elite opinion” to dismiss the near unanimous opposition of economists to her proposal for a gas tax holiday was a landmark in the use of elite to attack expertise supposedly beyond the comprehension of average Americans. One might as well say that there is no point in consulting musicians about music or ichthyologists about fish.

 

The assault on “elite” did not begin with politicians, although it does have political antecedents in sneers directed at “eggheads” during the anti-Communist crusades of the 1950s. The broader cultural perversion of its meaning dates from the late 1960s, when the academic left pinned the label on faculty members who resisted the establishment of separate departments for what were then called “minority studies.” In this case, two distinct faculty groups were tarred with elitism — those who wanted to incorporate black and women’s studies into the core curriculum, and those who thought that blacks and women had produced nothing worthy of study. Instead of elitist, the former group should have been described as “inclusionary” and the latter as “bigoted.”

 

The second stage of elite-bashing was conceived by the cultural and political right. Conservative intellectuals who rose to prominence during the Reagan administration managed the neat trick of reversing the ’60s usage of “elite” by applying it as a slur to the left alone. “Elite,” often rendered in the plural, became synonymous with “limousine liberals” who opposed supposedly normative American values. That the right-wing intellectual establishment also constituted a powerful elite was somehow obscured.

 

“Elite” and “elitist” do not, in a dictionary sense, mean the same thing. An elitist is someone who does believe in government by an elite few — an anti-democratic philosophy that has nothing to do with elite achievement. But the terms have become so conflated that Americans have come to consider both elite and elitist synonyms for snobbish.

 

All the older forms of elite-bashing have now devolved into a kind of aggressive denial of the threat to American democracy posed by public ignorance.

 

During the past few months, I have received hundreds of e-mail messages calling me an elitist for drawing attention to America’s knowledge deficit. One of the most memorable came from a man who objected to my citation of a statistic, from a 2006 National Geographic-Roper survey, indicating that nearly two-thirds of Americans age 18 to 24 cannot find Iraq on a map. “Why should I care whether my mechanic knows where Iraq is, as long as he knows how to fix my car?” the man asked.

 

But what could be more elitist than the idea that a mechanic cannot be expected to know the location of a country where thousands of Americans of his own generation are fighting and dying?

 

Another peculiar new use of “elitist” (often coupled with “Luddite”) is its application to any caveats about the Internet as a source of knowledge. After listening to one of my lectures, a college student told me that it was elitist to express alarm that one in four Americans, according to the National Constitution Center, cannot name any First Amendment rights or that 62 percent cannot name the three branches of government. “You don’t need to have that in your head,” the student said, “because you can just look it up on the Web.”

 

True, but how can an information-seeker know what to look for if he or she does not know that the Bill of Rights exists? There is no point-and-click formula for accumulating a body of knowledge needed to make sense of isolated facts.

It is past time to retire the sliming of elite knowledge and education from public discourse. Do we want mediocre schools or the best education for our children? If we need an operation, do we want an ordinary surgeon or the best, most elite surgeon available?

 

America was never imagined as a democracy of dumbness. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written by an elite group of leaders, and although their dream was limited to white men, it held the seeds of a future in which anyone might aspire to the highest — let us say it out loud, elite — level of achievement.

Susan Jacoby is the author of “The Age of American Unreason.”

[jedaisoul]

I copied this article from yesterday's Washington Post that, I think, supports my view...

That the American man (or woman) in the street is anti-elite does not mean that the people who come to this site for intelligent discussions are. Some may quite happily accept the term elite, or even elitist, being applied to them.

 

Some may merely aspire to it.

 

None of what you said, however accurate it may be with regard to the American populace, answers the questions I raised.

[coberst]

 

Now that could be taken to be a subtle way of saying that people who do not agree with you are intellectual throw-backs. Which, if it was your intent, would be offensive. I trust that was not your intent, but I struiggle to grasp what was your meaning. Who are the "we" who "have not the intellectual sophistication to comprehend the problems created by this rapid change"?

 

Are you including me and/or Reason in that statement? Are you including yourself? If so, how would you be able to distinguish whether others did, or did not, comprehend the problems? What is the meaning of "the evidence of this problem can be seen in this particular matter"?

 

 

The "we" I refer to is everybody who I know. I have read books by individuals who do not fit as the "we". I include you, Reason, and me in the "we". The fact of just how difficult it is to communicate about matters of reality, objective, and subjective is evidence of such a situation.

[jedaisoul]

I include you, Reason, and me in the "we". The fact of just how difficult it is to communicate about matters of reality, objective, and subjective is evidence of such a situation.

Well, I do find that offensive. As I said, if you include yourself in the "we" who "have not the intellectual sophistication to comprehend the problems created by this rapid change", then I do not see how you would be able to distinguish whether others did, or did not, comprehend the problems.

 

Anyway, you have given your answer, there is no point in pursuing this.