I believe that categories have no physical OR metaphysical existence. Nonetheless, they're darned USEFUL -- it really helps communication.
I'd go a bit farther regarding categories (but then, I used to study categorization and inductive reasoning, within the field of cognitive psychology[1]).
* All categories are human-created approximations of reality. Indeed, categories are a subset of "theories" or "hypotheses"; it's just that categories focus only on features (i.e, which features are necessary, sufficient, distinctive, common, etc. for an exemplar to belong to a category, and to what extent), whereas theories can include additional means of representation and expression (such as if-then statements, mathematical formulations, etc.).
* Categories are "correct" to whatever extent that they accurately describe and predict the underlying physical reality. (You can have categories of metaphysical reality too, but then it's even harder to judge if a category is "good" much less "correct".) "Better communication" is a nice bonus of having a category that's both "good" and "agreed upon", but it's not, to me, the main effect or purpose of having categories. A category would exist just fine in someone's mind, and be used to draw inferences, even if it was never communicated to others.
* Mental categories don't consist of only necessary and sufficient (defining) features, but also all sorts of other stuff (probabilistic features, sense of "essence", etc.) that I'm not going to go into now (because it takes an entire lecture in my class :-). However, I will give one quick example. The category "bird" might be defined in one way (has particular anatomical structure, feathers, etc.) but most people's mental category of "bird" also includes non-defining features such as "probably can fly" and a (usually unstated) sense that there is an "essence" to being a bird. Those "extra" features explain why some birds are more "typical" than others, why some conclusions (generalization and analogies about birds) are more persuasive than others, and why one could perform complete plastic surgery on a bird to make it look and act like a fish but it'd still be a bird.
* People often - get into arguments because they use the same label (e.g. "planet") but have different underlying mental categories - get into arguments because they think in a binary way-- either a particular instance DOES or DOESN'T fit the category, without allowing for "more and less typical" and in-between states (really, if an example doesn't fit neatly in or out of a category, it's time to conclude "I have extended this category as far as it can go as a tool, and it's time to find a new tool/category/theory/whatever) [2] - reify categories (once they have a mental category and a label/name, they think that's a real thing in the real universe) - confuse the category (the mental approximation) with the reality - fail to see other possible categories, ones that might describe/predict the universe better, or at least get at different aspects of it [3]
* Tying all this back to your epistemology, I mostly agree with you, except that I don't see a clean distinction between "metaphysics" and "categories" (none of it is "real') or even a clean distinction between "physics" and "metaphysics" (but it's nearly binary, and that's good enough).
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Date: 2013-07-09 02:26 pm (UTC)I'd go a bit farther regarding categories (but then, I used to study categorization and inductive reasoning, within the field of cognitive psychology[1]).
* All categories are human-created approximations of reality. Indeed, categories are a subset of "theories" or "hypotheses"; it's just that categories focus only on features (i.e, which features are necessary, sufficient, distinctive, common, etc. for an exemplar to belong to a category, and to what extent), whereas theories can include additional means of representation and expression (such as if-then statements, mathematical formulations, etc.).
* Categories are "correct" to whatever extent that they accurately describe and predict the underlying physical reality. (You can have categories of metaphysical reality too, but then it's even harder to judge if a category is "good" much less "correct".) "Better communication" is a nice bonus of having a category that's both "good" and "agreed upon", but it's not, to me, the main effect or purpose of having categories. A category would exist just fine in someone's mind, and be used to draw inferences, even if it was never communicated to others.
* Mental categories don't consist of only necessary and sufficient (defining) features, but also all sorts of other stuff (probabilistic features, sense of "essence", etc.) that I'm not going to go into now (because it takes an entire lecture in my class :-). However, I will give one quick example. The category "bird" might be defined in one way (has particular anatomical structure, feathers, etc.) but most people's mental category of "bird" also includes non-defining features such as "probably can fly" and a (usually unstated) sense that there is an "essence" to being a bird. Those "extra" features explain why some birds are more "typical" than others, why some conclusions (generalization and analogies about birds) are more persuasive than others, and why one could perform complete plastic surgery on a bird to make it look and act like a fish but it'd still be a bird.
* People often
- get into arguments because they use the same label (e.g. "planet") but have different underlying mental categories
- get into arguments because they think in a binary way-- either a particular instance DOES or DOESN'T fit the category, without allowing for "more and less typical" and in-between states (really, if an example doesn't fit neatly in or out of a category, it's time to conclude "I have extended this category as far as it can go as a tool, and it's time to find a new tool/category/theory/whatever) [2]
- reify categories (once they have a mental category and a label/name, they think that's a real thing in the real universe)
- confuse the category (the mental approximation) with the reality
- fail to see other possible categories, ones that might describe/predict the universe better, or at least get at different aspects of it [3]
* Tying all this back to your epistemology, I mostly agree with you, except that I don't see a clean distinction between "metaphysics" and "categories" (none of it is "real') or even a clean distinction between "physics" and "metaphysics" (but it's nearly binary, and that's good enough).