Perhaps we should not immediately look for "categories" as such, but start with looking for how our minds arrive at establishing categories. and here, I think, Jon Mason has a point. Proceeding from, among others, presumed linguistic universals, I arrived at the view that we cognitively deal with reality following two cognitive programs producing respectively personalized and depersonalized representations of reality.  The basics can be found in the added 1989 article on "Person and non-person." An overview of related empirical research can be found in the theoretical and discussion sections of the added 2007 paper on "Dual self."

Whilst it isn't new - would Erving Goffman Frames offer another way of looking at personal reality based on individual frames of reference / schema?

Hello Paul,

I am not familiar with this subject but did find some references which may be useful to you:

Tahko, Tuomas E. (2013). Boundaries in Reality. Classifying Reality, pp. 41-60.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118627747.ch3/summary

Smith, Barry (2013). Classifying Processes: An Essay in Applied Ontology. Classifying Reality, pp. 101-126.

URL: same as above

Zerubavel, Eviatar (1995). The rigid, the fuzzy, and the flexible: Notes on the mental sculpting of academic identity. Social Research, pp. 1093-1106.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40971135?sid=21105953569403&uid=4&uid=2

Moffett, James (1965). I, you, and it. College Composition and Communication, pp. 243-248.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/355201?sid=21105953569403&uid=4&uid=2

Vann, John W. (1984). A multi-distributional, conceptual framework for the study of perceived risk. Advances in Consumer Research, 11.

http://www.acrwebsite.org/search/view-conference-proceedings.aspx?Id=6293

This is about marketing and sales so probably not of your interest.

Regards

Tom

Hello Paul,

This is Herbert Simon's major theme.

Dear Rouslan, thanks for this. Do you have a recommendation as to a paper/book to read?

Thanks Ian, I have considered Goffman but not for a while. Time to revisit him.

Tom, I know some of these but not others. Thanks. Smith and Tahko come from Oderberg's Classifying Reality that assumes a realist position and is a good collection. The other work I am not familiar with but will have a look. Thanks again. 

Hello Paul,

I have classified human functioning as a dynamic system for the pursuit of endeavours (i.e. biologically necessary).  As Stefan says, it is impossible not to classify....and I would add, that is because classifying is a fixed (probably neurobiological) element of human functioning.

You can see this taxonomy at:

http://thee-online.com

In brief: Our psychosocial functioning is a system divisible into discrete non-physical systems (that I call ‘domains’). I have identified two sorts of domain: Root & Primary. The Root Domain, which enables coping and thriving, is intrinsically personal and ultimately supports all functioning. The Root is Will, structured hierarchically as 7 Levels of Will, each of which forms a Primary Domain e.g. Inquiry is Root Level-2. Primary domains are subject to quite intense social control in relation to what should count as reality.

Because human functioning permits/requires accounts of reality (via Communication--Root Level 5), this work could be relevant to your interests.

The Taxonomy has many unexpected properties e.g. I found that each Domain has its own way of handling Reality and Truth. The differences are a cause of intense disputes. This investigation can be found here:

http://www.thee-online.com/Architecture/default.htm#6._Root_Projection/3._To_Typology-Spiral/3.8.1_What_is_Reality.htm

It's a topic I am interested in, so do let me know how you go especially any issues/mistakes that you find.

Best regards,

Warren

www.thee-online.com/Architecture/default.htm#6._Root_Projection/3._To_Typology-Spiral/3.8.1_What_is_Reality.htm

This thread popped up to me with the mention of my article, I'm pleased to see that there's interest in this topic. I might add that from my point of view, the task -- and so the success or failure -- of classifying reality is intimately connected with the theory of natural kinds. They are, if anything, what reflects the 'joints' in reality.

But personally I'm inclined to think that there might be only very few natural kinds. For instance, I'm sceptical about biological kinds, and there are problems with chemical kinds as well. I've explored the latter in detail in my 'Natural Kinds Essentialism Revisited', which is forthcoming in Mind: http://philpapers.org/rec/TAHNKE

Paul, you may. - or may not - find the linguistic anthropology work focused on Natural Semantic Metalanguage an interesting diversion. Analysis of numerous natural languages reveals a common, but very small, set of "semantic primes". I'm thinking that to construct a category & or a classification then delving deep into semantics might be useful.  Also, from a totally different perspective - Indigenous studies - I sometimes encounter the phrase the "violence of categories" where contested knowledge systems do not share commonality

Perhaps we should not immediately look for "categories" as such, but start with looking for how our minds arrive at establishing categories. and here, I think, Jon Mason has a point. Proceeding from, among others, presumed linguistic universals, I arrived at the view that we cognitively deal with reality following two cognitive programs producing respectively personalized and depersonalized representations of reality.  The basics can be found in the added 1989 article on "Person and non-person." An overview of related empirical research can be found in the theoretical and discussion sections of the added 2007 paper on "Dual self."

Hello Paul,

You may already be aware of 'Critical Realist Applications in Organisation and Management Studies' edited by Fleetwood, S. and Ackroyd, S. Published by Routledge. My copy is 2004. See Stephen Ackroyd's discussion of a stratified ontology on page 150.

I also like Fleetwood, S.  (2005), 'Ontology in Organization and Management Studies: A Critical Realist Perspective', Organization 12(2): 197-222. 

Margaret Archer's work is important. See 'Being Human: The Problem of Agency', Cambridge University Press and my copy was published in 2000. She discusses three 'orders' or modes of reality: the natural, practical and social.

What about Andrew Sayer's discussion of the 'whole family of dialisms' that he argues scholars are 'trapped by': fact-value, is-ought, reason-emotion, science-ideology, science-ethics, positive-normative, objectivity-subjectivity, mind-body (page 30) . See 'Why Things Matter to People', published by Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Hope this helps. 

Reality cannot be many that you can classify. But unreal can be many. Reality and Absolute Truth are one and the same thing. Absolute and Relative are opposite of each other. Relative is associated with many (multiplicity) but Absolute is one without a second. Therefore classifying reality is like trying to classify Absolute Truth.

@ Stephan Gruner,

I agree that it is impossible not to classify reality and your example of distinguishing language and vision. The sciences, especially biology, is the subject matter of the book in my question (that of Oderberg). Classification does indeed appear ubiquitous to life (not just human life). I agree that "reality is not merely accidentally classifiable --- it must necessarily be classifiable, not per-se, but for us!" So do you think that there are no classes inherent in the world without humans imposing these?

@ Tuomas

So Tuomas, how would you define a natural kind? I am intrigued by the concept of these forming the joints in reality which seems to me that you are saying that reality is only distinguishable by the differentiation of natural kinds which is by necessity a human activity and therefore that there are no inherent classifications?

@ Jon Mason

Thank you Jon, linguistic anthropology is not an area I have any background in but this sounds interesting. Semantic categories are of great interest to me and analysing semantics is a large part of my work - I have done this using facet theory for many years. Again the violence of categories is an interesting concept which I shall explore.

@ Warren Kinston,

I agree that the classification forming facility is probably neurobiologically determined. I agree that your work may be central to my interests.

Your taxonomy is interesting but I have been unable to use the link you supplied, but I just tried again and these work, so I will enjoy reading your work.

@ Guido

How we form categories is, I agree, central to understanding categories and also how we are able to navigate through our lives. I am interested how "we" (an entity that is inevitably personalised) can produce a depersonalised representation of reality? If you mean a commonly agreed upon representation surely we personalise this?

@ Christine,

I am not aware of the literature you listed, so thank you.

@ Stephan Gruner,

Your comment,

Funny enough, our very notion of "reality" itself is already a product of classification --- otherwise we could not even distinguish between reality and dreams, between reality and fictive literature, etc., such as very young children: for the very young children everything is equally reality (including dreams and grandmother's fairy-tales) because they have not yet consciously developed a classifying notion of "reality".

------end quote

suggests that what appears real to very young children becomes unreal to them when they grow up. In the same sense I tend to think that what appears real to an intelligent normal grown up person in his day to day life becomes unreal to him when he succeeds in perceiving the Absolute truth (ultimate reality).

Paul you mention critical realism as one of your interests. I imagine you are aware of the notion of reality as a 'laminated system'. There's a great discussion by Bhaskar on this, in the Foreword to the book 'Studying Organizations Using Critical Realism: A Practical Guide', edited by Edwards, Paul K., O'Mahoney, J. and Vincent, S. Published by the O.U.P. in 2014.

Bhaskar attributes the term 'lamiated system' to Collier (1989). '..to mark the irreducibility of the mechanisms at the levels specified.' (p.x). I won't reproduce the rest of the discussion, here, but I recommend it to you.

Cheers,

Christine

Many thanks for this Christine. I know of this but I cannot say I know it. I will have to read as you suggested. Thank you. Does it make sense for me to ask whether Bhaskar meant that the irreducibility of mechanisms was a perceptual or veridical irreducibility?

Hi Paul, this is a quick off the top of my head answer. I think the answer is both. As I understand it the actual world is an open system. Within this there are what Lawson (see the Archer et al edited critical realism essential readings, Routledge, 1998, see Chapter 6) called demi-regs. It's all fascinating - and useful-  stuff.

Thank you Christine, you have given me a lot to think about and read!

Christine, given that we have been exchanging a couple of comments, I looked up your Notts U page. I wondered if you had any specific interest in the social responsibility of marketing research firms/agencies?

Hi Paul, my interests encompass all organisational forms, but I have practitioner expertise of marketing research from my former career. Perhaps you might want to contact me using the messaging service on this site. Best, Christine

Dear Christine, I have never used RGs messaging service (what an admission) can you instruct me? The reason I asked about market research ethics is that I am getting a book proposal together at the moment for an edited book on quantitative marketing research and I am looking for an author to write about ethics associated with contemporary MR ethics. Are you interested?

Thank you very much for considering me as a potential author, Paul. I'm not sure why MR ethics should be any different to any other spheres ;-)

Messaging on here: top bar, two icons to the left of the little photo of you, there is an envelope icon. But I'm going to email you. Regards, Christine

Bowker and Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences, for a social perspective. http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sorting-things-out

Thank you Annamarie.

Hi Paul,

I'm not sure if I understand your problem correctly but I highly recommend the following. 

The Character Concept in Evolutionary Biology

by Günter P. Wagner (Editor)

 Let  me offer you three paragraphs from my book "Existence and Ephemerality" (Amazon/Kindle)

 47. ... let us introduce the basic ontological framework which we use in this book. We consider appropriate to divide all that can be perceived, felt, or thought about into three ontological categories or classes. These three classes, also called worlds, are: (1) the class of physical entities, (2) the class of mental entities, and (3) the class of abstract entities. Natural phenomena, such as stones, rivers, and trees, belong to the class of physical entities: therefore, to the physical world, which we label with W1. Mental entities are also natural phenomena, which emerge from the physical world, but they are a new kind of entities and they constitute a new ontological space of mental states, such as desire, pain, love, and anger; we label this space with W2. The space of abstract entities contains numbers and theories, languages, symphonies and institutions, as well as all forms created by the human mind; we label this space with W3.

 48. A separation between matter and form brings certain difficulties, but it allows a more precise discourse, so that it must be done. For example, a desk conceived of as a piece of wood belongs to the physical world (W1); but conceived of as a form (of desk) in the functional and aesthetic sense, it is a creation of the mind (W2) and belongs to the world of abstract entities (W3). The same holds for all human creations: what makes them creations are specific forms that the creative activity of the human mind imposes no the matter. In the proposed ontological framework, works of art are forms (abstract entities) created by the human mind (W2), and they belong to W3. Works of art are forms which are made perceptible and effective by their instantiation by entities of the physical world W1. These instantiations then make an impact on the human perceptive system and, in this way, they produce mental states, which belong to W2. Every specific record and performance (of a play or a song) is an instance of a unique form. An entity from W3 (a song) can have many instantiations in W1 and it can create many mental states in W2. The forms we speak about here are not Plato's forms. Our forms are abstract entities created by the human mind; Plato's forms are not created: they are the primordial reality, everlasting (eternal) and changeless, according to which the phenomenal reality (world) has been created as the ephemeral image of this eternal reality.

49. A three-world ontological framework of the kind we proposed above was promoted by Karl Popper (1992, 105), but his discourse is not precise enough. We assume that the three worlds do not mutually overlap (as Popper's do), nor are entities from one world ontologically reducible to the entities of the other world. This framework has difficulties with the relationships between the three worlds, which we cannot deal with here. But in spite of these difficulties, we consider this basic ontological framework the most appropriate because it facilitates a precise discourse about notoriously elusive issues of existence and reality. In brief, physical entities, mental entities (states), and abstract entities all exist and they are real, but they belong to different spaces of existence and their realities are of different kind.

"It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All dynamical action, or action of brute force, physical or psychical, either takes place between two subjects (whether they react equally upon each other, or one is agent and the other patient, entirely or partially) or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs.

But by “semiosis” I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a coöperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs."

~Peirce, 

http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/semiosis

Reality - that which is sampled. The act of sampling (quantisation) can be considered an act of classification. Most classification is derived from our conscious model which is in turn derived from sensors which sample our world. The conscious model performs interpolation  and data/sensor fusion to create the illusion that the model is continuous.  The subsequent classification is therefore not from reality but from our models of reality. Classification is an process which reduces continuous change to discrete objects.

(Books on signal processing and quantum mechanics may be of interest at this point)

The problem of classifying reality has to do with the problem of language; the problem of language has to do with the peculiar way of knowing of humans; and in the end both the problem of language and knowing has to do with original conception of what the reality of humans in the world is. Human subjects speak because they have something to say; they say because they define themselves before the circumstance they are in at any moment. And this is possible because human subjects a able to know in the peculiar and exclusive way of knowing, the symbolic representation of the thing apprehended.

Human subjects must do something in the circumstance they are in order to survive in this world (Ortega y Gasset). The only means a human subject has to survive in the circumstance he is in at any moment is his senses, intellect and imagination (Kant). Human subjects are not determined to act in a particular way. They are free. It is their imagination and their intellect the most immediate means they can use to overcome their circumstance. So the first they do is to apprehend their circumstance and the world surrounding them through their senses (aísthesis, Aristotle) and immediately to structure the world surrounding them (saying, Ortega y Gasset, Martínez del Castillo). When they structure the world surrounging them they define themselves before that circumstance, that is, they say. With this human subjects are absolute, that is, creative, because they are free. But to say something, human subjects need a particular language. Human subjects must go out of themselves and find the other, giving for granted that his interlocutor, the "You", has the same capacity to speak as he himself has. Both the "you" and the "I" create diá-logos, that is, language. In this sense human subjects, who are creative, absolute becuase they are free, make themselves historical, that is contingent, and have to make themselves in history (Coseriu). Any human being come into this world must make himself in participlation with others in a speech community.

And now the problem arises. What is reality? Does it exist outside the human conscience? Real things do not exist outside the human conscience as Whorf 1956 would say. Reality is created in the human conscience. It is the relationship between the thing conceived and the so-called things in the world. That is, it is the connection of the internal logos (Plato-Aristotle, Ortega y Gasset, Coseriu, Martínez del Castillo) and the things apprehended throuhg their senses. This has the following implications. First, reality is known only through the human way of knowing (the symbolic representation of the things apprehended). Second, reality is only known by means of language and in particular of a language. Third, reality is only knwon individually, in the conscience of the knowing, saying and speaking subject. Fourth, the speaking subject, in as much as he has to survive in his circumstance and chooses how to overcome it since he is free, has particular interests chosen by him. And fith, the individual speaking subject, in as much as he has made himself in history in a speech community, bears with him many beliefs acquired from the common in his speech community thus biasing their way of conceiving things in the real (Ortega y Gasset, Martínez del Castillo).

Language does not create things, realtiy, but delimits things, that is, it attributes to the things selected, both in what they are and in the extension or form they may have, the condition of being. Things then start existing when they are selected, apprehended, delimited, given an essence, related to other things known, given a name, determined and made real by the individual speaking, saying and knowing subject (Martínez del Castillo 2004; Martínez del Castillo 2015).

So the answer to the question if reality can be classified is to be answered with another question, which reality? As a matter of fact all physical and natural sciences make scientific classifications of reality. And all speaking, saying and knowing subjects classify reality to their convenience  in every circumstance and at any moment.

Article International Journal of Language and Linguistics The meanin...

Article International Journal of Language and Linguistics The proces...

Article International Journal of Language and Linguistics Fixing the...

Article International Journal of Language and Linguistics The Speech...

Article International Journal of Language and Linguistics Determinin...

Article International Journal of Language and Linguistics The Activi...

Article Meaning and Language

Article International Journal of Language and Linguistics Meaning, What is It

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Article International Journal of Language and Linguistics Categories...

again, Peirce is neglected...

"The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality."

It was a serious suggestion to read books from other disciplines:

A group that have been wrestling with the task of classifying reality are the physicists. 

Their deliberations and struggles show how elusive knowledge can be.

My book of choice (skip the maths): Understanding Quantum Mechanics by Roland Omnes (Princetown University Press). This attempts to provide an interpretation to a normally mathematical analysis. The limitations of pinning down fundamental reality are clear and essential relationship between the empirical (observables) and theory are well dissected. Try it.