I sometimes use Formal Concept Analysis to describe, how people use implicit ordering (sub/super-concepts) of their concepts. Disjunct and exhaustive "categories" (as a binary relation between subjects and attributes, S "has" A) are a prerequisite to detect graphical "scales" among concepts.

Ulrich,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Formal Concept Analysis is a totally new area to me, as I am not a mathematician. From looking on the internet I see that there are international conferences devoted to this and to Concept Lattices. It also appears that FCA is a computer related area of study and application area for its knowledge. There also appear to be software programs available to conduct FCA. Henning, H. J. is cited as an authority in the application of FCA to psychology, the area I am most interested in.

I wonder if you can help me by pointing me in the direction of resources (books, academics etc) where I may learn more about FCA and towards its application to psychology and human behaviour?

I am interested in categorization because I think its a central idea in life world theory which states that our experiences, cognition and communication are founded on things taken for granted (assumptions) and these are the categories which order our experiences, cognition and communication and constitute the objects we experience, think of and communicate about . It is possible but challenging to reflect these taken for granted categories (and therefore the objects and their boundaries) because this hinders us in our everyday life proceeding with pragmatic solutions to match our biological, psychological and social needs. Kind of theoretical but I try at the moment to apply it to practical problems such as the transition to a sustainable society and how this is connected to the nature of everyday life.

I am very interested Johannes that you turn your thinking about categories to sustainability. Can you give me any more information about what you do?

Actually I am a biologist but the last years I was involved in a empirical social science project investigating the interface of biodiversity science and policy-making. During this time I came across social science theory, e.g. the life world theory and also constructivist social sciences. In Leipzig, Germany were I live their will be a conference on degrowth this fall with scientific contributions and also practitioners exploring alternative ways of living. So I started to think about how to contribute to this debate but I am currently doing this in my free time (its not a formal project or so).

Johannes, can you tell me more about: 1/ the biodiversity science and decision making project you were involved in, and 2/ life world theory? I have never heard of this theory.

I think categorization is a mental process. Our cognition guide us to categorize any event based on our past experience, values, environment and most importantly the state of mind at that point of time. Richard Thaler in 1980 while defining mental accounting highlighted how people categorize incomes based on the source. Similar classification can be done from different dimensions. There can be any unique rule for categorization which will be acceptable for all.