Re: Fwd: [xmca] A Failure of Communication

[Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>]

Very easy to bring me bak into the discussion, Larry!

Firstly, I want to say that the conception of the homo sapiens as a 
pigeon-holing creature is far from being the privilege of continental 
philosophy. Analytical philosophy and positivism assert that 
pigeon-holing is the gold standard if not the sole mode of human action. 
Continental philosophy on the other hand tends to see pigeon-holing as a 
kind of evil but ineradicable pathology of human society. But the 
problem for CHAT is more in combatting the analytical, or Anglo-American 
variety of homo pigeon holis.

Take that video by Katherine Slaney, and let's leave aside her own 
project to construct concepts as faux Wittgensteinism as rule-governed 
use of words, and review her survey of the Cog Sci version of the 
"psychology of concepts" which I am attending to in that article I sent 
you (http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/concepts-cognitivism.htm).

Slaney cuts this line of development in to (as I recall) 4 distinct 
types (already adopting the pigeon-holing approach herself): Classical 
Theory, Prototype, Exemplars and Theory-Theory. While each of these 
approaches brings important insights into understanding categorisation 
and has the potential to be developed into an aspect of a genuine 
psychology of concepts, this is not what the Cog Sci people do with it. 
Every one of these ideas is interpreted as a variation on one and the 
same action: abstract from the perception of the object a catalogue of 
its contingent attributes (or "features") and then make a verbal or 
visual definition of the object in terms of a set-theoretic formula. The 
theories differ only as follows.

   * the Classical presumes the existence in the head of a look-up
   table of uniquely definitive features, bringing verbal activity into
   play.
   * the Prototype presumes that there is an image of one individual
   similarity to which (defined by feature-by-feature comparison)
   determines membership of the set defining concept, which brings
   typicality into play.
   * the Exemplar presumes that there are many or several "prototypes"
   or exemplars, not just one, and membership of the set defining the
   concept is the union of all the atoms similar, by feature-by-feature
   comparison, to one exemplar which brings family resemblance into play.
   * the Theory-theory presumes that the list of features defining a
   set is drawn from a theory rather than being associated with the
   word alone, which brings context and subject's history into play.


Slaney is faithful here to her Cog Sci colleagues, but I think that fact 
that all these theorie are theories of categorisation is worthy of note. 
The most damning critique of this homo pigeon holis approach is possibly 
that of Robert Brandom, whom you brought to this list Larry (thank you), 
who points out, inter alia, that "differential response to stimuli" is 
something machines and even chemical substances are capable of. This is 
of course precisely the point for Cog Sci.

Andy
Larry Purss wrote:
> ... I want to bring Andy's voice back into the discussion
> with an insight he has made about *fuzzy boundaries*. In a paper he wrote
> [The Psychology of Concepts] he stated:
>
> The inability of subjects to provide consistent, stable and clear
> definitions replicating a systematic taxonomy, though, is not a problem of
> psychology. It is in the nature of *the concepts themselves*. Or I could
> say, the problem lies in the object, not the subject. As Gregory Murphy
> points out, it is well-known to lawmakers and those in the judiciary that
> it is impossible to frame a law that will not sooner or later run into
> ambiguities or self-contradiction, and as laws are subject to endless
> revision and interpretation, a time never comes when that ambiguity
> disappears. When lawmakers and judges set down the principle of justice
> that they intend, no amount of definition of terms, qualification and
> explanation can reliably represent their concept. Tests (Margolis &
> Laurence 1999: 444) involving novices and experts in the sciences showed
> that the concepts of experts were fuzzier than those who actually knew
> nothing about the topic; the more developed the concept, the fuzzier the
> boundaries. All this goes to show that there is more to any concept worthy
> of the name than can be set down in a few dead words. This is not a problem
> of psychology, it is *in the nature of concepts themselves*. Concepts are
> not pigeonholes and concepts which conformed to expectations of these
> researchers would be very poor concepts.
>
> What I found fascinating with this comment is that the more developed the
> concept the fuzzier the boundaries. This re-cognition is not a quality of
> our subjective psyche but is in the *nature* of the *concepts themselves*
>
> Chuck I'm not yet clear on why Andy sees the history of continental
> philosophy as merely *pigeon holing* [merely object categorization?] and
> not focused on solving projects within activity settings but that's my
> growing edge.
>
> Chuck, with that digression to draw attention to the Andy's insight  that
> with developing expertise *true* concepts become MORE ambiguous and MORE
> fuzzy around the boundary edges [in other words less able to be categorized
> or pigeeon holed into clear and definite object boundaries] I want to
> return to the thread of your answer to my questions. 


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