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Re: Fwd: [xmca] A Failure of Communication

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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