On Catagories

Day 36

“Ambushed by your categories again? Most categories are arbitrary, though I admit people do tend to find them reassuring.” - Cordelia Vorkosigan, from Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold

We are a people that tend to like categories, to make groups and put things into nice little boxes where we easily get at them. Things are gems, and some gems are happy, some are nice, and others are bold, blue, or borrowed. These categories can overlap as when a lake is cooling, blue, and beautiful. We build things up into categories, such as celestial object, then we break those categories down again into star, planet, nebula, galaxy, or black hole. Over and over again it seems we have systems for putting things in the right place, and we we turn right back around and argue that our categories are wrong. Categories are useful for sure – the first thing we do when we see something that is new to us, when we encounter a new gem in the world, is to try and fit it into some sort of category, to try to put a name on it that is made up of the names of things which we knew before we knew the new thing. We can be said to stand on the shoulders of giants, the tip of the pyramid, and thus gain the ability to see far and wade across the world, to see how everything fits together.

We know that everything is absolutely unique, but it turns out that uniqueness often doesn't get us anywhere. If every chemical reaction was considered unique and irreplaceable, then we would find it almost impossible to create a useful science of chemistry, a method for making chemicals and for categorizing them. The closer we look at thing the more special it it apparent that they are, and yet we tend to wand to work with things using our hands, even beautiful things, and not just gaze upon them with our eyes. Each brushstroke in a picture can never be replicated again, if only in time and considering the unique parts that compose the paint, but it can be replicated in a way that is close enough to be indistinguishable to us. Thus, the fact that things are vague is not always a hindrance to knowledge, but is often what gives us the ability to, as it were, get a handle on things. When we put things into categories we are better able to deal with them, because the fit in the world can be good enough. After all, the answer to Zeno's paradox does not lie in the mathematics of zero point nine repeating equaling one, or in a logical fallacy where the arrow overtakes the target, but rather in a simple idea – That Zeno's paradox is right: The arrow never, in fact, touches the target - It just gets close enough to effect it.

However, sometimes close enough is not good enough after all. When we place something in a category, we also simplify it. We make the complexities of the gem disappear, so that we only need to deal with a limited degree of angles, a limited amount of facets, or an incomplete incarnation of the gem. We frequently place things into categories which do not tell the whole story. This is why something can be in many categories at once, because gems are complex. Sometimes a category doesn't matter, for example that the lake is 'beautiful'. Sometime that category, that version of the lake, is the most important one – it depends on what we are trying to do, to communicate, to see. It depends on what type of world, and what direction the concerns of logic are placed in. It can depend on what emotion we are in as well – a beautiful lake may seem calming when we are angry, or stifling when we feel stuck. We may also entirely misinterpret a thing and place it in a category which it is not – and this can be a very unfortunate thing, to be tripped up by our own assumptions.

To place something in a category is to place it in a certain relation to others things in the world which it is like, things that are in the same category as itself, and in relation to things which are not like it – to other categories in the world. Thus, we have the concepts of opposites, metaphors, and the like. To place something in a category is to know – or believe you know – something about it. It doesn't require that you know the thing entire, only that you know a part of the thing. And, of course, you could be wrong. One of the issues that arise when we try to place the world into categories is determining if you made those categories up, or if those categories arose from the things, the gems, themselves. In other words, rather, the category that a thing is in is arbitrary or natural.

To place something in a category is to pretend that you know something about it, and thus it becomes known to you as a thing in that category, until you decide that you were wrong to place it in that category. If it turns out that you were wrong to place it in that category, then either its placement in that category was arbitrary and just an accident of you and the decision that you've made, or it is the result of you misunderstanding the natural signs. In the first case, if you fix the problem and place the thing into the correct category, then whats to say that that category is the correct one after all? If it is arbitrary, what's to stop it from changing later? On the other hand, if you place in a correct, natural , category, then whats to stop you from making another mistake about placement? It could after all be that the natural category is only partially correct, and that a new and more correct category will be revealed later. Anyways, this issue of a natural or a arbitrary category is not likely to be solved, and can't obviously be certainly known in any easy fashion. There is always another option if arbitrary, and always the possibility of another option if the category is natural, or of a mistake. This is just to say that since for something to be in a category is also for something to be in the world, we don't know that world is effectively correct or not until either the world is complete, or the world has been escaped somehow. That I have mentioned here is only the tip of the iceberg I think, a very brief description of some possible arguments that we might have over the question of natural categories. The history of argument over natural categories is very long, and doesn't appear like to be settled anytime soon.

However, that certain facts about categories are unclear is not exactly a weakness of categories. We use categories, we use vague groupings, because they are useful. The truth of the matter in reality, like all truths, is not yet clear to us. And yet, there seems to often be something beyond mere 'usefulness' about categories. The view of certain categories being arbitrary seems to suggest something true to us, just as the view of certain categories being natural and baked-in to the world seems to hold some strength.

Some categories seem to be definitively arbitrary, such as race, beauty, or dangerous. Race as a category has a substantial literature in the modern age which decries the existence of such a thing. 'Beauty is the eye of the beholder' seems to be generally correct in many cases. Every action we ever undertake is ultimately dangerous, but we don't often feel that the level of danger is high enough to worry about or take notice of. Differences between individual people, between languages, and between cultures can all work at placing the same thing – such as a certain color – into different categories. Wither something is bright, hopeful, or alive can often comes down to a matter of opinion, or of arguing over definition. That is to say, our lives often demonstrate arbitrary decisions, arbitrary understanding, and the ability to understand why things might appear different if you looked at them in another way.

Yet, we definitely get the sense that some things are not arbitrary. Arbitrariness usually seems to come down to the category that a thing goes into, or is referred to with, as being due to some accident or some decision. Those two are not the same. When arbitrariness is due to a decision, then what category something is in is due to some action by me, some way that the world is constructed or effected so that the gem which is the thing which is new to me, is placed into a certain category. It is in such and such a category because I placed it here, the me that is the free willed decision maker, or the me which is the world. When it is placed into a certain category due to my free will, then the origin of that placement into a certain category goes beyond my sight – although it doesn't, perhaps, give me some cues about my free will. When it is the world which places the item into a certain category, then that seems to us to be either some sort of mistake, or a non-mistake. If it is a mistake, then the category that a thing is placed in is not for some reason or another, or not at least one that we can envision, but rather due to some facts of the world, facts which could have been otherwise. If something is due to a mistake, then it could have been otherwise. If something is due to a non-mistake, then perhaps it could also have been otherwise – but it could not have been otherwise alone.

We receive new stimuli, which takes form of new gems which enter the world, These new gems we do not understand at first, we are surprised by them, but later we begin to understand them. The mosre closely we look at any gem the more apparent its uniqueness is, but before we look closely at a gem we look, as it is, in a no-so-close fashion. That is, a gem is vague to us before it is crystal clear, and vagueness is where categorization comes in. We understand there to be something isn't the world, some change in the way that things are. Then, we place that thing into a category so that we can deal with it for now, and so that we can get a handle on it. As we learn more and more about that gem, we learn that the gem can be placed into more categories and that the gem has more connections to things. That the gem looks different in different logical fields, and yet is a gem not a certain type of logic, so that it as we observe a thing as it is in many ways, by binding it to the world and to us more closely, we begin to understand it more and see more facets of the gem.

As we do this, it first tends to happen that we observe that the gem has a force to it – it demands to be such and such a thing, in such and such a way. A rock, upon first being thrown at us and striking us in the face, seems to have a force which cannot be denied. It is only later that we learn that it can be denied, ignored, or understood in a different way. The same thing can happen with a whole category fo things, which after all as a thing is also a gem. Thus, pain is first this thing that our nerves scream at us, then something bad, then something possibly good which can teach a lesson, then a nerve signal agains but in a different way, and so on and one. We start out with love, and then we give it different names like platonic love or eros, as we become aware if its many facets and start to distinguish them. It appears to us that we can determine to a great extent what something is understood to be, how to interpret it, and how it relates to the things – to a great extent, but not, perhaps, to a complete extent.

We could perhaps be wrong. After all, this could be the matrix, we could be dreaming, and we would be in a solipsistic world, and so on and on – yet we started this project by believing in everything. So, it seems that we should also try and believe in our own first impressions. Those impressions are obviously suspect, though they have been argued to be right and proper by many people. Why is that? We might be first tempted to say that is because we feel that those impressions, those beliefs that a thing is in a natural category, are reassuring. They give us a structure to stand upon and to build the world upon, so that we don't fall into the void. The question is, is that structure merely comforting, or it is necessary?

Take a certain sort of input, the types of gem that the gem in the world which we categorize as fish. Then take another sort of gem, the type of gem which we categorize as memories. It appears to us that fish =/= memories. After all, a fish is something you can hold in your hand, that swims in the water, and you can eat. A memory is something intangible, that lies somewhere in your mind, and which will not feed your stomach. Yet, we can remember eating a fish, and when we see a fish we remember other fish. After all, we eat fish after we hunt fish, and it turns out that hunting fish is much more effective if we remember things about fish. Thus, the gems of fish and the gems of memories seems to be linked in a certain way, and yet not be the same thing. If fish=memories, then we might get mightily confused and starve to death with picture of fish in our heads, or find some fish we catch today, but be not now what they were tomorrow. This is, perhaps, not the best example but it is a example – that certain stimuli, certain parts of the world, seem to have some difference between them, and which most seem to best fit together in certain ways. We might also talk about the category of things which want to eat us, and things which don't want to eat us – mix those two up at the wrong time, and you won't be around to regret it. While the particular natural category that a things might be placed in seems to be arbitrary, there also seems to be some relation between things which is not, entirely, accidental. So, we have gems which can be, arbitrarily and non-accidentally, placed into categories.

That is to say that what things are known to be is, arbitrarily, due to the world and not the bare things themselves. Yet, the world seems to be this strange mix of arbitrary choices that we make out of our own free will, as well as filled with forces and powers which direct the world to be in a certain fashion. It might be the case that the world could be constructed differently, but it is not clear to what extant that is the case. Or in other words – just how strange could a possible world be?

In my mind this is a question that we have no great hope of answering until we run into some sort of alien, at at least understand the other life forms on our own planet better. That, though, might have to wait until we understand ourselves better to really get started upon. There may indeed be non-arbitrary natural categories, but I think that until we understand our own choices, our own arbitrariness, we'll have a difficult time knowing what those non-arbitrary natural categories might be. Arbitrary and non-accidental categories seem to be due to factors having to do with the limits of the possible world, which is to do with questions about us, who and what we are, and what something really is in reality. Of course, we don't have all the answers to that yet, and so placing things into categories still tends to be a lot of guesswork. One question that we can get started on which is in that general direction though, is a question about us. If I am a part of the world, then I am a gem, a multi-faceted and complex gem. That is to say, a large mind and a collection of logical fields – of gems, which is a sort of category. It seems reasonable to imagine that what I think myself to be, the self that is a part of the world and not just my free will, is such a thing, at least. So there is a category of things, an area of the world, which is me- vague as I may be. So - how natural am I?