From Concepts and Reasoning

1
From Concepts and Reasoning to
Classifications, Standards, Information
Infrastructures
2
From Funes the Memorious

• We, in a glance, perceive three wine glasses on
  the table
• Funes saw all the shoots, clusters, and grapes of
  the vine. He
• remembered the shapes of the clouds in the south
  at dawn on
• the 30th of April of 1882, and he could compare
  them in his
• recollection with the marbled grain in the design
  of a leather-
• bound book which he had seen only once, and with
  the lines
• in the spray which an oar raised in the Rio Negro
  on the eve
• of the battle of the Quebracho ...

3
From Funes the Memorious

• These recollections were not simple each
  visual
• image was linked to muscular sensations, thermal
• sensations, etc. He could reconstruct all his
  dreams,
• all his fancies. Two or three times he had
• reconstructed an entire day. He told me I have
  more
• memories in myself alone than all men have had
• since the world was a world. And again My dreams
• are like your vigils. And again, toward dawn My
• memory, sir, is like a garbage disposal.

4
From Funes the Memorious

• The two projects I have indicated (an infinite
  vocabulary
• for the natural series of numbers, and a usable
  mental
• catalogue of all the images of memory) are
  lacking in sense,
• but they reveal a certain stammering greatness.
  They allow us
• to make out dimly, or to infer, the dizzying
  world of Funes.
• He was, let us not forget, almost incapable of
  general,
• platonic ideas. ...

5
From Funes the Memorious

• ... It was not only difficult for him to
  understand that the
• generic term dog embraced so many unlike
  specimens of
• differing sizes and different forms he was
  disturbed by the
• fact that a dog at three-fourteen (seen in
  profile) should have
• the same name as the dog at three-fifteen (seen
  from the
• front). His own face in the mirror, his own
  hands, surprised
• him on every occasion. ...

6
Classical Categories

• Classical categories (also Aristotelian,
  all-or-none, rule governed)
• Examples grandmother mother of a parent
• even number integer exactly divisible by 2
• bachelor unmarried man

7
Classical Categories vs. Family Resemblance
Categories

• Family Resemblance Categories (prototypes best
  example of a kind)

8
(No Transcript)
9
Classical Categories

• Aristotelian, all-or-none, rule-governed
• Examples
• even numberinteger divisible by 2
• grandmothermother of a parent
• Theory concepts are definitions in the head to
  sort out, map concepts in relation to each other
• list of properties common to all the members of a
  category (necessary conditions) and
• list of properties common only the members of
  that category (sufficient conditions)

10
Prototypical Categories

• Prototypes
• There are no common properties different
  properties are shared by different subsets
• Therefore, a family has a prototype (prototype
  chair, prototype bird, prototype bachelor)
• Unclear cases Is avocado vegetable or fruit?

11
(No Transcript)
12
(No Transcript)
13
Bachelor?

• Arthur has been living happily with Alice for the
  last five years. They have a two year old
  daughter and have never officially married.
• Bruce was going to be drafted, so he arranged
  with his friend Barbara to have a justice of the
  peace marry them so he would be exempt. They have
  never lived together. He dates a number of women,
  and plans to have the marriage annulled as soon
  as he finds someone he wants to marry.
• Charlie is 17 years old. He lives at home with
  his parents and is in high school.
• David is 17 years old. He left home at l3,
  started a small business, and is now a successful
  young entrepreneur leading a playboys lifestyle
  in his penthouse apartment.
• Eli and Edgar are homosexual lovers who have been
  living together for many years.
• Faisal is allowed by the law of his native Abu
  Dhabi to have three wives. He currently has two
  and is interested in meeting another potential
  fiancée.
• Father Gregory is the bishop of the Catholic
  cathedral at Groton upon Thames.

14
(No Transcript)
15
(No Transcript)
16
(No Transcript)
17
Evidence for the psychological reality of family
resemblance categories

• Psychological reality of prototypes is witnessed
  by studies
• People agree on goodness of membership (bird
  robinhigher score, chickenlower score)
• People classify prototypical members faster (is a
  robin a bird?)
• Kids use word with prototypical exemplars first

18
So are Classical Categories fictitious?

• The mind contains both family resemblance
  categories and classical categories
• Fuzzy and all-or-none judgments coexist in
  peoples minds
• 7 is prototypical odd number (447 not so good)
• Mother is a good example of female waitress,
  comedienne, professor not so good

19
(No Transcript)
20
(No Transcript)
21
(No Transcript)
22
Sources used

• Steven Pinker (MIT) lecture slides, Concepts
  and Reasoning
• Bowker Star Sorting Things Out (MIT Press,
  1999)

23

• The myriad of classifications and standards that
  surround
• and support the modern world, however, often
  blind
• people to the importance of the other category
  as
• constitutive of the whole social architecture
  (Derrida 1980,
• quoted in BS 1999, 301)

24
Concepts

• Communities of practice
• Processes of naturalization and categorization
• Boundary objects enable production and
  maintenance to achieve coherence across
  intersecting communities (mathematics, medicine,
  statistics for scholarly communication laws of
  nature, scientific objectivity and claims to
  truth are completely naturalized and become
  standards in the Western world)

25
Concepts

• Categorization work category of the ordinary and
  other category
• Borderlands, cyborgs, the ethics of ambiguity
• Naturalization is powerful because it defines the
  boundary of ordinary / other (social control
  hegemonic thought associated with the cultural
  leadership of one group, exclusion of other
  perspectives)
• ethical and political understanding of
  information systems whose categories attach to
  individuals

26
Concepts

• Need to manage multiplicity of naturalizations
  (in concrete representation through information
  technologies)
• Tension bw unified and universally applicable
  information system and chimera-like, distributed,
  boundary-object driven information system fully
  respectful of the needs of the variety of
  communities it serves (tension of localglobal)
• combine bureaucratic tools for classification and
  local variation (e.g. hospital information system)

27

• We live in a classification society. (Bowker
  Star 1999, 323)
• Classifications are powerful technologies when
  embedded
• in working infrastructures
• Rethinking the nature of information systems
  (enabling work practice) by rethinking
  categorization tools