A theory of categorization is presented in which knowledge of causal relationships between category features is represented in terms of asymmetric and probabilistic causal mechanisms. According to causal‐model theory, objects are classified as category members to the extent they are likely to have been generated or produced by those mechanisms. The empirical results confirmed that participants rated exemplars good category members to the extent their features manifested the expectations that causal knowledge induces, such as correlations between feature pairs that are (...) directly connected by causal relationships. These expectations also included sensitivity to higher‐order feature interactions that emerge from the asymmetries inherent in causal relationships. Quantitative fits of causal‐model theory were superior to those obtained with extensions to traditional similarity‐based models that represent causal knowledge either as higher‐order relational features or “prior exemplars” stored in memory. (shrink)

First published in 1984, this is a study of categorization practices: how people categorize each other and their actions; how they describe, infer, and judge. The book presents a sociological analysis and description of practical activities and makes a cogent contribution to the study of how the moral order actually works in practical communicative contexts. Among the issues dealt with are: collectivity categorizations, the organization of lists and descriptions, moral attribution and inferences, and the relationship between standards of morality and (...) standards of rationality. (shrink)

Conceptualism is the view that at least some perceptual representation is conceptual. This paper considers a prominent recent argument against Conceptualism due to Ned Block. Block’s argument appeals to patterns of color representation in infants, alleging that infants exhibit categorical perception of color while failing to deploy concepts of color categories. Accordingly, the perceptual representation of color categories in infancy must be non-conceptual. This argument is distinctive insofar as it threatens not only the view that all perception is conceptual, but (...) also views that restrict the Conceptualist thesis to perceptual categorization. However, I contend that it fails at two stages. Block’s arguments for the perceptual representation of color categories in infancy, and against color concept deployment in infancy, are unpersuasive. Thus, Block has not vanquished Conceptualism. I draw out implications for debates about the perception-cognition border and for the question of whether explicit categorization occurs in perception. (shrink)

The representation of physics problems in relation to the organization of physics knowledge is investigated in experts and novices. Four experiments examine the existence of problem categories as a basis for representation; differences in the categories used by experts and novices; differences in the knowledge associated with the categories; and features in the problems that contribute to problem categorization and representation. Results from sorting tasks and protocols reveal that experts and novices begin their problem representations with specifiably different problem categories, (...) and completion of the representations depends on the knowledge associated with the categories. For, the experts initially abstract physics principles to approach and solve a problem representation, whereas novices base their representation and approaches on the problem's literal features. (shrink)

Though individual categorization or decision processes have been studied separately in many previous investigations, few studies have investigated how they interact by using a two-stage task of first categorizing and then deciding. To address this issue, we investigated a categorization-decision task in two experiments. In both, participants were shown six faces varying in width, first asked to categorize the faces, and then decide a course of action for each face. Each experiment was designed to include three groups, and for each (...) group, we manipulated the probabilistic contingencies between stimulus, category assignments, and decision consequences. For each group, each participant received three different sequences of category response, category feedback, decision response, and decision feedback. We found that participants were only partially responsive in the appropriate directions to the contingencies assigned to each group. Comparisons of results from different sequences provided evidence for empirical interference effects of categorization on decisions. The empirical interference effect is defined as the difference between the probability of taking a hostile action in decision-alone conditions and the total probability of taking a hostile action in categorization-decision conditions. To test competing accounts for multiple empirical results, including two-stage choice probabilities and empirical interference effects, we compared a quantum cognition model versus a two-stage exemplar categorization model at both aggregate and individual levels. Using a Bayesian information criterion, we found that the quantum model provided an overall better model fit than the exemplar model. Although both models predicted empirical interference effects, the exemplar model was able to generate probabilistic deviation by incorporating category information of the first stage into the feature representation of the subsequent decision stage, while the quantum model produced interference effect by superposition, measurement, and quantum entanglement. (shrink)

The article explores digital literacy practices in children’s everyday lives at Norwegian preschools and some of the ways in which young children appropriate basic digital literacy skills through guided participation in situated activities. Building on an ethnomethodological perspective, the analyses are based on 70 hours of video recordings documenting the activities in which 45 children, aged 5-6, and eight preschool teachers participated. Through the detailed analysis of two categorization activities – identifying geometrical shapes and identifying feelings/thoughts –the use of digital (...) tools in the social organization of the activities are examined. The article finds that children’s digital literacy activities encompass visual, verbal, audio and embodied competencies that are made relevant, and thus accessible for learning, in interaction between the children and between the adults and children in the form of norms and guidelines for what constitutes correct categorizations (geometrical shapes and green and red feelings) in the situated activities, and that are appropriated and actualized by the children in interaction with their peers. The findings also show how the categorization practices in preschools deal with symbols and labels in ways that create and sustain socially organized ways of knowing, seeing and acting upon the world. Digital media are embedded in routines, procedures and socialites that are part of these categorization practices; they are part of how children are instructed to experience, interpret, understand and act in the world. Moreover, the different technologies created different conditions for the children’s participation. It was found that peer interaction was part of the digital literacy activities that involved such mobile technologies as smartphones and tablets, while when using non-mobile technologies, e.g. smartboards, the activities were structured more as ‘classic’ classroom activities, primarily guided by the teacher and the didactic material presented through the smartboard. (shrink)

In this chapter, I critically examine two of the main approaches to colour categorization in cognitive science: the perceptual salience theory and linguistic relativism. I then turn to reviewing several decades of psychological research on colour categorical perception (CP). A careful assessment of relevant findings suggests that most of the experimental effects that have been understood in terms of CP actually fall on the cognition side of the perception-cognition divide: they are effects of colour language, for example, on memory or (...) decision-making. (shrink)

In Categorisation in Indian Philosophy: Thinking Inside the Box, Jessica Frazier has brought together an impressive array of scholars who have contributed nine essays, plus an introductory and concluding chapter, both written by her, which collectively provide a most fruitful perspective for examining classical South Asian traditions of thought. Creating categorial frameworks was certainly a prolific activity among the ancient and medieval authors of the darśanas, and indeed these authors drew heavily from pre-scholastic texts and language to build their systems. (...) Frazier in her concluding chapter gives a helpful synopsis of the various roles played by categories in Indian philosophies, classifying them as.. (shrink)

Recent studies have shown that same‐race (SR) faces are processed more holistically than other‐race (OR) faces, a difference that may underlie the greater difficulty at recognizing OR than SR faces (the “other‐race effect”). This article provides original evidence suggesting that the holistic processing of faces may be sensitive to the observers' racial categorization of the face. In Experiment 1, Caucasian participants performed a face‐composite task with Caucasian faces, Asian faces, and racially ambiguous morphed face stimuli. Identical morphed face stimuli were (...) processed more holistically when categorized as SR than as OR faces. Experiment 2 further suggests that this finding was not underlain by strategic or training effects. Overall, these results support the view that one's categorization of a face as belonging to the same or another race plays a critical role in the holistic processing of this face. (shrink)

I discuss Edouard Machery’s claim that philosophers and psychologists when using the term ‘concept’ are really theorizing about different things. This view is not new, but it has never been developed or defended in detail. Once spelled out, we can see that Machery is right that the psychological literature uses a different notion of concept. However, Machery fails to acknowledge that the two notions are not only compatible but complementary. This fits more with the traditional view according to which philosophers (...) and psychologists are merely interested in different aspects of the same kind. The main aim of this paper is then to show how precisely the two notions of ‘concept’ relate. Distinguishing them resolves the long-standing debate on whether concepts can be prototypes and allows me to formulate success conditions of a theory of categorization that are independent of the success conditions of a theory of concepts. (shrink)

Categorization and memory for specific items are fundamental processes that allow us to apply knowledge to novel stimuli. This study directly compares categorization and memory using delay match to category (DMC) and delay match to sample (DMS) tasks. In DMC participants view and categorize a stimulus, maintain the category across a delay, and at the probe phase view another stimulus and indicate whether it is in the same category or not. In DMS, a standard item working memory task, participants encode (...) and maintain a specific individual item, and at probe decide if the stimulus is an exact match or not. Constrained Principal Components Analysis was used to identify and compare activity within neural networks associated with these tasks, and we relate these networks to those that have been identified with resting state-fMRI. We found that two frontoparietal networks of particular interest. The first network included regions associated with the dorsal attention network and frontoparietal salience network; this network showed patterns of activity consistent with a role in rapid orienting to and processing of complex stimuli. The second uniquely involved regions of the frontoparietal central executive network; this network responded more slowly following each stimulus and showed a pattern of activity consistent with a general role in role in decision-making across tasks. Additional components were identified that were associated with visual, somatomotor and default mode networks. (shrink)

During the course of this article, we examine the use of membership categorisation practices by a high-profile celebrity public social media account that has been understood to generate interest, attention and controversy across the UK media ecology. We utilise a data set of harvested tweets gathered from a high-profile public ‘celebrity antagonist’ in order to systematically identify types of antagonistic formulation that have generated different levels of interest within the social media community and beyond. Drawing from classic ethnomethodological studies of (...) banner headlines and other means of generating public interest and ‘making sense’, we respecify high-profile antagonistic tweets as category formulations that exhibit particular and regular membership category features that are reflexively bound to potential antagonistic readings, interest and controversy. In conclusion, we consider how such formulations may be understood to represent resources that constitute ignition points within antagonistic flows of communication and information that can be metaphorically understood as ‘digital wildfires’. (shrink)

A strong claim, often found in the literature, is that it is impossible to categorize perceptual properties unless one possesses the related concepts. The evidence from visual perception reviewed in this paper however questions this claim: Concepts, at least canonically defined, are ill-suited to explain perceptual categorisation, which is a fast, and crucially a largely involuntary and unconscious process, which rests on quickly updated probabilistic calculations. I suggest here that perceptual categorisation rests on non-conceptual sorting principles. This changes the claim (...) that categorisation cannot occur without concepts: It does not preclude that the concepts remain necessary for categorisation, but opens the possibility that they are not and that those sorting principles could be here sufficient. (shrink)

Although recent work has emphasised the importance of naïve theories to categorisation, there has been little work examining the grain of analysis at which causal information normally influences categorisation. That level of analysis may often go unappreciated because of an “illusion of explanatory depth”, in which people think they mentally represent causal explanatory relations in far more detail than they really do. Naïve theories therefore might seem to be irrelevant to categorisation, or perhaps they only involve noting the presence of (...) unknown essences. I argue instead that adults and children alike effectively track high-level causal patterns, often outside awareness, and that this ability is essential to categorisation. Three examples of such pattern-tracking are described. The shallowness of our explanatory understandings may be further supported by a reliance on the division of cognitive labour that occurs in all cultures, a reliance that arises from well-developed abilities to cluster knowledge in the minds of others. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists widely hold that artifact categories – just like biological categories – are individuated by their function. But recent empirical findings in psychology question this assumption. My proposal is to suggest a way of squaring these findings with the central role function should play in individuating artifact categories. But in order to do so, we need to give up on the standard account of artifact function, according to which function is fixed by design, and replace it with a (...) more context-sensitive account, according to which function attributions depend on the explanatory context and, as a result, categorization also depends on the explanatory context, just as the empirical findings from psychology suggest. I argue that the recent ‘modal theory of function’ originally proposed to explain biological function, is capable of providing such an account of artifact function. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate and describe the content in school rules by developing a category system of school rules, and thus making the logic behind different types of rules in school explicit. Data were derived from an ethnographic study conducted in two primary schools in Sweden. In order to analyse the data, grounded theory methodology was adapted. The analysis resulted in a category system of school rules, containing the following main categories: (a) relational rules, (b) structuring (...) rules, (c), protecting rules, (d), personal rules and (e) etiquette rules. In the light of this categorisation, more consciously pedagogical and professional work with rules can be conducted. The category system can counteract vagueness and unreasonableness, as well as highlighting the content, logic and functions of different school rules. (shrink)

We argue that there are neither scientific nor social reasons to require gathering ethno-racial data, as defined in the US legal regulations if researchers have no prior hypotheses as to how to connect this type of categorisation of human participants of clinical trials with any mechanisms that could explain alleged interracial health differences and guide treatment choice. Although we agree with the normative perspective embedded in the calls for the fair selection of participants for biomedical research, we demonstrate that current (...) attempts to provide and elucidate the criteria for the fair selection of participants, in particular, taking into account ethno-racial categories, overlook important epistemic and normative challenges to implement the results of such race-sorting requirements. We discuss existing arguments for and against gathering ethno-racial statistics for biomedical research and present a new one that refers to the assumption that prediction is epistemically superior to accommodation. We also underline the importance of closer interaction between research ethics and the methodology of biomedicine in the case of population stratifications for medical research, which requires weighing non-epistemic values with methodological constraints. (shrink)

The recent resurgence of Sacks’ work on membership categorization has highlighted the growing analytic interest in how members’ social category orientations operate at multiple levels of interactional work. One of the outcomes of this, highlighted in Stokoe’s discussion, is the re-emergence of the question of whether membership categorization analysis has been, is, or can be an approach in its own right. In this brief discussion I consider the emergence of ‘MCA’ as an approach to the study of social-knowledge-in-action, the relationship (...) between MCA and contemporary directions in conversation analysis, and finally the future of MCA as it continues to develop. (shrink)

Flexible categorization clearly requires an adaptive component, but at what level of representation? We have investigated categorization in sequence learning that requires the extraction of abstract rules, but no modification of sensory primitives. This motivates the need to make explicit the distinction between sensory-level “atomic” features as opposed to concept-level “abstract” features, and the proposal that flexible categorization probably relies on learning at the abstract feature level.

Recent studies have documented substantial variability among typical listeners in how gradiently they categorize speech sounds, and this variability in categorization gradience may link to how listeners weight different cues in the incoming signal. The present study tested the relationship between categorization gradience and cue weighting across two sets of English contrasts, each varying orthogonally in two acoustic dimensions. Participants performed a four‐alternative forced‐choice identification task in a visual world paradigm while their eye movements were monitored. We found that (a) (...) greater categorization gradience derived from behavioral identification responses corresponds to larger secondary cue weights derived from eye movements; (b) the relationship between categorization gradience and secondary cue weighting is observed across cues and contrasts, suggesting that categorization gradience may be a consistent within‐individual property in speech perception; and (c) listeners who showed greater categorization gradience tend to adopt a buffered processing strategy, especially when cues arrive asynchronously in time. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 9, September 2022.

Two experiments examined the impact of causal relations between features on categorization in 5- to 6-year-old children and adults. Participants learned artificial categories containing instances with causally related features and noncausal features. They then selected the most likely category member from a series of novel test pairs. Classification patterns and logistic regression were used to diagnose the presence of independent effects of causal coherence, causal status, and relational centrality. Adult classification was driven primarily by coherence when causal links were deterministic (...) (Experiment 1) but showed additional influences of causal status when links were probabilistic (Experiment 2). Children’s classification was based primarily on causal coherence in both cases. There was no effect of relational centrality in either age group. These results suggest that the generative model (Rehder, 2003a) provides a good account of causal categorization in children as well as adults. (shrink)

This study examines the relation of language use to a person’s ability to perform categorization tasks and to assess their own abilities in those categorization tasks. A silent rhyming task was used to confirm that a group of people with post-stroke aphasia (PWA) had corresponding covert language production (or “inner speech”) impairments. The performance of the PWA was then compared to that of age- and education-matched healthy controls on three kinds of categorization tasks and on metacognitive self-assessments of their performance (...) on those tasks. The PWA showed no deficits in their ability to categorize objects for any of the three trial types (visual, thematic, and categorial). However, on the categorial trials, their metacognitive assessments of whether they had categorized correctly were less reliable than those of the control group. The categorial trials were distinguished from the others by the fact that the categorization could not be based on some immediately perceptible feature or on the objects’ being found together in a type of scenario or setting. This result offers preliminary evidence for a link between covert language use and a specific form of metacognition. (shrink)

Faut-il abandonner l'idée de catégorisation ou lui conserver une fonction plus restreinte, diversifiée, domaniale ? On se demande ce qui peut être préservé de la conception transcendantale pour prolonger son évolution récente au-delà de Wittgenstein, Goodman et Peirce. On propose une approche interrogative, présuppositionnelle et textologique qui lui conserve assez de fonctions , pour qu'il reste significatif de parler de catégorisation. Au lieu d'être immobiles, les catégories ont vocation à commander la recherche, qu'elle soit enquête scientifique ou même (...) quête religieuse. Un concept devient catégorial pour autant qu'il ouvre un domaine à la recherche, la guide ou lui permet de se réorganiser. A first question is raised, whether the idea of categorisation should be altogether dismissed or retained, but with more restricted, diversified and less extensive functions. The second question deals with what of the transcendantal dogma can be maintained in order to extend its recent developments beyond Wittgenstein, Goodman and Peirce. An interrogative, pre suppositional and textological approach is put forward, which could preserve enough functions to allow to go on speaking of categorisation with some kind of relevance. Far from being immovable, the categories indeed call for leadership in matters of research, be it scientific investigation or sacred religious quest. It appears that a concept becomes categorial in so far as it breaks fresh ground for research, provides guidance and enables it to perform self reorganisation. (shrink)

This paper draws attention to a simple distinction that, when ignored, considerably distorts discussion of what should be subject to what form of ethical review and by whom. The distinction is between two types of ethical questions that can be asked about any investigation, and indeed about many other types of activity. First, there are questions of the kind: Is it ethical to conduct this investigation at all? Second, there are questions such as: How can this investigation be conducted in (...) an ethical way? Consideration of these questions and of the categorization of research based on study design can lead to a model for triage, however the aim of the paper is not so much to make a real practical suggestion but rather the to highlight the distinction between two types of ethical question. It is clear thinking on the relationship between the two types of question that might lead to some practical suggestions and serve to better define the scope of research ethics review. (shrink)

When reusing existing ontologies for publishing a dataset in RDF (or developing a new ontology), preference may be given to those providing extensive subcategorization for important classes (denoted as focus classes). The subcategories may consist not only of named classes but also of compound class expressions. We define the notion of focused categorization power of a given ontology, with respect to a focus class and a concept expression language, as the (estimated) weighted count of the categories that can be built (...) from the ontology’s signature, conform to the language, and are subsumed by the focus class. For the sake of tractable initial experiments we then formulate a restricted concept expression language based on existential restrictions, and heuristically map it to syntactic patterns over ontology axioms (so-called FCE patterns). The characteristics of the chosen concept expression language and associated FCE patterns are investigated using three different empirical sources derived from ontology collections: first, the concept expression pattern frequency in class definitions; second, the occurrence of FCE patterns in the Tbox of ontologies; and last, for class expressions generated from the Tbox of ontologies (through the FCE patterns); their ‘meaningfulness’ was assessed by different groups of users, yielding a ‘quality ordering’ of the concept expression patterns. The complementary analyses are then compared and summarized. To allow for further experimentation, a web-based prototype was also implemented, which covers the whole process of ontology reuse from keyword-based ontology search through the FCP computation to the selection of ontologies and their enrichment with new concepts built from compound expressions. (shrink)

Theories on categorization have led to numerous technical innovations. Starting with artificial intelligence and neural models, scientists have leveraged psychological theories to drive forward innovative technology. More recently, software companies and Internet firms have implemented high technology software developed from cognitive theory. One class of systems rooted in the philosophical tradition stresses the importance of explanation and function. Another focuses on feature similarity and rule-based reasoning. Both approaches have had modest success and solve fundamental problems, but neither has achieved the (...) higher-levels of categorization found in humans. The current paper critically analyzes the various theories of categorization and their collective impact on recent technology innovations. (shrink)

In this article, we address the problem of how people understand predicative metaphors such as “The rumor flew through the office,” and argue that predicative metaphors are understood as indirect (or two-stage) categorizations. In the indirect categorization process, the verb (e.g., fly) of a predicative metaphor evokes an intermediate entity, which in turn evokes a metaphoric category of actions or states (e.g., “to spread rapidly and soon disappear”) to be attributed to the target noun (e.g., rumor), rather than directly evoking (...) a metaphoric category as argued by CitationGlucksberg's (2001) categorization theory. We test our argument using two experiments, namely, offline comprehension and online priming. The offline comprehension experiment showed that interpretation of predicative metaphors had greater overlap with words indirectly associated with the verb than those directly associated with the verb. The online priming experiment demonstrated that indirectly associated words were activated during predicative metaphor comprehension, but directly associated words were not. These results provide convergent evidence for our argument, and thus the psychological validity of two-stage categorization as a process of predicative metaphor comprehension was confirmed. (shrink)

In the Categories, Aristotle addresses two different cases of dual categorization, cases in which the same thing might appear in two different categories: relatives and secondary substances in the first case, qualities and relatives in the second. His treatment of these two cases is markedly different. Ackrill thinks dual categorization poses a dilemma for Aristotle’s project as a whole, but I argue that there is a dilemma only on particular understandings of Aristotle’s purpose in compiling the list of categories. I (...) investigate various interpretations of the categories to find one that explains Aristotle’s reactions to dual categorization, and suggest an interpretation of the peculiar four-fold system of classification in Chapter 2. (shrink)

Contained in the face is a vast body of social information, both fixed and flexible. Across multiple lines of converging evidence it has become increasingly clear that face processing is subject to one of the most potent and best understood of social cognitive phenomena: social categorization. This article reviews this research at the juncture of social psychology and face perception showing the interplay between social categorization and face processing. It lays out evidence indicating that social categories are extracted easily from (...) faces, suggesting that the effects of social categories can occur quickly and unintentionally. Recent evidence that social categories can affect perception of both invariant and variant facial characteristics is discussed. Finally, the article summarizes recent evidence indicating that the motivational consequences of social categories can affect which faces are remembered and how faces are processed. (shrink)

Spatial region concepts such as “front,” “back,” “left,” and “right” reflect our typical interaction with space, and the corresponding surrounding regions have different statuses in memory. We examined the representation of spatial directions in the auditory space, specifically in how far natural response actions, such as orientation movements toward a sound source, would affect the categorization of egocentric auditory space. While standing in the middle of a circle with 16 loudspeakers, participants were presented acoustic stimuli coming from the loudspeakers in (...) randomized order, and verbally described their directions by using the concept labels “front,” “back,” “left,” “right,” “front-right,” “front-left,” “back-right,” and “back-left.” Response actions varied in three blocked conditions: (1) facing front, (2) turning the head and upper body to face the stimulus, and (3) turning the head and upper body plus pointing with the hand and outstretched arm toward the stimulus. In addition to a protocol of the verbal utterances, motion capture and video recording generated a detailed corpus for subsequent analysis of the participants’ behavior. Chi-square tests revealed an effect of response condition for directions within the left and right sides. We conclude that movement-based response actions influence the representation of auditory space, especially within the sides’ regions. Moreover, the representation of auditory space favors the front and the back regions in terms of resolution, which is possibly related to the physiological characteristics of the human auditory system, as well as to the ecological requirements of action control in the different regions. (shrink)

Despite the subjective experience of a continuous and coherent external world, we will argue that the perception and categorisation of visual space is constrained by the spatial resolution of the sensory systems but also and above all, by the pre-reflective representations of the body in action. Recent empirical data in cognitive neurosciences will be presented that suggest that multidimensional categorisation of perceptual space depends on body representations at both an experiential and a functional level. Results will also be resumed that (...) show that representations of the body in action are pre-reflective in nature as only some aspects of the pre-reflective states can be consciously experienced. Finally, a neuro-cognitive model based on the integration of afferent and efferent information will be described, which suggests that action simulation and associated predicted sensory consequences may represent the underlying principle that enables pre-reflective representations of the body for space categorisation and selection for action. (shrink)

The interdisciplinary notion picture of the world makes research works devoted to this area of studies challenging from the point of view of finding interconnections between linguistic and extra-linguistic factors in the process of structuring categories of words, including those functioning in terminological systems and subsystems. Legal pictures of the world are specific cultural phenomena that may differ in various countries due to the nationally specific features of law and legal culture development. One of the most complicated problems of representing (...) specific knowledge through linguistic, terminological, signifiers is the problem of linguistic categorization of concepts. The article considers the problem of forming legal categories based on word-building suffixes from the point of view of the development of the legal language ‘picture of the world’ [reflection of the world] closely associated with its conceptual picture. The conclusion is drawn that commonly used derivational suffixes transform their meanings in accordance with the legal taxonomies, forming the conceptual legal picture of the world. The results of theoretical studies in terminological conceptualization may be used in teaching legal English vocabulary in the form of systematic presentation of term-building patterns expressing certain conceptual categories. (shrink)

S’interroger sur les variations intra-individuelles des comportements culturels, et notamment chercher à saisir les variations du degré de légitimité culturelle des goûts et des pratiques, selon le domaine ou le type de pratique considéré, permet de respecter un peu plus que d’ordinaire la complexité des patrimoines de dispositions et de compétences culturelles individuels. Mais la construction de profils culturels individuels rend nécessaire un retour réflexif sur les présupposés des habitudes intellectuelles qui consistent : 1) à agréger des individus dans des (...) groupes ou des catégories sur la base de propriétés communes ; 2) à lister les traits les plus fréquemment attachés statistiquement à ces groupes ou à ces catégories et 3) à brosser un portrait idéaltypique du groupe et de sa culture.Examining intra-individual variations of cultural behaviours, and in particular the varying degrees of cultural legitimacy of tastes and practices according to the sphere or type of practice considered, is a way of showing more than the usual respect for the complexity of individual inheritances of cultural dispositions and competences. But the construction of individual cultural profiles makes it necessary to look closer at the underlying assumptions of some intellectual habits. These consist of : 1) aggregating individuals in categories or groups on the basis of common properties ; 2) listing the features most frequently associated statistically with these categories or groups and 3) painting an idealtypical portrait of the group and its culture. (shrink)

This study draws on theory of dyadic morality and categorization to disentangle opportunistic behaviors from the perception by their victim that leads to the moral categorization of the perpetrator as an opportunist. We show that it is this moral categorization, not the behaviors, that determines the trust beliefs of the victim. Further, the effect of psychic distance on the process of perpetrator moral categorization as an opportunist depends on the form of opportunistic behaviors. Finally, this study questions the cultural universality (...) of opportunism by showing that effects of opportunistic behaviors on categorization vary across national cultures—based on data sets of French and Slovene exporters. (shrink)

The debates about ethics in the context of artificial intelligence have been recently focusing primarily on various types of utilitarianisms. This article suggests a categorization of the various presented utilitarianisms into static utilitarianisms and dynamic utilitarianisms. It explains the main features of both. Then, it presents the challenges the utilitarianisms in each group need to be able to deal with. Since it appears that those cannot be overcome in the context of each group alone, the article suggests a possibility of (...) using a combination of the two categories of utilitarianisms to resolve most of the challenges without the need to abandon the concept of utilitarianisms as such. Even this possibility comes with its own issues that might not be resolved within the boundaries of utilitarianisms, however. Therefore, another potential alternative based on a combination of various ethical systems is suggested and briefly explored. (shrink)

In this paper, we demonstrate how the collaborative and sequential unfolding of a story ties into the constitution of a membership categorization device which we have glossed as ‘us and them’. The data come from a focus group activity where first and second generation immigrants to Denmark have been asked to discuss their situation in Denmark. Using Ethnomethodological Conversation and Membership Categorization Analysis, we present one story which involves a story-teller and his family and an elderly Danish couple living in (...) the same block of flats. In the telling of the story, co-participants align and affiliate, and disalign and disaffiliate, at sequentially relevant junctions. We will argue that not only do such phenomena indicate listenership and possible agreement to the moral of the story in its telling, but also to the morally implicative categorical work involved in the story’s telling. (shrink)

The prime objective of this paper is to conduct phoneme categorization experiments for Indian languages. In this direction a major effort has been made to categorize Hindi phonemes using a time delay neural network (TDNN), and compare the recognition scores with other languages. A total of six neural nets aimed at the major coarse of phonetic classes in Hindi were trained. Evaluation of each net on 350 training tokens and 40 test tokens revealed a 99% recognition rate for vowel classes, (...) 87% for unvoiced stops, 82% for voiced stops, 94.7% for semi vowels, 98.1% for nasals and 96.4% for fricatives. A new feature vector normalisation technique has been proposed to improve the recognition scores. (shrink)

This work contrasts Giovanni Sartor’s view of inferential semantics of legal concepts with a probabilistic model of theory formation. The work further explores possibilities of implementing Kemp’s probabilistic model of theory formation in the context of mapping legal concepts between two individual legal systems. For implementing the legal concept mapping, we propose a cross-categorization approach that combines three mathematical models: the Bayesian Model of Generalization, the probabilistic model of theory formation, i.e., the Infinite Relational Model first introduced by Kemp et (...) al. and its extended model, i.e., the normal-IRM proposed by Herlau et al.. We apply our cross-categorization approach to datasets where legal concepts related to educational systems are respectively defined by the Japanese- and the Danish authorities according to the International Standard Classification of Education. The main contribution of this work is the proposal of a conceptual framework of the cross-categorization approach that, inspired by Sartor, attempts to explain reasoner’s inferential mechanisms. (shrink)

The article looks at idioms as categorization means. On the basis of linguistic analysis of semantic organization of idioms two patterns of idiomatic categorization are argued — general categorization and relevant property based categorization. Cognitive functions of idioms differ with regard to their role as categorization means, idioms can serve different categorization purposes according to two general cognitive processes — static and dynamic — including in a category or considering the given qualities as the reasons for categorization. Moreover, the purpose (...) of categorization was investigated with defining the specificity of the phenomena and its types. The categorization purpose was conceived as different types of information e.g. behavioral expectations or interaction models with the object. The cause-effect relationship between the category and the categorization purpose was claimed. (shrink)

Without making any reference to traditional linguistic disciplines such as presupposition, implicature and indirect speech acts, this article analyzes how and what implicit meanings were constructed, structured and negotiated through an ambulance request call to the119 call center in Yamagata, Japan in 2011, while enhancing the cogency of the empirical approach independent from analytical theories. Through the occasioned taxonomic analysis of the occasioned semantics of the caller and the call-taker regarding the dispatch, the analysis captured definitive evidence on how a (...) negative response was created from the call-taker’s categorization process. It reveals the process in which the rejection was determined from the talk by the call-taker that was oriented toward and constructed by the conceptual knowledge of motion, which was formulated as ‘walk’. A three-part-list structure was created, which formulated ‘emesis’ into the category of a symptom, but not into that of an illness. The analysis reports that the call-taker’s method of occasioned semantics was operative and systematically patterned. Based on the results of the analysis, with linguistic evidence, the article critically argues that the rejection of an ambulance request was due in large part to the call-taker’s method of categorization when asking questions, which provides an alternative account to that of a previously reported analysis. (shrink)

Contemporary genetic and biomedical research on race and ethnicity has reignited the debate over the biological significance of these categories. This article provides an overview of the critical literature concerning the categorization of Hispanic and Hispanic populations within these research programs. More specifically, this article focuses on issues regarding: The conceptualization of Hispanic identity, issues of data collection and generalization (e.g., the use of a specific Hispanic nationality as a stand‐in for all Hispanics), the tension between social and biological classifications (...) of ethnic populations, and the social, political, and scientific implications of genetic research for Latin America. (shrink)