Categories

Defining the World: Categories, Generally

Developing categories through which to simplify the world is one of the primary functions of the human mind.  The mind records information about our environment in countless discreet bits of data, associates new data to old data whenever possible, analyzes the data to make generalizations, and uses those generalizations to form expectations about the unknown.  Basically, the mind functions on a statistical model, generating assumptions that things will continue to behave as we have seen similar things behaving.  This model may be scientific, but it is not objective – we still choose subjectively how to group our data points before we make our projections.  Objectivity can be claimed as light and sound pass through our eyes and ears and meet the brain.  After this point, before we even become conscious of the data, we are already applying a very fuzzy process of association.

To understand the fuzzy nature of the associative process, consider the case of Little Albert.  Little Albert is the pseudonym given to a baby who was involved in a psychological experiment in 1919 to investigate classical conditioning.  A white rat would enter the room with the baby and when  Little Albert saw the rat, the researchers would make a loud noise to frighten the child.  Little Albert’s mother chose to withdraw her son from the experiments and little more is known about him.  Psychologists have speculated that at that young age, his discriminatory faculty would not have been well-developed, so the fear associated with the rat may have extended to anything small, white, and furry; anything white and furry; or even just anything white, etc.  As our brains mature and we gain experience (more data), we are able to distinguish finer details between ‘similar’ things.  Had Little Albert been older when he participated in the experiment, it would have been less likely for his conditioned fear to extend to white rabbits, fur coats, or cotton, for example.  For such a young baby, all of these things may be grouped together in a single category –  “cuddlies” perhaps – the boundaries of which remain blurred until the child’s discriminatory faculty becomes more developed.
To Little Albert, due to his limited data, grouping “cuddlies” together as a category is practical.  It allows him to identify which objects are more or less likely to hurt his skin if he touches them.  Further subdivision between objects in the category would only come with experience.  If some of the objects bite, for example, he might learn to distinguish between “biting cuddlies” and “non-biting cuddlies”.  Unfortunately for Little Albert, the frightening noise made by the researchers artificially added false data to his understanding of “cuddlies” which may have spoiled the potential of the category to be useful to him in generating expectations about the world.  The category “cuddlies” has effectively failed because the feature “makes a terrifying noise” has erroneously become one of the category’s defining features.
Just like Little Albert, as we learn more about the individual data points, we must challenge the validity of our previous categories; we must subdivide them, alter the conceptual boundaries, or even abandon our initial judgment that there was any relevant similarity at all between the individual items in question.

Without categorizing and forming mental schema to deal with an endless stream of incoming data, a person would not be able to effectively navigate their environment. We would stub our toes on every solid object without realizing that all solid objects (a practical category) are equally dangerous to our feet.  On the other hand, a person becomes similarly hindered by mental categories that are too inclusive.  If we actually believe that there exists a monolithic culture (“Muslim” for example) and make this belief a basis for action, we will run into all kinds of problems without understanding why.  Decisions based upon false information rarely succeed in achieving the desired results.   The difficulty is in knowing when to include a bit of data into a category, and when to exclude it.  This is the process of subjectivity, the use of the infamous “should.”  When should a thing be included and when should it be excluded from a group?  Authority, criteria, exceptions, and opinions come into play.
We cannot go without making the broad generalizations that allow us to simplify our environment enough to make practical decisions, but we must also jettison categories when we turn our attention to an individual, or else we risk adding imagined information to the real data we obtain from the person.  We will hear what we expect to hear rather than learning about what we don’t know.

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