gms2004

Just Playing

This is a continuation of the "Why do we need definitions?" post based
on the reply posted by Stephen Harris.
I will try to play with the idea that every "Neural Beings Must
Categorize. Every living being categorizes" presented in the reply.
Let's say that if I will analyze a dog along many criteria such as
height, weight, color, size, race etc I will end up with a lot of
corresponding categories.
Now if I come in contact with a lot of dogs and try to categorize them
in the same way I will end with a few categories that are common to
most dogs and many that are not. By using the categories that are
common I will create a new term, a new concept, a "dog" that will not
have a physical representation anymore.
I can go on and have the same process with specific cats, horses,
squirrels, etc. and end with other new terms.
The next step is to create a new term that will include the common
categories of all the previous terms and I will end up probably with
the term "animal".
The difference between the first terms "dog", "cat", etc. and the term
"animal" is the amount of information, the number of categories
included. While a specific dog may be have 45-50 categories, a generic
dog will have much less categories, maybe 20-25, while the next step,
"animal" may have even less categories maybe 10-15. It doesn't really
matter if the numbers I use are correct, what matters is the trend,
the process of reducing information thru conceptualization.
The same way I can create a lot of conceptual categories and use them
for creating new ones and neither the initial ones nor the resulting
ones will have any physical representation. And the process can go on
and on, the only limitation being our imagination.
Now let's assume that most of us create the conceptual terms
differently.
Let's say that I have reduced my generic dog to 15 distinct categories
while my opponent uses 16 categories for his generic dogs or 15
categories but they are not the same as mine.
We may agree for a while at least for the categories that are common
but we may end up calling each other names and this only because we
have not created identically the same conceptual term.
I am pretty sure that there is a mathematical model that can
approximate this type of situation but this is not my strength
One can see the same phenomenon when we use concepts that are not
directly related to a physical representation, that are abstract as it
is the case with "freedom", "God", "religion" etc.
Here there a lot more categories involved, I can easily assume that
there will be hundreds or maybe thousand of them, and the number of
possible combinations is huge.
In order to reach consent we may have even to go back to the initial
categories that are used to create these terms thus increasing
exponentially the number of possible disputes resulted from using
these conceptual terms.
Any major mistakes so far in my "fun with categorizations"?


Just Playing