| 1996 | Anthropological Studies of Classification |
| p.33 | p.33 | 10496 | Monothetic categories have fixed defining features, and polythetic categories do not |
| Full Idea: Many categories are 'monothetic' (the defining set of features is always unique), and others are 'polythetic' (single features being neither essential to group membership nor sufficient to allocate an item to a group). | |||
| From: Roy Ellen (Anthropological Studies of Classification [1996], p.33) | |||
| A reaction: This seems a rather important distinction which hasn't made its way into philosophy, where there is a horrible tendency to oversimplify, with the dream of a neat and unified picture. But see Goodman's 'Imperfect Community' problem (Idea 7957). |
| p.33 | p.33 | 10495 | Continuous experience sometimes needs imposition of boundaries to create categories |
| Full Idea: Because parts of our experience of the world are complexly continuous, it is occasionally necessary to impose boundaries to produce categories at all. | |||
| From: Roy Ellen (Anthropological Studies of Classification [1996], p.33) | |||
| A reaction: I like it. Ellen says that people tend to universally cut nature somewhere around the joints, but we can't cope with large things, so the sea tends to be labelled in sections, even though most of the world's seas are continuous. |
| p.35 | p.35 | 10497 | In symbolic classification, the categories are linked to rules |
| Full Idea: Symbolic classification occurs when we use some things as a means of saying something about other things. ..They enhance the significance of some categories, so that categories imply rules and rules imply categories. | |||
| From: Roy Ellen (Anthropological Studies of Classification [1996], p.35) | |||
| A reaction: I'm afraid the anthropologists seem to have more of interest to say about categories than philosophers do. Though maybe we couldn't do anthropology if philosophers had made us more self-conscious about categories. Teamwork! |
| p.36 | p.36 | 10498 | Classification is no longer held to be rooted in social institutions |
| Full Idea: The view that all classification finds its roots in social institutions is now generally considered untenable. | |||
| From: Roy Ellen (Anthropological Studies of Classification [1996], p.36) | |||
| A reaction: And about time too. Ellen (an anthropologist) inevitably emphasises the complexity of the situation, but endorses the idea that people everywhere largely cut nature at the joints. |
| 2006 | Categories, Classification, Cogn. Anthropology |
| I | p.4 | 10494 | Several words may label a category; one word can name several categories; some categories lack words |
| Full Idea: Words are not always a good guide to the existence of categories: there may be several words which label the same categories (synonyms). and the same word can be used for quite different ideas. Some categories may exist without being labelled. | |||
| From: Roy Ellen (Categories, Classification, Cogn. Anthropology [2006], I) | |||
| A reaction: This is the sort of point which seems obvious to anyone outside philosophy, but which philosophers seem to find difficult to accept. Philosophers should pay much more attention to animals, and to illiterate peoples. Varieties of rice can lack labels. |