I said I was going to leave specifics for today;
instead, Ithought I should present some ideas related
to the question of 'discrete' and 'fuzzy' categories:
First, some words about classification as used within
the so-called physical sciences; these classifications
are usually of the 'discrete' type. I feel I have to
say something on the subject because scientists are
nowadays constantly maligned (here and in many other
places) for imposing their views on classification
upon Western culture at large and thus distorting
supposedly wiser worldviews.
Said classifications are based on an argument
which, as most things, is also attributed to
Aristotle: the <A and not-A> thing. If an apple is
red then, it cannot be not-red; if an animal is a
mammal, it cannot be a not-mammal; if an action is
moral it cannot be not-moral; if a book is
philosophical it cannot be not-philosophical. What
follows is that, if B is a <not-A> , it must be
something else. If we have a group of many things,
then we can divide them in two sub-groups: one
containing those things we call A and a second one
containing those things we call something else. That's
a classification.
That way of thinking (could I call it a pattern
of thought?) is pretty neat and, as such,it has proven
extremely useful in what here is called S/O science.
Thomas Mann in 'The Magic Mountain', put it very
nicely: "order and simplification are the first steps
towards the mastery of a subject the actual enemy is
the unknown"
Note that he says not just order but "order and
simplification". To introduce order into a chaotic
ensemble we have to simplify, we have no other
alternative within this pattern of thought. To put a
thing in a certain category we have to strip it of
most of its traits and attend only to the relevant
one. This means,in a way, falsifying the object of
study.
In S/O science this is not a very high price
to pay, because the scientist is usually aware of the
simplifications he has to make in order to classify.
She doesn't assign to categories any particular
ontological or epistemological implications; just a
procedure that can makes things considerably easier.
She is aware that the classes and the classifications
are arbitrary artifacts invented by her colleagues and
if they prove not useful they can be changed in the
next Conference.
Furthermore, the scientist is aware that when she
says that the categories are discrete, that is, that
the objects under consideration cease 'abruptly' to be
A and become B, it is just a convenient device of
make-believe. When do molecules must be called
macromolecules? No problem. People in the field get
together and decide (arbitrarily) that any molecule
with more than a 100 atoms will be called a
macromolecule. It doesn't particularly matter really
because one is aware that, say, a certain
polynucleotide under study is blissfully ignorant of
how we may call it; it couldn't (and it can't) care
less.
All the preceding just to illustrate why this
peculiar Aristotelian pattern of thought works so well
in most(not all) branches of Science and there is
really no need to introduce there Fuzzy Logic instead
of Formal or Aristotelian one. However, the fact that
it works so well in most branches of Science does not
necessarily mean that it is going to work as well in
every other field of enquiry.
A group of academics in the field of
Education get together and decide that, from now on,
their field is going to be called Educational
Sciences. Since now they are 'scientists' they assume
that a thought pattern that worked so well in other
branches of Science should work as well in their
field
and they get into trouble; the pupils don't know
that they have become categorical objects (and as such
simplified) and keep behaving as when Education was
not yet declared a Science. Or, Psychologists decide
that, since their field should be a Science (?) things
like sensations, feelings and emotions, should behave
according to the A and not-A principle; they are
thought as discrete categories: a certain feeling,
because it is a feeling, cannot be an emotion. And it
doesn't even stop there, it permeates other fields: if
someone is a positivist he cannot be a constructivist
and, if a reductionist, he cannot be a pragmatist, and
so on and so forth.
How do we decide whether to classify some thing as
a feeling or as an emotion? How do we decide whether
to classify someone as a pragmatist or an idealist?
The scientists in our example above set up the
distinction for macromolecules using the (arbitrary)
number 100.Here we have no numbers to assign to
feelings or to pragmatism. No 'metrics' available.
Insisting in not to depart with the <A, not-A
thing>, people in these fields of enquiry resort to
devising air-tight definitions. Definitions so
air-tight that sometimes they manage to suffocate the
things under study. Definitions then become all-
important because they are the main foundations of the
classification thought pattern. I don't recall ever
any bitter, passionate discussions about where
Inorganic Chemistry ends and Organic Chem begins. But
we all recall bitter and endless discussions about
where Romanticism or Empiricism end or begin.
Is there a plausible and promising way out of this
constant bickering? Well, actually there seems to be
one: Why not to forget the whole <A, not-A> thing
altogether and work with a different Logic? A Logic in
which A can also be a not-A. An emotion can also be a
feeling (to some degree); an objectivist can also be a
subjectivist (to some degree); a red apple can( to
some degree) be also a green apple. Here is when we
enter Fuzzy Logics.
To be continued in next Digest: "In defense of
Ambiguity"
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