From: pautler@ils.nwu.edu (David Pautler)
Subject: Re: Ethnobiological Classification
Organization: The Institute for the Learning Sciences
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 15:49:06 GMT

In article <-1363923435snx@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au>, gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick) writes:
> 
> In article <1992Nov16.164728.7481@ils.nwu.edu> pautler@ils.nwu.edu writes:
> 
>  > But the Aboriginals do have something like a noun-word for dogs, for example,
>  > don't they?  They refer to individual dogs they've never seen before as dogs,
>  > right?  The relevant Rosch claim here would be that there is more
>  > cross-cultural agreement on the membership of basic-level categories, like
>  > dogs, than on superordinate (animals) or subordinate (dingoes) categories.
>  > Rosch doesn't claim that categorizations are culture-independent, much less
>  > a priori.
> 
> Sorry, but the animal is not named and classified, but described and
> related to. One of my Aboriginal brothers (one of my students now
> working for the Western Australian Museum as a research officer on
> Aboriginal Heritage matters), for example, is dingo dreaming, which
> makes the animal my brother. I refer to him as dingo as I do the
> animal, and I have the same set of social obligation to those animals
> as I do to him since we are all of the same sibling set.

I understand that the cultural divide between Aboriginals and Westerners
may be so great that you must be constantly on guard to prevent us from
underestimating it.  But I do believe that the common evolutionary path
we both followed until just recently makes a difference in such a
fundamental activity as categorization unlikely.  It's your categorization
of your former student as a dingo that indicates which social obligations
are now relevant, for example.

I'll readily admit that categorization is just a folk theory based on a
container metaphor (albeit with much evidence to vouch for it), and that
the Aboriginals, or someone else, could possibly invent a rival metaphor
that might garner as much evidence.  But it's a theory that works, and
we should try to extend it as long as it does.

> That such a situation may not make sense to you, or may be classified
> by you among "religious beliefs", would merely reinforce my argument
> that your categories evaporate outside your own cultural context.

Only in the case where the informant passed off his belief as "religious"
would I care to note the fact.

>  > A culturally-specific emphasis on relationships is interesting, and I'd like
>  > to see more on that from you here.  But you, Rosch, and I agree that
>  > Aboriginal brains work very much the same as our European brains do when
>  > it comes to categorization, don't we?
> 
> No, I do not agree. I shall not attempt to argue, however, that human
> brains do not share the same capacity since we know already that
> Aboriginality is not race specific. Nor will I attempt to invoke an
> argument about evolution of human "capacity for culture".

It's not a capacity argument; I'm merely arguing that vast cultural differences
don't necessarily indicate a difference in fundamental cognitive activities.
We all categorize, but our cultures may make use of that activity to a more
or less obvious degree.

> The differences as far as the quantitive research is currently able to
> reveal is that the European culture imposes a world-view comprising
> logically categorised entities onto a linear time-frame, so developing
> the "left brain" functions in children, while the Australian culture
> imposes a visual-spatial map onto a cyclic time-frame, so developing
> the "right-brain" functions. Dr Judith Kearens, of the Psychology
> Department at the University of Western Australia, has been doing a
> lot of work in this area among school age children in attempting to
> unravel the learning difficulties Aboriginal children experience in
> European schools. I know that she is a little uncomfortable with my
> own thesis, but then there are so few other white people who have
> grown up among Aboriginal people it can be tested against.
> 
> Suffice that I have widespread and spontaneous agreement from the
> Aboriginal side that the European world-view is fundamentally different
> and incompatible with theirs, and I have yet to see Europeans alone in
> the bush with Aboriginal people, away from their own cultural support
> mechanisms, who do not suffer severe physical illness from the extent
> of the culture shock they experience.

I don't have any argument with this.  You're saying there's a vast cultural
gulf, and I agree.  But that doesn't mean the cognitive infrastructure
differs.

	-dp-