From: pautler@ils.nwu.edu (David Pautler)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Prototypes
Date: 26 Aug 92 16:09:27 GMT
Organization: The Institute for the Learning Sciences

In article <1992Aug26.120018.9260@athena.mit.edu>, pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky) writes:
> In article <c_bnap+@lynx.unm.edu> lgorbet@carina.unm.edu (Larry P Gorbet ANTHROPOLOGY) writes:
> >
> >It is not obvious from your post just what kind of ontological status you
> >are assuming for "categories".  That is, just what do you believe
> >categories are that we are deciding what belongs to?  That's not a
> >rhettorical question.  It is not clear, if one is talking psychology or
> >neurology, how one makes a principled distinction between "categories" 
> >and "the results of the process of categorization".  Isn't a view of
> >categories as "classical" sets also about "our ability to decide what
> >belongs in what category:  given some set of necessary and sufficient
> >conditions for membership or given an exhaustive listing (or some 
> >combination thereof), isn't that just a "way to decide what belongs".
> 
> Not at all.  Suppose, for example, we have a mental category "Germanic
> language" which is defined as "all and only those languages that use
> morphmes descended from Proto-Germanic for 90% of the terms on some word
> list (e.g. Swadesh)".  Now suppose we have another category "Romance"
> with a similar definition. Granted, a stupid definition, but let's
> assume it for the sake of the example.
> 
> Now suppose we are asked "is English Germanic or is it Romance".  I
> might be quite happy to answer "neither".  But if forced, there is an
> obvious metric under which it's *closer* to Germanic than to Romance.
> So I hesitate for a second, remember that I have to give some answer,
> none of the above isn't an answer, besides, that would be unhelpful, so
> I say "Germanic".  Even if I'm not being given a forced choice
> inventory, there may be an implied forced choice, since it's more useful
> to give the closest category than to give no answer at all.  Presto, we
> have the results Lakoff discusses, but the fuzziness is now all in the
> metric of "closeness" and not at all in the category itself.

You appear to be claiming that the classical view of categories allows for
the possibility that the necessary and sufficient conditions are inaccurate.
English is a member of the Germanic language category by the end of your
example, isn't it?  The fact that pragmatic factors had an influence shouldn't
matter when we examine the "contents" of the category afterwards.  I think
Larry Gorbet is right to say the classical view doesn't allow the necessary
and suffient conditions to disagree with the actual inventory of members.

> There's another way you can get the appearance of prototypicality
> without the essence: the answer to a question is "yes" (e.g. is an
> ostrich a bird, is the Pope a bachelor), but there is some other
> property of ostriches or Popes that comes much closer to defining them,
> so that the property being questioned is not exactly salient to the
> categorizer.
> 
> So there really is a difference.

How does this avoid prototypicality?  One property is still "closer" than
another to the "central" meaning of the category.  The fact that we have
misidentified the prototype here doesn't explain away the observation of
*a* prototype effect.

	-dp-
Newsgroups: sci.lang