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PLATO AND ARISTOTLES INFLUENCE ON THEORIES OF CATEGORISATION AND THINKING.

1) Platos forms and prototype theory


Plato's theory of "forms" (his word is literally "ideas") is at once a theory about understanding and a theory about the creation. Initially an idea is the "blueprint" in the mind of the individual who makes something based on that blueprint. The blueprint of created nature is in the mind of the individual who created the world (viz God). The metaphor (or perhaps "model") of the process is a craftsman who pictures a perfect artefact, but the artefacts produced are imperfect copies of the ideal type the craftsman used to guide him in the first place. Likewise the things of this world are imperfect copies of the ideas in God's mind when He originally designed and created the world. But humans are unique in the created material world in that they have various routes to an understanding of the ideas in God's mind. True knowledge (episteme, in Latin translation scientia, our word science), as against mere opinion (doxa), is knowledge of these forms or ideas the blueprints of creation, rather than mere creation itself. Creation is imperfect at any moment. It is also unstable and transitory. The original design is eternal, unchanging and perfect. This concept was to vex all neoplatonists and even subsequent and different kinds of philosophers. Although rationalist philosophers have urged that reason, and particularly mathematical reasoning provide a route into the hidden structures of creation, many have recognised that human reason is not flawless, and, from a theological perspective, can hardly be expected to work at a level that allows insight into the mind of God. Hence for the pure rationalist like Descartes maths is the only guarantee, since it gives demonstrable and certain truth - clear and distinct ideas, as he called them. Plato himself seems to have wanted to suggest, through his reincarnation theory, that in our inter-life periods we go to a great good place in which we have direct acquaintance with the reality that imperfectly informs the material world we encounter during our lives. For St Augustine (354-430), a neoplatonist and the greatest single philosophical influence on Christian thought, the possibility of acquiring truth rather than delusion depends on God's grace - hence the motto of Oxford University taken from Augustine - Dominus illuminatio mea - God is my light. Descartes made the point that God would not deceive us, because He is not that kind of a God. Descartes however only arrives at this point in his argument after expounding the "way of doubt" to demonstrate the untrustworthiness of sensory experience. For Descartes, the reintroduction of God seems a convenient mechanism to reinstate the possibility that, despite his own sceptical arguments, empirical evidence is often actually OK, so long as you are very careful about how you use it. This is a point about Descartes conclusions that is often underemphasised when his position is contrasted schematically with Locke's. (Augustine incidentally had already argued that the senses are often delusory, but that this is not sufficient ground for believing that we can never trust the evidence of our senses.) Modern psychological theories of categorisation by prototype and distance are quite similar to the Platonic model. Examples of any given type or category may presumably be better or worse copies of the blueprint or prototype on which, in Platos theory, they are based. (Type is another metaphor since the image is of coin-making or other transfer from an original to copies.) If God and the "copying" aspect are left out, it appears that this is much the same as the modern (1970s onwards) psychological theory of categorisation by central tendency and distance from the prototype. It is particularly close to Posner's model of a prototype rather than to Rosch's exemplar view. Such prototype theories explain that borderline cases are difficult to categorise because they are far from any central-tendency prototype, and therefore not easy to recognise or label (typically in reaction-time studies or decision making tasks).

2) Aristotle on boundary conditions, logic and decision making


Aristotle seems not to have been attracted by the straightforward mind of God model. He offered a slightly different "blueprint" theory in which the formula (logos - literally "word" - something with a meaning) is instantiated in the objects whose existential development it determines. The prototype, so to speak, of this process for Aristotle is biological growth and development - oaks from acorns. He is advocating a version of what we now call the genetic code, whereas the prototype for Plato seems to be a design in the mind of a carpenter who is making a thing, an artefact such as a table or chair. As for categorisation Aristotle invented the notion in his text "Categories". What this text is about is the set of fundamental ways in which entities can be defined or described. It is a slightly odd, and supposedly early and exploratory text, but it is one of the earliest of his texts to have had a major impact on western European thought in the millennium just finished. This text is of profound interest to certain kinds of linguists and to those interested in the connection between thought and language. Its scheme is an ancestor of Kants fundamental categories of thought (space, time, cause). Debates about the Kantian categories are in turn the basis of the fundamental constructs of twentieth century science. More mundanely they are precursors to research on collective representations in Durkheims sociology and its creative descendants. They are also of course a milestone in the empiricist/rationalist debate (which Kant felt he had resolved) and of critical importance in any attempt to delineate the possibility and nature of psychology. Aristotle's determinate contribution to the theory of categorisation in its modern sense lies in his theory of classification by feature. Humans are featherless bipeds in this system. In other words the features that define a type or category (or species - this word is the Latin translation of Aristotle's word eidos) are the minimum set of descriptors that (in combination as a set) are verifiably true of all and only members of that species. Hence most creatures do not have two legs, but birds and human do. What distinguishes (anatomically rather than functionally) humans from all birds (says Aristotle) is that humans are featherless. He was aware that "flight" could not be the feature because not all birds fly, but also, as an anatomist, which he was, he recognised that "flight" could not be strictly a visible (although it might be an inferential) feature of a creature (on the slab). In his logic he worked with the idea that once one had categorised an individual as a member of a species or category, then one could infer that it had all the features of that category. Hence the standard modus ponens syllogism in Aristotle:- All men are mortal; S. is a man; therefore S. is mortal. Compare the far more difficult negative instance syllogism - the modus tollens - All pigs have tails; Pinky is not a pig; therefore ? But All pigs have tails; Pinky does not have a tail; therefore Pinky is not a pig. In other words category exclusion does not tell us anything about features, but feature exclusion tells us that an entity is not a member of a given species. Aristotle assumed that one identifies an individual as a member of a species by establishing that it meets all the criteria (boundary conditions) for membership. Once you have (correctly) established its category membership, you can infer all sorts of facts about the individual simply on the basis of your knowledge that members of that species have certain features. This can in fact be done probabilistically or on an all-or-none basis - i.e. most members of the species have characteristic x, therefore this individual probably does; or all members have characteristic y, so this individual definitely does. This is the basis of all schema (top-down) models of information processing including those derived through Gestalt psychology. It is also of course the basis of modern stereotype models of prejudice, involving either incorrect beliefs about the group members' characteristics, or assumptions that a characteristic is universal in a given group when in fact it is not that common. Both Aristotle and modern cognitive psychologists such as Johnson-Laird have been interested in error rates in different kinds of syllogistic reasoning, and the relative difficulty some, such as tollens, present. In modern psychology such research has led to various conclusions about how people think. For example we show confirmatory bias a tendency to look for features that confirm our initial assumptions, rather than to look for disconfirming, diagnostic evidence. This seems to parallel the ease we have with ponens and the relative difficulty we have with tollens.

Aristotles theory of boundary conditions led to the necessary and sufficient features model of categorisation that was taken for granted until thinkers like Posner and Rosch argued that it did not accord with the facts about human memory. Perhaps the difficulty of the modus tollens might actually imply this. (Necessary features are ones which are necessary for x to belong to category C , i.e. if this feature is missing then x does not belong e.g. Pinky is not a pig if he has no tail. Sufficient features are ones which are enough to qualify x as a member of C, regardless of any other characteristics x has, e.g. if you are the eldest son of a duke then you are an aristocrat regardless of any other characteristics you may have.) The syllogistic feature model of categorisation is not strictly part of Aristotle's psychology. He does not offer it as a description of human thought and memory; it is instead part of his logic, i.e. description and prescription for drawing correct conclusions from premises. Nevertheless the "classical" concept of categorisation was applied not just to argument and definition but also to assumptions about how we store knowledge and utilise it. Aristotle himself uses the syllogism as a schema for his descriptions of thought processes. He describes decision making as a form of syllogistic reasoning. For instance one might recognise that food of a certain type is good for individuals with a particular medical condition, recognise that one has this medical condition, and then select food of that type when given a choice. This is syllogistic: it has a general rule about the relation between this type of medical condition and this type of food (the major premise linking members of a certain category, i.e. those with the condition, with a particular characteristic, i.e. experiencing benefits from a certain type of food); it defines an individual (oneself) as a member of the category of those suffering from this condition (the minor premise), and then draws the conclusion that therefore this individual will benefit from this kind of food. This is the practical equivalent of the standard modus ponens syllogism above:- All men are mortal; S. is a man; therefore S. is mortal. The interesting implications Aristotle goes on to infer from this model have influenced legal thought ever since, especially in Roman jurisprudence and its modern successors. At the very end of the twentieth century psychologists started to catch up. Aristotle suggests that in a reasoning process of the kind he has outlined various (cognitive) errors can readily occur. One might forget the general rule (the major premise), or, as jargon might put it now, the rule might not be readily accessible or available in memory. One might also forget that one has this medical condition (the minor premise). One might also fail to recognise that one of the available choices of food is of the appropriate type, while others perhaps are not. This idea that mistaken, bad decisions, whether in matters of self-interest or morality, may actually be due to faulty cognitive processes contrasts with the Platonic model that was so completely absorbed into European religious and everyday thought that we almost take it for granted. Although Plato offered a number of possible explanations for failure to make the correct choice, whether in ones own or in others interests, his most fully worked out explanation is in terms of temptation and weakness one cannot resist the gorgeous high-fat food. This explanation permeates Christian thought, especially in its post-reformation incarnations. It is also the basis of the idea that human nature is riddled with self-conflict and inner torment. The representative and influential example in psychology is of course Freud. But the idea has often been applied to theories of neurosis, and was domesticated within the Learning Theory tradition in Millers 1940s experiments on approach-avoidance conflict in rats. In discussing decision making, Aristotle continually uses examples drawn from health topics (his father was court physician to Alexander the Greats father). At the end of the twentieth century health psychologist began to use an Aristotelian model in dealing with patients with medical conditions that require self-regulation. (In Aristotles Greek the word for this kind of self-regulation is diaita. In English this word transliterates as diet.) Temptation and laziness do not seem to account for all deviations from health regimes. Sometimes patients recognise a general rule (the major premise) but do not think it applies to them (the minor premise). For example hypertension patients apparently sincerely acknowledge that hypertension has no symptoms, but consider that their own hypertension does have symptoms. This has the unfortunate consequence that they vary their medication according to the prevalence of their symptoms.

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