- Some sensory complexes bring with them positive valence, and other sensory complexes bring with them negative valence. Metaphorically speaking, we’re “pulled to move toward” the former kind and “pushed to move away from” the latter kind.
- Some sensory complexes have more positive valence, or less negative valence, than others. (a) We prefer higher positive valence to lower and lower negative valence to higher, and (b) in making choices, we try to maximize any possible positive valence and minimize any possible negative valence—those two propositions just being tautologically true, of course. But—and here’s the important point to be made here—some sensory complexes are equal to each other in expected valence. That is: Some sensory complexes are unequal to each other in that respect, and other sensory complexes are equal to each other in that respect. We may have a preference for X over Y, but we also may instead be indifferent between X and Z. For example: Imagine that you’re at a supermarket choosing whether to buy an apple or an orange to eat as a snack. After a moment of thought, you may find yourself reaching into the tray of apples, thus revealing a preference for an apple over an orange. But which apple will you choose? In choosing, you may ignore whether the apple does, or doesn’t, have a stem; such is indifference between a “stemmed” and an “unstemmed” apple. Your hierarchy of value in the moment of choice was such that 🍎 > 🍊 but unstemmed 🍎 = stemmed 🍎.
- Empirically speaking, we’re a mixture of preference (e.g., 🍎 > 🍊) and indifference (e.g., unstemmed 🍎 = stemmed 🍎). That proposition can be treated as a true a posteriori postulate in the science of human action and the human mind. But let’s consider the respective logical implications of the two empirically false, but nevertheless useful and interesting, contraries of that a posteriori postulate: (a) the postulate of no such mixture in the sense of all preference and no indifference and (b) the postulate of no such mixture in the reverse sense, i.e. no preference and all indifference.
- With all preference and no indifference, what’s logically entailed is choice (i.e., action) without categorization—unless, of course, even a “category” of only one sensory complex is admitted, definitionally speaking, as a “category.”
- With no preference and all indifference, what’s logically entailed is no choice/action because everything is put together into just one single category.
- Logically entailed in the (empirically true) mixture of preference and indifference, then, is a system of categorization. For example: It’s in sometimes preferring apples to oranges, but sometimes being indifferent, in turn, among the different kinds of apples, that we justify the category “apple.” And it’s only because some people, at some moments, prefer to eat a Honeycrisp instead of a Fuji, or a Granny Smith instead of a Red Delicious, that we further distinguish the supercategory “apple” into the various subcategories thereof: “Honeycrisp apple,” “Fuji apple,” etc.
- Consider next that there’s not only positive and negative valence but also neutral valence. That is, a sensory complex can be desirable, undesirable, or neither desirable nor undesirable.
- It’s common, though, for a yet uncategorized range of sensory complexes, all of them originally neutral in valence, to all take on an equivalently positive or negative valence, and thus become categorized, because the agent comes to believe that the originally neutral range of sensory complexes X is the cause of an already positive or negative category of sensory complexes Y. That is: Something originally neither desirable nor undesirable becomes either desirable or undesirable because the agent comes to believe that it’s the cause of something else, that something else being what’s more fundamentally desirable or undesirable. The valence of the effect is imputed to the cause. For example: Let’s say that your grandfather recently passed away and you’re looking through his belongings, which he bequeathed to you. An old clock sitting in the attic of his house looks like nothing to you, just junk to get rid of. But then you find a note from your grandfather saying to be careful with the clock because it’s an antique worth $5,000. The originally neutral valence of the clock—you didn’t care about it one way or the other—suddenly takes on the already positive valence of $5,000 (assuming, of course, that you believe that your grandfather’s note is true).
- If you desire the effect Y, and X is the cause of that effect, then Y is the end and X is the means—definitionally speaking.
- To summarize all of the foregoing: (a) With every preference comes a distinction in category (e.g., 🍎 vs. 🍊), and with every indifference comes no distinction in category (e.g., an 🍎 is an 🍎 whether it has a stem or not). (b) Our more fundamental preferences and indifferences, which determine our more fundamental categories, bring about, in accordance with our beliefs in cause and effect, our less fundamental preferences and indifferences, which in turn determine our less fundamental categories. (c) Thus, “our” system of categorization—the micro and macro, or in other words the psychology and sociology, of “the” system of categorization, to be analyzed elsewhere—is a function of belief and value.
- That is: Out of our beliefs in cause and effect, along with our most fundamental values, comes all of our other values, and together all of that determines how we take all of our familiar sensory complexes and put those sensory complexes into categories. The most elegant generating function possible for our system of categorization takes as its input (a) our beliefs in cause and effect—perhaps our “ultimate” beliefs of that kind, whatever that may turn out to mean—and (b) our ultimate values.
The praxeology of categorization
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