{"title":"Categorizing Imaginary Objects","authors":"G. Arroyo","doi":"10.1515/krt-2020-340102","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Philosophers often invite their readers to categorize imaginary objects. These objects are not only hypothetical: many of them cannot exist because of physical or technological reasons. They are unprecedented or unheard-of objects. By categorizing imaginary objects, philosophers expect to gain knowledge about our concepts. In this paper, I challenge this general assumption: not every conceivable object can be described in terms of our existing categories. Although prominent philosophers held similar views in the past, they made no effort to provide a satisfactory explanation for such impossibility. The argument that I will develop in the following pages rests mainly on three philosophical assumptions: a) that concepts whose content philosophers attempt to describe denote \"monothetic classes\"; b) that concept formation depends largely on \"ecological salience\" (a notion developed in the field of ethnobiology); c) that in any monothetic class, we can draw a proper distinction between definitional and correlated properties.","PeriodicalId":107351,"journal":{"name":"KRITERION – Journal of Philosophy","volume":"76 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"KRITERION – Journal of Philosophy","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/krt-2020-340102","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract Philosophers often invite their readers to categorize imaginary objects. These objects are not only hypothetical: many of them cannot exist because of physical or technological reasons. They are unprecedented or unheard-of objects. By categorizing imaginary objects, philosophers expect to gain knowledge about our concepts. In this paper, I challenge this general assumption: not every conceivable object can be described in terms of our existing categories. Although prominent philosophers held similar views in the past, they made no effort to provide a satisfactory explanation for such impossibility. The argument that I will develop in the following pages rests mainly on three philosophical assumptions: a) that concepts whose content philosophers attempt to describe denote "monothetic classes"; b) that concept formation depends largely on "ecological salience" (a notion developed in the field of ethnobiology); c) that in any monothetic class, we can draw a proper distinction between definitional and correlated properties.