Categories? (was Re: The Left, The Public, was Re: Ideology....)

[Carrol Cox]

Categorization always (when rational) indicates a context. Water animals
can be a useful category in some casual conversations. Even animal,
vegetable, mineral can be legitimate in some contexts. Both would be
idiotic in a systematic study of relations in the physical world (the
physical sciences). That is what I meant when I said that nominalism was
a powerful tool but a vicious master. Careless catetorization kills
people, and the topic is not really one that is usefully the subject of
humor. For example, the catetory of "violence in general" is at the very
heart of legitimizations of bourgeois tyranny.

Categories are arbitrary but the selection of a context radically limits
that arbitrariness.

Carrol

Charles Brown wrote:
> 
> >>> jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com 05/31/01 02:10AM >>>
> >>> [ ... ] do not constitute a unified category
> >>
> >> neither does the category [ ... ]
> >
> > Nor does the category [ ... ]
> 
> Er ... what category does?
> 
> ((((((((
> 
> CB: How about the category "nothing " ?