What follows is a twenty- paragraph philosophical essay investigating the titular question. It is somewhat technical in nature, but I have done my best to adequately describe all the philosophical tools I make use of in the text. I cannot guarantee that you will find the answer to this question in the essay; but you will at least be wrong more accurately than before.
As I am writing these words I am ignorant. I do not know what the results of this philosophical investigation will be. Nor am I educated about what other philosophers may have to say about the subject. The method I will use is to identify the concepts inherent in this question. I will then try to analyse them, that is; to take apart their logical structure and examine their component parts. I will then try to compare the component parts of each concept to one another. This is an act of synthesis. I hope then that the method will reveal the question reflexively; that is to say; Have I then done a classificatory act; and if so, when? I realise that most are not familiar with this method of thinking, I will however try to make things as clear as possible - explaining relevant terminology as I go.
Let us first introduce the words of synthesis and analysis. They were first introduced by the ancient greeks, then they fell out of use until Kant reintroduced them in the 1900's. Roughly speaking the first means putting together and the second means taking apart. What we are taking apart or putting together are the words such as we understand them; or to be more precise the concepts that constitute them. We have an understanding of what "classification" entails - it is this understanding which we are to pick out. It will sound like a definition; but is subtly unlike it. Definitions try to give an understanding of the use of a word, but our use is meant to represent a deeper structure. To understand this we must introduce the use/mention distinction, but to explain this we must first understand what it means to refer to something. I will try to keep my explanations as short as possible, but be prepared to jog your mind.
When you refer to something you point to it. For instance you could say; "I love this car" - pointing to it on the street. You are then referring to it. In this instance the word "this"is a reference to the car in it self. It is possible for the same use of a word to refer to different things. If two different people say the exact same thing, "my car", we know that they are talking about different things. When we use language for philosophical investigation, we must be sure that what we are saying is referring to the same thing. The political tactic of not doing so is called to use a "straw man" (which is to say; in place of a real man). But philosophy is not politics - and we crave exactness.
In short; there is a distinction between using a word and mentioning a word. If you use it you are referring to something else which is determined beforehand. If you mention it you are only pointing to the word it self. To fail to see this distinction is to make a use/mention error - and is so common that it is normally shortened UME. To make things clear, it is possible to employ special punctuation where one might be confused. It goes like this: When discussing 'use', use "use". In the first instance a concept is denoted. This is punctuated by single quotes. Normal use has no quotation. Mentioning merits double quotes. You will then understand me when I say that, in this blogpost we will eventually be discussing 'classification', 'synthesis' and 'analysis'.
But what are concepts really? Concepts are the general idea of something specific. For real- world objects it is reasonable to suppose that we somehow infer their general structure from many examples. I.e when you have seen enough waste bins you know the next one when you see it. For an entirely different set of objects - constructs - the situation is different. 'Constructs' are observer- dependent, or mental, instances. If we have a conception of a construct - then we have constructed the concept. We can have ideas in our minds that have no real existence outside our minds. When this is true we are dealing with a construct.
Are the three concepts of 'classification', 'synthesis' and 'analysis' constructs? Yes! But what does this mean for our investigation? It means that when we establish these concepts - we do it by way of defining them. This definition will then constitute the concepts - which are only real as long as we keep them in our own minds. It is a different question wether we find acts of classification, synthesis and analysis in nature. I will not treat it here. We should expect that the idea of the concepts are bigger than what we will be able to reproduce in the form of a definition. This would be the case for any investigation in which a definition is required (barring very few exceptions).
Let us get to work then. First; what Is 'synthesis' and 'analysis'? We'll simplify a bit and us the definition of the logical positivists who said: "A synthetic proposition is one who's truth rests solely on it's terms".
This means that it is the words and the way they are put together which is constitutes the truth in it self. From this they contrasted that synthetic statements are those that are not analytic; meaning that some of their truth rests upon factors outside the sentence itself. Let me illustrate this distinction by way of an example. First an analytic statement: "The word "cloudberry" is synonymous with the word "Rubus Chameamorus"". As you can see, this declaration is made up from two arbitrary words connected together by logical force. We do not need to go out and check anything for ourselves for this sentence to be true. Conversely we could make another sentence: "Cloudberries are orange." To confirm the truth of this sentence, we need to go out and see for ourselves that this is so. This last example is therefore synthetic. Earlier I wrote that one could think of an analysis as taking apart, and a synthesis as putting together. I hold to this, because to see that there is a synthetic truth you must analyse the statements constituent parts - which means that you must somehow take it apart. Further the elements of a synthetic statement may themselves be put together by other analytic statements and so on principally ad infinitum. It is not so with synthetic statements. To find out if your synthetic statement is true, you must go out into the world and observe that it is. You are then doing the act of corresponding your linguistic notion to the external facts. This is an act of joining together. Truths that are reached only by way of analytic reasoning are deduced. Truths that depend on experience must be inferred.
With this added vocabulary I am able to describe my approach even more accurately. My reasoning will be of the nature of a deduction based on constructed concepts, but where the concepts are inferred from our experiential conception of them. Or in other terms; I will try to figure out how we think of classification, and then translate this inexact notion into a formal structure. I will not say "formal sentence", because some of my concepts may have extra-lingual elements to them.
Finally then; how can we describe classification? Initially I think there are two different things we need to look into. There is the noun form of the concept; 'class', and then there is the verb form of the concept 'classify'. The first denotes a set or group of objects or people. The second denotes the concept of 'constructing a class'. It is not possible to use neutral language here, so I try to foreshadow.
The first idea I think we should do away with is that a class can consist of a number of arbitrarily picked and unrelated objects. A class must have some unifying characteristic. If we think about real- world classes, such as battleships, we can also see that even though many ships are warships, warships seem to be classified by size, armament and function. Abstracting this observation we might say that there seems to be in-group stratification based on qualitative or quantitative differences. And In fact, I think we should be able to say that the difference is wholly qualitative, because the very function of the quantifiable elements of the ships are those that define class. From this example alone it would seem that a class is a strata differentiated by qualitative terms within a larger framework of characteristics.
A similar case could be made for other manufactured things of the same nature - cars, suitcases, windows, buildings and televisions - all have characteristics of quality that allow them to be classified.
I would appreciate it if the reader could think of a counter- example, as I cannot at the moment do so.
We make things in different classes, so we should not be surprised to find them. But are there also classes in nature? Linné famously improved the work Aristotle began - with the catalogisation of species. In this we know that species can be classified. But that does that mean that they are? Let us again apply the analytic distinction we gleaned from artificial objects: A class is a strata differentiated by qualitative terms within a larger framework of characteristics. Okay; so we know that animals are qualitatively different. When one animal breaks off in the animal kingdom it belongs by virtue of som mutation, we are able to differentiate it by the qualitative change. These then form the basis of new species. In fact - if there were no qualitative change in the animal - it would be a part of the prior species. The most commonly used definition of a species is that it's offspring are fertile. This distinction is not absolute - but a good indication that species have divided. In this instance the description follows a natural occurrence that in the same stroke leads to a delimiting physiological function. While biological (that is of the academic discipline biology) seems to follow naturally occurring physical, functional, and qualitative differences would it be right to say that these are different classes?
In nature we find interesting counterexamples. For example in trees we might find gradual differences where changes become gradually bigger the farther away from your reference point you come. I don't remember these examples completely, only that Darwin spoke of this in hi Origin. This example raises an interesting question; what counts as a qualitative difference? Without going into any depth of this - we might preliminarily say that it has interacts differently with it's environment, and maybe also in different environments. So that; a fox within it's environment interacts differently within that environment, and a red fox interacts similarly to a grey fox but in different environments.
Then it is the question of framework of characteristics, which is just what constitutes environment.
Is it then an interaction effect between 'framework characteristics' and "function"? I actually think that would be a mistace. A function is a word denoting the interaction effect, which would then only be a higher level explanation of the mechanism we are looking for. What we are looking for should be intrinsic to the animal or the design. Is intrinsic quality a tautology? Can any quality not be intrinsic? This last question is bigger than any essay, bigger than most books, and highly controversial within philosophy. Let us say that they share enough characteristics that I am comfortable reverting to the word quality and assume that any quality is intrinsic.
This next point is complicated. It follows from the premises above that in it is the combination of quality and external characteristics that serve to differentiate the object/animal in question. This is partially covered in the above definition, but not quite. This is because the word "characteristics" only seems to describe the 'interaction of other objects to the same framework'. It seems to me that it is further implied that this framework is constituted by these interaction objects. This does not make allowance for there to by anything else than characteristics in interaction. I think this mistake comes from the fact that the definition was inherited from a field where there were no agents. In other words the agency that supplied the classification came from without - a clear act of synthesis. But can it be made otherwise?
Let us first try to revise the definition: "A class is a host of objects of quality who's interaction within an environment is stable and similar".
Putting other differences aside for a moment: Even though we change the act of classification over to intrinsic qualities such as inherent activeness (such that animals, and indeed all life possess), is not a class by definition a linguistic entity with clear references?
This is a linguistic problem. Is the word "Class" a part of the concept 'Class'. I would say that by our lates definition - it needn't be. Because it's 'class'- ness could be an intrinsic quality of the object in question. Just as words can be referents, (see the introduction of the concept of 'reference'), objects can be too. When the references take different forms we say that they have different senses. In short; The sense of the expression is the mode of presentation of the reference of the expression. (Searle via Frege). But as we learned from Saussure any word is arbitrarily assigned to a meaning. If we turn this idea on it's head we can say that any the quality of 'arbitrary' is transferred to both objects as soon as they are related, and then back again - abstracting the whole system to one vehicle of meaning and one content of meaning where the content naturally rides the vehicle. We then need to make the small leap to say that the quality we are looking for is an arbiter of sense. I admit to word- play, but I think it should be clear enough. Or in longspeak: Anything may define itself by having the power to control its sense or presentation. This is an interesting result; because one might as easily argue that any things very existence, it's facts, dictates its mode of presentation. This means that anything is indexically it's own sense.
To summarise. When we expand the rather narrow idea of language into the knowledge of signs or semiology, we see that objects present their own explanation for what they themselves are. Now for the question of deliniation; where do the objects stop and where do they begin? To make this simple; Any object that is at the same time stable and interacts with its environment will reveal this, and in a practical sense it is seldom difficult to tell. Just think of a possible question. "Is that thing under the car a part of the car itself?" This question will quickly be answered when the car moves, but the parking lot stays.
Now we have established that an object can independently assert itself. But can it also independently connect itself to other objects of similar quality? This is a question of interpretation. If two objects are identical except for their location - they would have the same sense but a different reference. But say that a man would see these objects successively but never at the same time, would he not mistace them for the same object and then in a unique way confound the reference? The situation is this; I show you a red ball, then hide it. Then I take away from the same basket a ball that looks exactly like it; would you assume it were the same? You might. In this this case you might be tempted to define them as having the same qualities, and thus being of the same class. This is the act of classification. You have then, if unwittingly, jointed two referents under the same senses. This self- referential sense I must name indexical sense, to distinguish it from any other sense. Once more; what defines this sense in its self- referentiality is that it is inherits it's secondary characteristics, (those we see), from it's exact primary characteristics (what it is), and is therefore unique. The uniqueness of of 'indexical sense' I think forces us to consider an observer if we are to make an act of classification. But we have reached a notion of an interesting two- way interaction here. It is the quality of the object that forces the sense impression on the observer. We recognise this in language: we may have freedom of will, but we do not have freedom of perception. We see what we see - not matter what we want.
And this is the crux of the question; Is classification an act of synthesis or analysis? Is the nature of the interaction creating the sense in the observer, inherited from the indexical sense of the object, such that it forces, by way of intrinsic quality, the observer not to recognise its sense from the sense of that of another object? If the answer to this question is yes; then classification is synthetic in the extreme. If the answer to this question is no; then classification is analytical.
And now the clarification. If a man is sailing on the ocean and sees a dolphin he might say "I'll call you flipper". The dolphin ducks down again. Another dolphin jumps. Now the man can perceive two different things. He might say 1: "This is another animal, it is similar but it is not too similar. This is not flipper, but I'll call him Snout, and since they are so similar I'll call them both Dolphins" The man has then recognised the differences, and set about creating definitions and orders. These concepts he have established will have a more or less rigid relationship - and consequently be analytical in nature.
Now for the second thing the man might say 2: "Another dolphin jumps - the man simply says; There is flipper again!". This case he is basing his conclusions on experience - and though the dolphins were not the same their sense was so similar that classification into flippers was automatic. In this case classification was an act of synthesis.
Bringing forth the definition of class we found earlier we can see more clearly how this would work out: "A class is a host of objects of quality who's interaction within an environment is stable and similar". We can see that there is a gradient to "similarity and stability". Similarly we should expect that there is a gradient to the astuteness of the observer. Establishing relative scales we should say that classification by synthesis is more likely when astuteness is low and similarity is hight - and conversely that classification by analysis is more likely when astuteness is high and similarity is low.
Returning to real world examples again we can find examples of both. The classification of planets was first done by the inexact science of peering at the sky. Consequently the qualities by which judgement was made seemed similar - the observer had little chance of adequate differentiation. His experience forced him to classify pluto as a planet, although later observations have clearly confirmed that in any sensible way - it could not be. It is simply a muddy and icy body in the sky.
When we are talking about toys it's another tale. Toys are so different two- year olds routinely pick them apart (they also differentiate). But they still have similar functions, and are grouped together by sheer force of will to form that idea of "toy".
Thought the nuances are numerous - from here on I encourage the reader to take the analysis further. In everyday life the question to ask is: Did I make up this category, or was it the only way to understand it? I hope you will make use of the philosophical tools presented in this essay.
In spite of much deliberation I don't know that a definite answer was reached. But at least many interesting questions was asked. And as I often say; We might not ever be right; but at least we are wrong more accurately than before.
