Classification is a very important tool for us as human beings. Classification allows us to generalise and remember everything, so that every time we walk into a room, we are not mystified by "the thing with four legs and a flat, shiny surface." We know, from our previous experience, from the list of categories in our brain, that if it has a flat, shiny surface and four legs, that this is a table. Therefore, through our memory and sense perception (both ways of knowing), we have been able to classify that this is a table. In real life, this happens all the time: we use our ways of knowing, or our areas of knowledge (AOKs), through which we have already created categories, in order to work our way around the world.
In this sense, classification is good. It helps us figure out things much faster than if we had to analyse things from scratch every time we encountered a new room, a new table, or something more complex. Classification, in this sense, is very useful to us as humans. An example that our textbooks gives us is of the Indian journalist, Manini Chatterjee. Her job is interesting, because she interacts with people within several different contexts. She has to use her different AOKs and power of categorisation when she interviews people. For example, when she interviewed a man in India about political parties, she had to use her knowledge of political parties to understand that when the man was talking about kerosene lamps, he was referring to the bleak future of the party, whose symbol was a kerosene lamp. The power of categorisation and past knowledge allowed her to categorise this man’s dialogue as an opinion on the political party’s future, not a discourse on the rising lamp oil prices. Similarly, when we did the classification activity, we had to think about how we could classify objects. Most of the classification of objects came from our past experience in either learning about the classification of living organisms (biology, an AOK) or classifying them by what they represented to us, like its function, or what it looked like (WOK). It is interesting to note, however, that none of us used WOKs such as sense perception, apart from sight, to identify this object. Therefore, from our past experience, we were also categorising the idea of categorising - through its appearance, like we do when we walk into a room ( a WOK), or function, like in biology (or an AOK) - which limited the ways in which we could categorise these objects.
However, classification is not always a good thing. I was reading a book recently, called What is the What by Dave Eggers. In the opening scene of this book, a man who is a refugee from Sudan and now lives in America opens his door to a woman who asks to use his phone, only to find out that he is getting robbed. The woman locks herself into his room, and her accomplice walks in to watch the young man while they rob him. When the young man resists, the woman’s accomplice begins to hurt him, both of them classify each other as different things - this scene has a plethora of classification. The accomplice tries several times to stop the young man without violence. He looks at his dark skin, and since he also identifies as an African-American, he decides to call the young man his brother, and ask him to let them rob him, because they are basically brothers. However, when the young man doesn’t stop, the accomplice begins to show his more prejudiced side by categorising this man as a Nigerian (because he is black, he is from Africa, and all men that are from Africa are from Nigeria), and yells and kicks him repeatedly in order to stop him from interfering. He hurts him several times, and immediately, this young man who has been through so much is afraid only now, because he knows this man is enjoying himself, and when people enjoy injuring others, they often abandon any care. However, the negative type of categorisation that is going on here is being carried out by the woman’s accomplice. He assumes that this black male is from Africa, and that if he is from Africa, he is from Nigeria. This type of classification is known as prejudice, and it has led to problematic things like racism and sexism. This is because this type of classification does not allow for the broadening of our world view, and it limits our perspective to only a handful of experiences. We will never know any different types of women if we assume that all women are silly and hysterical. We will never know anything else about this man’s culture if we assume that he is Nigerian, and refuse to hear the rest of his story, because if we’ve heard one, we’ve heard it all.
But what do we do? Do we completely stop classifying, in order to prevent such bigotry? I don’t think it is possible to function very well without categorisation. As the textbook mentions, classification is good, but we should also be careful about running into logical fallacies like hasty generalisation. In order to be aware of the world around us, and build better knowledge, with more variety, and not be bigoted, we must learn to think critically when we classify. If we see a woman on TV, and immediately discredit her because she must be crazy, we have to stop ourselves and think about why we would classify something in a certain way. We have to ask ourselves: could my classification be fallacious? Am I classifying it this way because of my past experience, and my past experience only? In this way, we not only avoid generalising too much, and we also become better thinkers, because we are aware of our own limitations, and we can use that as fodder for improvement.
'every time we walk into a room, we are not mystified by "the thing with four legs and a flat, shiny surface."' love that shade. Also, very creative approach with the journalist paragraph. It was a really fresh idea and I enjoyed it. I also want to ask, where do we stop asking whether our classifications are fallacious or not? When do we ask ourselves the question?
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