Kinds, Classes, and Clumps: A Preliminary Typology of Concepts and some Implications for the Study of Religions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Much mischief has been done in thinking about religion by a general failure to attend to the different kinds of concepts that the brain employs and the capabilities of each kind. The general assumption seems to have been instead that concepts are, or should be, all of the same kind. This paper attempts to redress that failure by offering a preliminary typology of concepts. It identifies three types: kinds, classes, and clumps, defined in terms of ‘essences’ (generative mechanisms), features, and (generally unbounded) sets of instances, respectively. It also points to degree of inferentiality as a property of these types that can be especially useful for thinking about religion, kinds being inference-rich, classes inference-fixed, and clumps inference-indeterminate. Although careful reflection at times transforms clumps into kinds or classes, it can also lead to the recognition that a putative kind or class may be better considered a clump. An example of the latter—hardly the only one—may be the term ‘religion.’ It is neither necessary nor possible for careful reflection entirely to abandon clump concepts for kinds and classes. Scholars do, however, need to exercise care in what they use each type of concept to try to do. Bien des erreurs ont été commises à propos de la religion à cause d’une incapacité générale à s’attacher aux différentes sortes de concepts que le cerveau utilise et les capacités de chacune. Il semble que la supposition générale ait été que tous les concepts doivent être de la même sorte. Cet article cherche à remédier à cette incapacité en offrant une typologie préliminaire des concepts. Il identifie trois sortes : les types, les classes et les agrégats, définis respectivement en termes d’ ‘essences’ (mécanismes génératifs), de traits et de séries de cas (généralement illimités). L’article nous amène également à envisager le degré d’ ‘inférentialité’ comme propriété de chacune de ces différentes sortes qui nous permettent de penser la religion : les types étant ainsi riches en ‘inférentialité’, les classes ayant une ‘inférentialité’ fixe, tandis que l’ ‘inférentialité’ des agrégats demeure indéterminée. Bien qu’une attention méticuleuse puisse à certains moments transformer les agrégats en types ou en classes, elle peut aussi nous amener à reconnaître qu’un type ou une classe supposée pourrait être considérée plutôt comme un agrégat. Un exemple de ce dernier cas de figure —loin d’être isolé— pourrait être le terme de ‘religion’. Il n’est pas nécessaire ni possible dans une réflexion soutenue d’abandonner le concept d’agrégat au profit des types ou des classes. Il est cependant nécessaire de porter une attention soutenue à la façon dont chaque concept est utilisé et à ce qui en est fait.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.043 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.025 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".