ON THE ORIGIN AND KNOWLEDGE OF CATEGORIES

The object of the project is the study of philosophical categories. In this project, however, these are not taken to be classificatory abstract devices that answer the question what is there? and then offer an order of reality in different hierarchical levels of being. Rather, categories are ultimate metaphysical structures through which our thought about the world is to be constructed, and by which the referential capacity of language could be explained. Identity, causality and object/entity are the categories that we have in mind as paradigmatic of these sort of structures and along the project we also aim at establishing this subsidiary hypothesis.

Despite the indisputable metaphysical character of the main question of the project, it has also a significant underlying naturalistic inclination that takes into account the different studies and theoretical interpretations that, on the question about categories, different áreas of scientific knowledge, such as Linguistics, Evolutionary and Developmental Psychology, or Social Cognition are actually putting over the table. Thus, we distinguish five, non-exclusive, main axes sustaining different approaches to philosophical categories. According to the modal approach, categories are those structures without which reality/language/thought are impossible. In consequence, their knowledge must be a priori. According to the psychological approach, categories correspond to extremely general concepts, such as causality or object, that are acquired in very early stages of child development, and perhaps in other animals. According to the innatist approach, if providing an account of conceptual capacities in children presupposes some kind of comprehension of very abstract notions of causality, it seems natural to anchor those capacities in innate knowledge. On the other hand, while these approaches see categories as a structural part of thought and reality, the social interaction approach questions whether our thought has in fact such a determinate structure. In extreme versions of this view, reality is seen as mere social construction or categories understood as a direct product of human interests. According to the metalinguistic approach categories are determined and configured by the use of language and, then, our way of categorizing reality could diverge between different conceptual and linguistic frames. We believe that there are fundamental points of intersection among these approaches that can be the guide towards a general understanding of philosophical categories.

In general terms, we aim at understanding philosophical categories, taking into account very different results and debates that, from different perspectives and scientific fields, are being offered nowadays for this traditional metaphysical question.