Metaphysics is an area that I know litle about, hence I’m drawn, like a moth to the light, to humiliate myself with ignorant comments/questions. I doubt that I’m alone, but one never knows … anything apparently.
My first is regarding the nature of the logic of the arguments, which seems, to my brief readings, to be full of extremely linear equality statements. A is a member of B therefore C, etc. Yet membership in sets is rarely sharp edged. Yes, I know about fuzzy set theory (and have found it of limited utility, but that may only reveal that I do not understand it well enough) but even that does not catch the flavor of real human perception and, consequently of human thought.
A concept is a blurry thing.
It is based on our experience with multiple past exemplars and never defined de novo. Out of multiple past exemplars we create a prototype and a space around that prototype that extends a probability cloud along various perceptual and cognitive dimensions. Color, shape, size, smell, function, current drive significance: all these and many others, are dimensions of varying relevence to any particular concept that we form. A is classified as a B because it is more densely in B’s conceptual space cloud than in any other’s. This is a nonlinear process. The point that is the prototype, and the exact shape of the cloud, changes with the addition of new exemplars to the data set.
None of us acquire knowledge by constant learning of X equals B plus C; we learn by experiencing examples. Neither has society learned a set of static definitions as it acquires knowledge.
So the questions: Is there an extant epistemology that is based less on the linear mathematics of traditional formalized logic, and instead utilizes nonlinear systems theory as a tool? Or to ask in a different way, that models cultural knowledge acquistion on the mechanisms utilized by individuals in real life? Are the principles of epistemolgy comparable for individuals and society? Or have I merely restated induction?