A now classic test on this is “Which is the odd one out? Cow, Chicken or Grass?” Anglo-saxon (NA, England) tends to be based on categories, grass is the odd one out as its a vegitable. Asia, African, Soouth Europe, Celts tend to eliminate chicken as the cow has a relationship with crass.

Now this has implications for social computing. By increasing tags (a form of category) we do enable richer meaning to emerge but it is limited by common use of language and sophistication of tags. If instead we look at the network relationships we get richer meaning faster.

I can see how this reflects the way we think already, albeit in a liberal way (“I don’t care what you call yourself, as far as I’m concerned you’re a friend/colleague/worker…”). I can see how it could challenge us, in dangerous ways (“fish, dolphin, who cares when you’re hungry?”) What I can’t see is how it challenges us in a good way.

Now, there are times when those “essential” characteristics of Socrates don’t matter: If he’s a dead organ donor, he’s a sac of collectibles to be evaluated purely in terms of the condition of his liver. And his essence doesn’t mean he can cut in line. Nevertheless, some characteristics that seem more telling, more important, more essential..

But, we can acknowledge that intuition without falling for the rest of essentialism. The essence isn’t necessarily definable. It isn’t necessarily know-able or certain. There isn’t necessarily only one essence for each thing that makes it what it “really” is. Those essences don’t necessarily go together in an orderly way. And they are not independent of us, at least in the sense that they strike us as essential because we care about such things.

So, yes, it matters that we value Socrates as a searcher for wisdom over categorizing him as snub-nosed, at least if we’re trying to understand Socrates. But that doesn’t get us very far into essences.

It seems to me that one of the most interesting things about moving away from the taxonomy-centered approach means we no longer need to see categorizations as exclusive. It frees our methods to act like multiple sets of circumstances can be true simultaneously.

Previously there might be a conflict between certain categorizations. You can’t be a mamal and a insect; fiction and non-fiction. To make taxonomy work, we need certainly.

But this puts a strain on our thinking – especially when using subjective terms where there are other variables.

So, was Clinton a good president at home? Was Clinton a good president in terms of the Rwandan crisis. You probably get different answers. And this is why we just can’t answer the question “was Clinton a good president”. Because it’s not a straightforward classification. Were genetically modified crops progress?

And this is why truth and falsity seem harder to grasp, and why what counts as knowledge, harder to reconcile.

Do we still say some facets are essential? It seems like the debate about essences is way too big for this space, buy by its nature I’m very wary of any attempt to take the certainty of the analytic truths of mathematics or logic (‘triangles are three sided’, ‘x or not x’) and apply them to the synthetic truths of observation and testimony (‘grass is green’ or ‘every nice girl loves a sailor’).