Andrew Gray wrote:
And here we come to the fundamental problem. It's all very well to say we need to redevelop the category system, to say that the system is broken and failing and so on, but in order to do this we need to *decide what categories are*.
We have yet to manage this. Everyone brings their own conceptions to the table; we regularly get complaints about the stupidity and wastefulness of the system, which are fundamentally just "my preferred concept of what this system is is not being used".
We need to sort this out before we go any further - and the problem is that both sides are entirely convinced that theirs is the self-evident only way to work.
That's well said.
Another way to tackle this might to ask a different question. "What are categories," seems better suited for a philosophy seminar. We might get more useful answers if we ask, "What can people use categories to do?"
With a list like that, we can figure out which uses we'd like to support, and from there I'd expect the argument over which system to use would be much easier.
William