John, you wrote:
6. The theory of prototypes was well established by Aristotle in
his biological writings. His logical writings were the source
of the theory of categories that Lakoff criticized. But in his
more voluminous biological writings, Aristotle argued for a
bottom-up theory of analysis based on *prototypes* rather than
top-down definitions. He explicitly said that any definition
of species or genera must be based on a detailed description
of a specimen, and that the definitions must *change* when
new discoveries are made. Kant and many others made similar
observations -- but with the term 'schema' rather than prototype.
Are you saying that Kant’s schema was a bottom-up, empirical development of categories? It’s good to hear that Aristotle had such good sense, but I didn’t expect that from Kant.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
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