Abstract
‘The questions facing us, then, are: What is the nature of categories? Are they real? Do they exist in nature, or are they made up by people? Does our language determine what categories we have? What are the effects of using categories?’ (p. 12) These are the primary questions within Categories We Live By: How We Classify Everyone and Everything. Gregory L’Murphy's study of categories extends over years of research and teaching, providing a thorough analysis of the philosophical, linguistic, legal and medical concerns with categorisation. The volume has a distinctive ability to remain perceptive and question our existing knowledge of categories, depicted in part one. Particularly Murphy focuses on the who – whether that be philosophers, linguists or governmental bodies and extending to the size of the categories – gender, race and mortality to categorisation of food products (Chapter 9, ‘Peanut Butter, Potato Chips, Almond Milk…’). The comprehensive analysis offers valuable insights into the history and cognitive processing underlying human categorisation. Undoubtedly, the topic of categories is not one with a singular conclusion but rather ‘common morals’ that Murphy evaluates, among them: ‘The Inescapability and Inadequacy of Rules’ (p. 147), ‘Should We Use Categories at All?’ (p. 149), his scepticism towards ‘Expert’ help (p. 152), language is able to offer a ‘decent first guess’ (p. 154) as to why things exist in the same category. Murphy also explores the relationship between categories and power as well as the existence of arbitrariness and its impact on the inability to definitively categorise. He concludes that categories are conveniences and ‘categories we live by also can be categories we created in order to live by them’ (p. 164). All of these conclusions are promptly evaluated and discussed throughout the chapters, using relevant and contextualised case studies in our modern world.