Towards an epistemic-logical theory of categorization

Willem Conradie (1) , Sabine Frittella (2) , Alessandra Palmigiano (1, 3) , Michele M Piazzai (3) , Apostolos Tzimoulis (3) , Nachoem M Wijnberg (1, 4)

1 UJ - University of Johannesburg [South Africa]
2 SDS - Sécurité des Données et des Systèmes
3 Applied Logic
4 UvA - University of Amsterdam [Amsterdam] = Universiteit van Amsterdam

Categorization systems are widely studied in psychology, sociology, and organization theory as information-structuring devices which are critical to decision-making processes. In the present paper, we introduce a sound and complete epistemic logic of categories and agents' categorical perception. The Kripke-style semantics of this logic is given in terms of data structures based on two domains: one domain representing objects (e.g. market products) and one domain representing the features of the objects which are relevant to the agents' decision-making. We use this framework to discuss and propose logic-based formalizations of some core concepts from psychological, sociological, and organizational research in catego-rization theory.

Mots clés: epistemic logic of categories; categorization; formal concepts; decision- making; common knowledge; formal concept analysis; prototype theory; category-spanning

Domaines: Logique en informatique [cs.LO]

Willem Conradie, Sabine Frittella, Alessandra Palmigiano, Michele M Piazzai, Apostolos Tzimoulis, et al.. Towards an epistemic-logical theory of categorization. 2017. ⟨hal-01509418⟩