The Categorization Imperative

[guesswest]

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As our mood improves when do we switch from unhappy to happy? If I were rich, what amount exactly makes me so?

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aeeest beat me to the bulk of my response by bringing up Hume's idea of constant conjunction - but I just want to pick up on the above quickly.

It seems to me like this is a fallacy insofar as it does what we tend to do when we talk about the human urge, innate or otherwise, to categorize experience. It's pointing to the arbitrary nature of one category or process of categorization by referencing another solid one. DS does that a lot in defence of his utilitarian mantra.

If our categories really are arbitrary it doesn't make sense to pick at them like this. To ask, as in the example, when we switch from happiness to unhappiness, presupposes the distinction that's under attack - we need categorized notions of happiness and unhappiness to say there's no single point (as I'm sure luckyme is implying), or say there is. It's more or less impossible to attack the legitimacy of our tendency to categorise because we find ourselves using categories to do so.

The suggestion that categorization is an essential part of being human is about more than an observation that we invariably do it, it's a more fundamental claim that categorization is an integral part of reason.