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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT
To organize information, librarians create structures. These structures grow from a logic that goes back at least as far as Aristotle. It is the basis of classification as we practice it, and thesauri and subject headings have developed from it. Feminist critiques of logic suggest that logic is gendered in nature. This article will explore how these critiques play out in contemporary standards for the organization of information. Our widely used classification schemes embody principles such as hierarchical force that conform to traditional/Aristotelian logic. Our subject heading strings follow a linear path of subdivision. Our thesauri break down subjects into discrete concepts. In thesauri and subject heading lists we privilege hierarchical relationships, reflected in the syndetic structure of broader and narrower terms, over all other relationships. Are our classificatory and syndetic structures gendered? Are there other options? Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice (1982), Women's Ways of Knowing (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986), and more recent related research suggest a different type of structure for women's knowledge grounded in "connected knowing." This article explores current and potential elements of connected knowing in subject access with a focus on the relationships, both paradigmatic and syntagmatic, between concepts.
INTRODUCTION
The organization of information as practiced in catalogs, indexing and abstracting databases, and other tools of bibliographic control is primarily based on traditional or Aristotelian logic. The result is a linear, hierarchical structure made up of mutually exclusive categories. Feminists have critiqued logic, just as there has been criticism of the organization of information as gendered. This article examines traditional/Aristotelian logic and its feminist critiques together with principles and standards of the organization of information and its critiques. It is a first attempt at synthesis of these concepts. It takes threads from these various literatures and traditions and, although it may not weave a fabric, it may string the warp and suggest patterns for the weft.
TRADITIONAL/ARISTOTLIAN LOGIC
Logic has been called "the general science of inference" (Blackburn, 1994, p. 221), or as the Oxford English Dictionary elaborates, "the branch of philosophy that treats of the forms of thinking in general, and more especially of inference and of scientific method" (Simpson & Weiner, n.d.). Traditional or Aristotelian logic is a philosophical practice that uses the concept of the categorical syllogism as a foundation. A categorical syllogism defines the relationships between categories such as:
All human beings are mortal. All Greeks are human beings. Therefore, all Greeks are mortal.
This syllogistic form implies a hierarchy: mortals make up a broad class containing the subclass of human beings, which in turn contains the subsubclass Greeks. Or it may be expressed as a Venn diagram (See Figure 1).
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
Alternatively, a categorical syllogism may define the relationships between categories and an individual instance such as:
All human beings are mortal. Socrates is a human being. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
A class or subclass will, of course, normally contain more than one individual or subclass, as indicated by the Oxford English Dictionary: "class, n.... 6. a. gen. A number of individuals (persons or things) possessing common attributes, and grouped together under a general or 'class' name; a kind, sort, division. (Now the leading sense.) b. in Logical classification" (Simpson & Weiner, n.d.). The class mortals contains the subclass human beings, which contains groups such as Greeks and individuals such as Socrates.
Each of the first two statements in the syllogism is a premise, "a statement of something about some subject" (Aristotle, Prior Analytics, I.I.24a):
This statement may be universal or particular or indefinite. By universal, I mean a statement which applies to all, or to none, of the subject; by particular a statement which applies to some, or does not apply to all; by indefinite, a statement which applies or does not apply without reference to universality or particularity. (Aristotle, Prior Analytics, I.I.24a)
The first statement in the categorical syllogism is a universal premise relating to "all" and the second is a particular premise relating to a particular group or individual. The third statement is the conclusion drawn from the two premises. This is the format of Aristotle's first form, the only form of syllogism that he deemed able to produce true conclusions. (1) It is also the basis for the hierarchy found in a conventional classificatory structure.
Key to the functioning of logic are the three "laws of thought": (2)
* Law of Non-Contradiction: Nothing can be both A and Not-A. e.g., Nothing can be both mortal and Not-mortal.
* Law of Identity: Whatever is A is A. e.g., Whatever is mortal is mortal.
* Law of the Excluded Middle: Everything is either A or Not-A. e.g., Everything is either mortal or Not-mortal.
These three laws taken together enforce the boundaries of classes so that classes are watertight and so that there is nothing left unaccounted for. Everything is either in or outside of any given class. This introduces further hierarchy in that everything is defined by being A or Not-A with A being privileged and Not-A being defined only by its relationship to A. The relationship between the two is, then, hierarchical in the sense that A is independent and dominant and Not-A is dependent and subordinate.
Traditional/Aristotelian logic focuses on deductive reasoning as epitomized by the syllogisms above. Deductive reasoning infers particular instances from the general/universal such as inferring that the particular class of persons, Greeks, or the particular individual, Socrates, is mortal because they are human beings. A weaker form of logic derives from inductive reasoning in which general or universal premises are inferred from a selection of particular cases. Because it is typically impossible to examine all possible cases, inferences from induction are not absolute. It is always possible that some exception exists. For example, if we depend on inductive logic, the fact that no human being with whom we are acquainted is not mortal, does not mean that there is none. So, deductive reasoning, working from a universal truth to the specific instance, is certain. Inductive reasoning, working from the specific to the general, cannot incontrovertibly establish a universal truth. Thus, only deductive reasoning commands the full force of traditional/Aristotelian logic.
FEMINIST CRITIQUES OF LOGIC
Logic, in particular traditional logic, has been the object of feminist critique from various perspectives. As Susan Hekman (1990) summarizes it, "most contemporary feminists agree on the diagnosis of this problem: since Plato, and most particularly since the Enlightenment, reason and rationality have been defined in exclusively masculine terms; the 'Man of Reason' is gendered, not generic" (p. 34). (3) Andrea Nye (1990), Luce Irigaray (1985) and Val Plumwood (1993), while voicing different views on what should be done, agree that "from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and beyond, .the philosophical tradition of the west has delineated a concept of reason which is exclusive of women and other oppressed groups and is most fully represented by privileged social groups" (Plumwood, 1993, p. 436).
In logic, the knowing subject (the person who achieves knowledge) is traditionally masculine, or, as Plumwood denotes him, "the master" (1993, p. 454). Reason has been the province of men since at least Aristotle, through Descartes and the Enlightenment and beyond with emotion being the province of women (Lloyd, 1984/1991, p. 174; Plumwood, 1993, p. 437). Emotion is excluded from any role in reason or logic, resulting in a familiar set of dichotomies:
Male / female Reason / emotion
in which the two elements have a hierarchical relation to each other. The three laws of thought enforce these dichotomies, even though, as Nancy Jay (1981) points out, they are not truly contradictory:
Although gender distinctions are regularly dichotomous, they do not always carry out the full implications of form A/Not-A phrasing. When they are so phrased, men and women are conceived of in ways that cannot be a consequence only of conceptualization and reinforcement of empirical distinctions between them. Concepts of femaleness and maleness come into being that have nothing whatever to do with human sexual differences, but follow from the nature of contradictory dichotomy itself.... To begin with, all dichotomous distinctions are not necessarily phrased as A/Not-A. Consider some differences between the phrasings A/B and A/Not-A. A and B are mere contraries, not logical contradictories, and continuity between them may be recognized without shattering the distinction. ... Continuity between terms is a logical impossibility for distinctions phrased as contradictories, as A/Not-A. Thus, men and women may be conceived as men and not-men, or women and not-women, between which there is logically not continuity, or as two forms (A,B) of the class 'human' which may be supposed to have a good deal in common. Further, in A/B distinctions both terms have positive reality; Not-A is only the privation or absence of A. ... The structure of A/Not-A is such that a third term is impossible: everything and anything must be either A or Not-A. Such distinctions are all-encompassing. They not only cover every possible case of the category (gender, propositions, and so forth) to which they are applied, but they can, and logically do, order "the entire universe, known and knowable. (p. 44)
The implication of traditional/Aristotelian logic, then, is that women are Not-men. They (we) are outside of the category. Whereas, if instead of the dichotomy of contradiction (A/Not-A) we accept that while women and men are different, they are not opposites (A/B), women need not be defined as having characteristics that are opposite to those of men (e.g., reason/emotion).
Excluded along with women is emotion in particular and women's experience in general. Traditional/Aristotelian logic denies the value of affect and of practical activities. Lorraine Code (1991) explains how the logical knowing subject, by being at an emotional distance from what is to be known, needs to be an autonomous individual, independent of all subjective factors (pp. 110-121). The process of gaining knowledge through logic has the aura of neutrality with the implication that if the process is followed, including maintaining the autonomy of the knowing subject, knowledge, or even truth, will result. (4) Descartes reduced thought to an "orderly chain of deductions" that he believed reflected the understanding of the human mind (Lloyd, 1984/1991, pp. 169-170). Even though we have twentieth-century evidence that people's ordinary thinking does not follow syllogistic reasoning, the pattern persists (Oliver, 2002, pp. 210-211).
A major flaw with the system of logical syllogisms is with the construction of premises (Nye, 2002, p. 192; Oliver, 2002, p. 222). There is no mechanism for ensuring that premises themselves are not biased. The knowing subject's autonomy becomes a liability in establishing premises at a distance from the object to be known. A false premise does not necessarily cause the system to grind to a halt--it may simply produce a false conclusion.
So both the structure and the content of logic have been the objects of feminist criticism. There are two general reactions: to reject traditional/ Aristotelian logic or to adapt traditional/Aristotelian logic. Nye and Sandra Harding are among those suggesting the first option and Plumwood and Marjorie Hass the second. There is also the suggestion of simultaneous multiple approaches described below. However, regardless of the stream, emerging from a number of critiques is a search for richer, more situated logical models that rely on interdependence (5) or connectedness. This article will seek such a model for application in the organization of information.
LOGIC AND TOOLS FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF INFORMATION
Classification schemes, thesauri, subject headings, and other tools used in cataloging, indexing, and even metadata are grounded, to a greater or lesser degree, in logic and the hierarchy that grows from logic. The strongest link is between traditional/Aristotelian logic and library classification. Library classification is connected to the classification of science that developed from Aristotle and blossomed particularly in the nineteenth century. W.C. Berwick Sayers asserts in his canonical Manual of Classification (1926), "of the value of the study...
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