Cognitive Foundations of Biological Reasoning: Categorization & Inference Among American Folk & Itza Maya

生物推理的认知基础：分类

• 批准号: 9319798
• 负责人: Scott Atran
• 金额: $ 28.99万
• 依托单位: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1994
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1994-05-15 至 1997-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9319798&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Cognitive; Foundations; Biological; Reasoning; Categorization

9319798 ATRAN This research will explore how people categorize animals and plants and reason about them. The focus is on how the structure of categories, such as the set of taxonomic relations that hold between DEER and MAMMAL or OAK and TREE, constrain inferences about the distribution of biological properties among the categories. For example, when people discover that both deer and cows have multi-chambered stomachs or hoof-and-mouth disease, to what extent do people then predict that other animals also have multi-chambered stomachs or hoof-and-mouth disease? More generally, to what extent does this categorical structure constrain inferences that causally relate biological taxa to one another, and to what extent are culturally-specific belief systems, or "theories," able to modify that structure and hence change the nature of biological reasoning? These interrelated issues of category formation and induction are central to a broader understanding of conceptual development both in everyday thinking and in science. This research will compare biological categorization and reasoning among groups of American folk and Itza, the last Maya native to Guatemala's rainforest. This comparison also will involve looking into the influences of science on American folkbiology as well as the effects of cultural expertise on Itza folkbiology. In particular, the studies will address three questions: 1) To what extent is there a universal folkbiological taxonomy? 2) How is this taxonomy used in reasoning? 3) Where, and how, do differences in theories and cultural belief systems affect folkbiological categorization and reasoning? The project will build on previous fieldwork and laboratory studies, bringing together recent theoretical and methodological innovations in anthropology and psychology to promote an interdisciplinary cognitive science. It will provide a way to measure levels of consensus in categorization and reasoning among individuals within cultures, be tween cultures, and between the folktaxonomies of different cultures and scientific taxonomies. Biological inventories of local flora and fauna provide crucial comparative data. The work will employ multidisciplinary techniques across cultures to analyze theoretically the relationship between category formation and category-based reasoning for a cognitive domain, biology, which is at the center of human knowledge and understanding of the natural world. Although this project is specifically designed to address issues in basic cognition, tasks involving categorization of living kinds and reasoning about biological properties and diseases can inform our broader understanding of environment, health, and science education. ***

小行星9319798 这项研究将探讨人们如何对动物和植物进行分类，并对它们进行推理。 重点是如何结构的类别，如一套分类关系，鹿和哺乳动物或橡树和树之间举行，约束推论之间的分布类别的生物特性。 例如，当人们发现鹿和牛都有多腔胃或口蹄疫时，人们在多大程度上预测其他动物也有多腔胃或口蹄疫？ 更一般地说，这种分类结构在多大程度上限制了将生物分类群相互因果联系起来的推论，在多大程度上特定于文化的信仰体系或“理论”能够修改这种结构，从而改变生物推理的性质？ 范畴形成和归纳的这些相互关联的问题对于更广泛地理解日常思维和科学中的概念发展至关重要。 这项研究将比较生物分类和推理群体之间的美国民间和伊察，最后一个玛雅土著危地马拉的热带雨林。 这种比较也将涉及到美国民俗生物学的科学的影响，以及对伊察民俗生物学的文化专业知识的影响。 特别是，这些研究将解决三个问题：1）在多大程度上是一个普遍的民俗生物分类？ 2)这种分类法在推理中是如何使用的？ 3)理论和文化信仰体系的差异在哪里以及如何影响民俗生物学的分类和推理？ 该项目将建立在以前的实地考察和实验室研究的基础上，汇集人类学和心理学最近的理论和方法创新，以促进跨学科的认知科学。 它将提供一种方法来衡量文化内的个人之间、文化之间以及不同文化的民间分类法和科学分类法之间在分类和推理方面的共识水平。 当地植物群和动物群的生物清单提供了重要的比较数据。 这项工作将采用跨文化的多学科技术，从理论上分析类别形成和基于类别的推理之间的关系，为认知领域，生物学，这是人类知识和理解自然世界的中心。 虽然这个项目是专门设计来解决基本认知的问题，但涉及生物种类分类和生物特性和疾病推理的任务可以为我们对环境，健康和科学教育的更广泛理解提供信息。 ***