ABSTRACT
Humans come to know and experience the world through various categories that organize it into knowable fragments. All rational beings understand the world in terms of space and time, and deploy categories such as cause and effect, substance, unity, plurality, necessity, possibility, and reality. That is, whenever we think about anything, we do so in certain ways; for example, as having causes, as existing or not existing, as being one thing or many things, as being real or imaginary, as being something that has to exist or doesn’t have to exist. We think this not simply because we passively reflect the way the world is, but rather because that is the way that our minds order experience. There can be no knowledge without sensation, but sense data alone cannot provide knowledge. Throughout history, people tend to think in terms of categories that help them to demarcate difference. In the process, we also shape the world with the language we use to describe it.
