Spin by Degrees

Key to modern theories of classification is the notion of 'family resemblances'. A thing or relationship is a member of a class by degrees; membership in a class is on a continuum. The key question is "What is the threshold value at which an attribute of a thing or relationship becomes a member of a class?"

In a brief item in The Guardian for 26^th January 2006, "Can you measure politicians' spin?", Charles Arthur reports on a study by Professor David Skillicorn, which, in turn, is based on a "model of deception" developed by James Pennebaker. Pennebaker's model is based on four attributes/dimensions of a speech that indicate increased 'spin'.

• Reduced use of first-person pronouns ("I" and "we").
• Reduced use of such exception words as "unless" or "except".
• Increased use of 'negative emotion' words.
• Increased use of 'action' words.

What is one person's 'truth' may be another person's 'spin', which reminds me of Bertrand Russell's little language game of 'emotive conjugation': I'm firm; you're obstinate; he's pig-headed. (See Marien Helz's column in Word Worth, January 2005 [PDF]). It strikes me that there is something, here, of fuzzy logic. In fuzzy logic, there are fuzzy sets, which allow for "the gradual assessment of the membership of elements in relation to a set".

In today's Guardian, there was an article about which cities are the most expensive to live in based on a survey done by The Economist's Intelligence Unit. The metric that they use is "cost of living", but that's only one dimension of "expensiveness". Other costs that occur to me are 'psychic' costs, 'ecological' costs, and 'opportunity' costs. I wonder how the cities might rank on some of these other dimensions. We need to be aware of the attributes/dimensions that we choose for sorting things into classes ... and all the more reason for using faceted classification.