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Noesis: Perception and Every Day Classification

Article · January 2008

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Richard Smiraglia
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Noesis: Perception and Every Day Classification
Richard P. Smiraglia

1. Perception and KOS

This paper is about the role of human perception in every day classification. Systems for
knowledge organization (KOS) occupy a broad spectrum from universal bibliographic
classifications to emergent domain-specific taxonomies to social tagging with many variations
between. On many levels it is appropriate to suggest that perception is a crucial element in the
viability of any KOS. Related to cognition but colored by individual experience, perception acts
as a filter that provides contextual information about any phenomenon, including its potential
categorical membership. Perception is moderated culturally—more formal systems for KO
operate in specific cultural milieu that require the user to conform perception to the reality
modeled in the system. But recently emerging so-called “social” systems exercise little or no (or
at least very subliminal) cultural conformity. Every tag cloud is dominated by terms that can be
seen to conform clearly to some norm among the taggers, but that core is surrounded by
variability. Perception is obviously an epistemological element influencing that variability.

2. Every day classification

Of course, one can also posit a kind of “every day classification,” which is rife throughout
human experience. Every human action involves decision-making, which by its nature produces
categorization. Jacob (2001, 81) reviews several approaches to understanding the human
processes that contribute to a “cognitive core” (p. 81) and suggests classification needs to be
analyzed by studying its impact within the settings of everyday activity” (p. 96). In an earlier
paper Jacob (1994) emphasizes the importance of categories as “building blocks of cognition” p.
101). She also makes an important distinction between the concepts of “categorization” and
“classification,” by contrasting the cognitive function of the former with the formal
systematization of the latter. That is, humans engage in categorization constantly as part of the
experience of being. Classification arises as a system of formal constraints that embody cultural
assumptions (or demands) about the categories that are the products of human cognition.
Discussing what she terms “cross-disciplinary dialogue” (p. 108), she suggests rigid schemas
must be rejected because of the relative (and different) contextual experience of participants.
This suggests that traditional, formal approaches to classification might better be accommodated
simultaneously with more fluid structures.

The environment of the semantic web is one in which mutuality is encouraged and a multiplicity
of vocabularies reside side-by-side. Jacob’s approach to cross-disciplinary communication
suggests one way of looking at the issues of vocabulary regulation and category infixion in the
multiplexity of the semantic web environment. No particular, rigid, language or set of categories
(for a classification is a language of sorts, see Jacob’s reference to Foucault (1994, 103) is
preferred. Rather, many are allowed and crosswalks are created to encourage movement back
and forth in much the way bridges facilitate circumlocution in Amsterdam’s grid of canals. One
can take the water, or the road, or one may switch back and forth as dictated by the potential for
benefit and forward motion.

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I would like to suggest that in addition to Jacob’s notion of contextualization, we also have to
comprehend the phenomenologist’s notion of noesis (perception) when we look at the human (or
every day) conceptualization of classification as a social action, in the semantic web or
elsewhere. One man’s beer is not necessarily another’s biertje or even his Bier. The notion of
“beer” is shaped by each person’s expectations in the moment of encounter. What good does it
do to posit a category, if every interpreter’s infixion of it is different? The answer is visible in the
disparity in terminology seen in the tag clouds that emerge as the products of today’s social
classification. Munk and Mørk (2007) point to the notion of least effort to explain the
bandwagon effect seen in tagging environments. But as Kipp and Campbell (2006) pointed out,
variation in terminology is rife. One good way of understanding the meaning of this variability is
noesis.

3. Noesis

Noesis is a perceptual component of Husserl’s phenomenological approach to human experience.

According to Husserl ([1913] 1958), phenomenology provides an epistemological tool for
analyzing isolates, which Husserl refers to as eideia, that are recognized as absolute and
independent entities. Intentional human perception of each entity is framed by human experience
and expressed through a filter of ego-acts such as volition and feeling—which he calls noesis.
How we perceive a thing is filtered by our experiential feelings about it. The corresponding
objects of our perception are called noems. For every isolate (or eideia) we must take into
account both intentional human perception and the empirical nature of the object perceived.
Noesis and noem thus reside in a circular relationship that brackets each eideia. Husserl’s
traditional example is a very real apple tree, which can be described in absolute terms, but can
also be bracketed by its noetic value (for instance, pastoral) and its noema (the apples, the shade,
etc.). What this suggests is not the usual reflection that the presence of a thesaurus would “help”
(see Noruzi 2007), but rather, that multiplicity, such as that suggested by Jacob, should be
encouraged and facilitated with the use of dynamic crosswalks.

4. Mailboxes

In order to extend the metaphor and simultaneously to embrace the concept of cultural variation
(or conformity) we use the mundane example of a postal box (or mailbox). Photographs of
mailboxes from different locales are compared to demonstrate the noetic process. Here are some
examples for the purpose of this abstract:

Edinburgh Mexico City Toronto

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By positing the eideia (here the “mailbox”) we “bracket” the phenomenon (to return to later) and
instead focus on perception and varying realizations. We see that mailboxes are devices for
communication (yes, for posting letters, but more directly as loci for handbills and graffiti); we
see that as icons of government mailboxes are variously efficient, sleek, sturdy, decorous, pious,
modern, and timeless. This is a very simple illustration (for the purpose of this abstract) but it
already demonstrates the potential power of a noetic analysis of every day classification.

We can extend the illustration further with the process of naïve classification (Beghtol 2003) by
analyzing the essential empirical and common characteristics of the mailboxes observed. Beghtol
posits another bracketing process—the statement of purpose—as a control over the extent of
empirical observation. In this case we look for likeness and differentness. We see that all of the
boxes are alike in that they are:

Sturdy
Placed at roadside
Receptacles for mail

We see that they differ by:

Color
Proximity to walkways
Style
Presence or absence of handbills, graffiti.

And so forth--this classification is naïve because it represents merely the grouping of simple
empirical observations in this particular instance. Combined with the noetic process we can see
that despite the sameness of function, the influence of cultural priorities dictates differences in
expression or realization, which in turn affect the noetic character of the eideia. Noesis helps
explain perceptual differences that arise in even naïve classification. In fact, Kipp (2007) has
noticed affective use of tags, which appear contextually irrelevant to the casual observer but
seem to be meaningful to taggers. She suggests taggers see their relationships to documents in
many different ways; in particular some seem to express emotional and personal relationships.
Figure 1 is a tag cloud identified by Kipp (2007b) as one with clearly distinct user groups
contributing.

Figure 1. Nutrition tag-cloud

Clearly, there are tags related to health and nutrition alongside those related to recipes and
references, and still others with affective referents (lifehacks, for example). These kinds of
perceptual differences that arise in tag clouds suggest different user perceptions among those
contributing tags. Perceptual differences are a sign of noetic activity in this very prevalent form

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of every day social classification. Several tag clouds (formed from searching “postal” and
“mailbox”) from del.icio.us are reproduced in Figure 2, to demonstrate further.

The research paper proposed here falls into the ISKO conference themes of epistemological
foundations and users and social context. It will include an expanded discussion of noesis as a
means of comprehending the role of perception in every day classification. The naïve
classification of mailboxes is included as a demonstration of noesis and as an example of the role
of cultural conformity. The purpose of this research is to increase understanding of the role of
cognition in every day classification by developing a fuller profile of perception.

References

Beghtol, Clare. 2003. Classification for information retrieval and classification for knowledge
discovery: relationships between “professional” and “naïve” classifications. Knowledge
organization 30: 64-73.
Husserl, Edmund. [1913] 1958. Ideas: general introduction to pure phenomenology, tr. by W.R.
Boyce Gibson. New York: Macmillan.
Jacob, Elin K. 1994. Classification and crossdisciplinary communications: breaching boundaries
imposed by classificatory structure. In Albrechtsen, Hanne and Oernager, Susannne eds.
Knowledge organization and quality management: Proceedings of the Third
International ISKO conference, 20-24 June, 1994, Copenhagen, Denmark. Advances in
knowledge organization 4. Würzburg: Ergon, pp. 101-8.
Jacob, Elin K. 2001. The everyday world of work: two approaches to the investigation of
classification in context. Journal of documentation 57: 76-99.

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 Kipp, Margaret E.I. 2007a. @toread and Cool: Tagging for Time, Task and Emotion. The 8th
Information Architecture Summit, Las Vegas, Nevada, March 22-26, 2007.
http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1947/.

-----. 2007b. E-mail 15 November 2007.

Kipp, Margaret E.I. and Campbell, D. Grant. 2006. Patterns and Inconsistencies in Collaborative
Tagging Systems: An Examination of Tagging Practices. Proceedings of the 2006 Annual
Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Austin,
November 3-8, 2006. http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00008315/.
Munk, Timme Bisgaard and Mørk, Kristian. 2007. Folksonomy, the power law & the
significance of the least effort. Knowledge organization 34: 16-33.
Noruzi, Alireza. 2006. Folksonomies: (un)controlled vocabulary? Knowledge organization
33:.199-203.

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