Dan Bolser  wrote:

> Ever met someone and known how they would think in general given a few
> specific examples of their thoughts?
>
> Given the massive number of variables underlying 'psychology', do a few
> stable psychotypes emerge out of the chaos?
>
> Can we look at these attractors as self reproducing, self reinforcing,
> co-evolving entities in a psycological ecosystem?
>
> Does the 'systematic metaphor' make sense in this case? For example can we
> look at a well armoured beatle - and see its analogue in certain human
> psycotypes?
>
> Are cultures ecosystems?
>
> Does it make any sense to ask these questions?
>
> Ta,
> Dan.

Scott Atran has made these sorts of claims in one or both of these
articles (I don't have them to hand right now):

Atran, Scott. 1995. Causal constraints on categories and categorical
constraints on biological reasoning across cultures. In Causal
cognition: a multidisciplinary debate, edited by D. Sperber, D. Premack
and A. J. Premack. Oxford, UK: New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford
University Press.
---. 1998. Folk biology and the anthropology of science: cognitive
universals and the cultural particulars. Behavioral and Brain Sciences
21 (4):547-609.

I don't think so - psychological categories are either predetermined in
the very old parts of our brain such as the limbic system, or they are
culturally acquired as conventions, or some mix of both. There will be a
sense in which the latter are stable states (as cultural evolutionarily
stable equilibria) but I doubt they form attractor points in the
mathematical sense.

A nice book on psychological categories is:

Griffiths, Paul E. 1997. What emotions really are: the problem of
psychological categories. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
-- 
John Wilkins
wilkins.id.au
"Men mark it when they hit, but do not mark it when they miss" 
                                               - Francis Bacon
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