The assignment events, objects, state of beings, etc., to an experiential category is a fundamental activity carried out by human (and by other animals). So rudimentary are the processes involved in categorizing that it is indeed impossible to imagine conscious awareness to exist without the presence of categories. A considerable body of writing exists on categories dating from the times of Classical philosophy. Plato developed a categorical ontology and Aristotle produced one of the earliest examples of a complex understanding of basic ontologies. A number of other categorially structured ontologies have been proposed including those by Lowe, Westerhoff, Chisholm, etc. The book is an edited collection of up to the moment essays that address critical aspects on the understanding of categories and categorial systems. The perspectives included in the book are drawn from philosophy, psychology, theology, divinity, comparative cognition and facet theory. The authors are all renowned experts in the area of their writing. Topics addressed include both contemporary advances in the understanding of perennial debates and latest thinking upon how categories are employed to structure our experiences of the world we live in. The book is distinct as being written by philosophers and psychologists. The book is a collection of writings from selected academics at the fore of debates and understandings of categories in contemporary thought. The text provides a single source for contemporary scholarship in categories. No single text that brings together expositions of categorial experiences for students and academics within the above listed disciplines.

In this Research Topic the two editors bring together a series of articles that use facet theory and allied approaches to research. Since its inception in the work of Louis Guttman in the mid twentieth century, facet theory has become an established approach within social science research. In addition, over the past 70 years a wide range of research publications have appeared operating within the theoretical and analytic rubric of facet theory and for the last two decades a biennial international conference has been held devoted to facet theory research. When using a facet theory approach, an implicit aim of the research within this framework is to bring together in an explicit manner a clear definition of the content area that is being investigated along with data analysis procedures. Integrating the explicit design of research content (for example, attitudes, values, etc) and its subsequent analysis (for example to identify the variables that are influential to respondents in relation to the specific area under investigation) allows for the construction of theory relating to the content area and for the meaningful measurement of complex research areas. The clear explication of an area of research content, is achieved through the use of a mapping sentence (MS). In a MS all of the pertinent variables (called facets) associated with the specific subject matter of the research study are specified in the form of a natural language sentence where facets (variables) are arrange to demonstrate how these theoretically relate to each other. Sub-levels of facets are defined in such a way as to capture the relationships of research variables (facets) to each other and the overall research domain. Background variables are also stated in the MS along with a specified range over which observations will be made to test the veracity of the structural hypotheses (statements regarding the proposed manner in which variables are related to the study’s content) implicit in the MS. Furthermore, by using a MS the researcher is able to select variables that appropriately address the area of content. Traditionally, facet theory has been used in quantitative research but has recently been applied to the analysis of qualitative and philosophical research which incorporates a declarative mapping sentence in such research and which is included in this Research Topic. In order to interrogate these structural hypotheses, quantitative data analysis procedures are employed, such as Smallest Space Analysis (SSA) and Partial Order Scalogram Analysis by base Coordinates (POSAC). In SSA the structure of the content area of interest (the variables that have been included in the MS) can be interrogated as observations that have been made along the specified outcome range, are represented geometrically (as partitioned regions) in a concept-space related to the specific research domain. Individual respondents may also be investigated in terms of their profile of facet related scores using POSAC. A similar approach is employed when analysing information from qualitative facet theory research, which interrogates the structural hypotheses present in the declarative mapping sentence through approaches such as content and narrative analyses. This Research Topic presents work from scholars with particular emphasis upon how the approach has developed both theoretically and in terms of its application, new areas of application, and advances in theory development.

This book is the second edition of Facet Theory and the Mapping Sentence: Evolving Philosophy, Use and Application (2014). It consolidates the qualitative and quantitative research positions of facet theory and delves deeper into their qualitative application in psychology, social and the behavioural sciences and in the humanities. In their traditional quantitative guise, facet theory and its mapping sentence incorporate multi-dimensional statistics. They are also a way of thinking systematically and thoroughly about the world. The book is particularly concerned with the development of the declarative mapping sentence as a tool and an approach to qualitative research. The evolution of the facet theory approach is presented along with many examples of its use in a wide variety of research domains. Since the first edition, the major advance in facet theory has been the formalization of the use of the declarative mapping sentence and this is given a prominent position in the new edition. The book will be compelling reading for students at all levels and for academics and research professionals from the humanities, social sciences and behavioural sciences.

This book presents the facet theoretical framework as a tool for facilitating the conception of complex animal behaviour research and the design of research procedures through employing mapping sentences. Using the facet theoretical framework, this book takes a holistic view of bird behaviour. Components of bird behavior are identified and then reassembled to facilitate an understanding of the behaviour in the context of its natural occurrence. This provides new insight on both the parts of the behaviour and how these interact as a whole. The multi-faceted approach to designing, evaluating and understanding bird behavior presented offers a template that is adaptable for investigating a wide variety of avian species and different forms of behaviour. Behavioural biologists, animal and comparative psychologists, other natural and behavioural scientists, as well as students of these disciplines will find this book to be an interesting and enlightening read.

In this book, Hackett introduces the traditional usage of the mapping sentence within quantitative research, reviews its philosophical underpinnings, and proposes the "declarative mapping sentence" as an instrument and approach to qualitative scholarship. With a helpful glossary and a range of illustrative tables, Hackett takes the reader through a straightforward introduction to mapping sentences and their construction, before discussing declarative mapping sentences and possible future research directions. This innovative direction for social research provides a flexible structure for research domain, and it allows qualitative research results to be uniformly sorted. Declarative Mapping Sentences in Qualitative Research will be essential reading for researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of qualitative psychology and psychological methods, as well as philosophical psychology and social science research methods.

This book acts as an introductory guide to understanding and using the mapping sentence as a tool in social science and humanities research. The book fills the need for a concise text that simply instructs how and when to use a mapping sentence and provides practical examples. Mapping sentences are a major research component and tool of facet theory. The book begins by covering the background to mapping sentence, including the philosophy and theory underpinning it. The following chapter discuss what mapping sentence is, what different kinds of mapping sentences exist, and knowing when and which to use it in a given situation. The book then moves into describing how to write a mapping sentence and how to analyse the information gained from mapping sentence research. It ends with a consideration of the future developments of mapping sentences and their applications across the social sciences and humanities, including in particular psychology, marketing, behavioural biology, art and health.

This book examines how we perceive and understand abstract art in contrast to artworks that represent reality. Philosophical, psychological and neuroscience research, including the work of philosopher Paul Crowther, are considered and out of these approaches a complex model is developed to account for this experience. The understanding embodied in this model is rooted in facet theory, mapping sentences and partially ordered analyses, which together provide a comprehensive understanding of the perceptual experience of abstract art.