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Thus, the general organization of the vocabulary of conceptual terms
characterizing analytical objects in the ASW universe of discourse has three main
branches. “Within” these branches, we find higher-level conceptual categories,
i.e. categories which organize other, more specialized, conceptual categories, richer
from an intensional point of view and less broad, more circumscribed from the
extensional point of view. The branch [Object “Endurant”] thus has two sub-
branches (Figure 12.2):
‒
the sub-branch [Natural object] which refers to physical (material, biological,
etc.) entities;
‒
the sub-branch [Object of value] which refers first to physical entities of a
particularfunctionalstatus
(i.e. which play a particular role in the life of a human or
anthromorphic agent) and secondly to
entities of meaning
, i.e. to entities (with a
non-specified support) which form part of the
culture
, the
horizon of meaning
(to
use Schütz's term [SCH 03]) of an agent.
Also, the distinction between [Natural object] and [Object of value] is in some
ways reminiscent of the distinction between “Nature” and “Culture” in Greimas'
semantic theory [GRE 70] and in Lévi-Strauss' structural anthropology [LÉV 58] -
a crucially important distinction, formulated and defined according to the constraints
and peculiarities of a particular social language (i.e. a language specific to a
socialactor
) or set of languages [WIT 03]. It also echoes the distinction drawn
between the
intrinsic characteristics
of an object and an object's
characteristics
based on an observer
(a subject) in the social ontology developed by Searle
[SEA 95].
That said, the two conceptual terms [Natural object] and [Object of value] do not
have any kind of descriptive value either - the heuristic interest they hold lies
instead in their capacity to classify and organize lower-level conceptual categories,
i.e. more specialized conceptual categories.
The second branch of the vocabulary of conceptual terms characterizing
analytical objects in the ASW universe of discourse has the conceptual term
[Object “Perdurant”] as a taxon. In general, the terms in this category serve to
describe actions and social practices, situations or states. They also serve to describe
causal processes for which there is no real identifiable intentional agent, but which
can occur in the natural world as well as in the social and historical world.
Figure 12.2 shows the general organization of this branch in the form of a taxonomy
of conceptual terms constructed around the two basic categories [Stative object] and
[Process object].
The taxon [Object Region] initiates the third branch shown in Figure 12.2. This
brings together all the conceptual terms which refer to physical (natural or social)
