I might need to explain this a bit before opining. The basic case for categories is politics. The right/left dichotomy. Here I know something is correct because it has to be correct to justify my political party's take. This can be no more than identifying "good" and "evil." These distinctions in politics avoid loaded terms and say, right and wrong -- US and THEM.
My dissertation reader, David Levy, has a great paper which I am always promoting called, The Technological Obsolescence of Scientific Fraud. I am loosely translating the argument here: Someone imports a particular desired outcome into their formation of hypothesis even if the explicit question might be scientific, for example: What are the effects of the minimum wage?
That hypothesis can be tested with a widely diversified set of analytical tools. We, as researchers, choose the tool which is able to test the hypothesis. Because there are no rules for which tools apply to certain questions, we might implicitly choose the tool that comports with the expected outcome. Hence, the array of options created by science has allowed a back door into justifying our expected outcome that is built into the standard means of analysis. We opportunistically choose data sets and, as the paper emphasizes, pick the estimators from computer-based statistical programs, that appear to give the most plausible results. It should be no surprise that by the end of our research we get the significant variables expected. Since this is not what the English language dictionaries refer to as "fraud," but has the same result, the paper suggests that fraud should have been tautologically eliminated through the advance of technology.
Now, I use this example as part of categorical thinking, because it seems hard to imagine that in a world where social issues are tested by thousands of people using different estimators which do not result in confusion among the consumers of the resulting information. The discourse becomes a shouting match which further reinforces the categories.
I have recently come to lampoon this tendency in social science as equivalent to going to a meteorology conference and attending a panel on why only one thing that matters: low pressure, because this is where precipitation occurs. This panel is further devoted to why we should not confuse people with talk about high pressure. In this fantasy world there would be a separate panel, scheduled at the same time, arguing the exact opposite: High pressure (after-all low pressure is the absence of high pressure). My conclusion is supposed to be implied, but what I mean to say is that both High and Low pressure are important distinctions and work together in concert. Why would anyone isolate one as the primary cause?
Categories were meant to help simplify analysis. For instance, when I teach balance of payments, I talk about how Dollars flow to China for goods and then flow back to the states in some form (capital or goods and services). The other side of this transaction is the Yuan, but to stop at each point of the process and invert the analysis could be confusing. I simplify the logic in order to build the initial round of intuition and then add to this later. Similarly, when describing High and Low pressure, it would make sense to step back from the apparent cycle and describe where the term High pressure comes from. It would be nice to motivate the discussion with a particular point-of-view. However, the categories were never meant to be taken as a serious dichotomy, anyone that has looked at the range of pressures on a meteorological map knows that there is a continuum with a center that is conveniently labeled. The High pressure center over Seattle could be lower than the High pressure center over Milwaukee.
Similarly in social science, categories do not actually exist in the world. The categories are created to make sense of the world. The categories, just like statistical estimators, exist only as tools. To have fetishes for certain tools over others means that you are becoming ideological or narrow in your analysis. I certainly appreciate the division of labor in science, but what I fear comes with these silos of technical tools is the "Gnosticism" of hierarchical thinking. Each school of thought believes they have priority vis-a-vis the other. We run dangerously close to assuming that Low pressure just doesn't exist when we spend too much time emphasizing the categories. We miss the forest for the tree we are facing two inches from our eyes.
What role do academics have in stepping back and talking about the forest? I can only assume this is dictated by the market for our opinions. Relative to supply the demand for opinions is very low. I think there is a reason for this. There might be something about intuition that tells people in general that academics do poorly in giving a complete picture of any event. One thing that I think is crucial in the next generation is to develop a science of interdisciplinary studies. The PPE project that Peter Boettke runs and the book series that he edits is a good start. What about uniting behind this banner and helping our consumers to sort out producers of useful information? We have a market test to pass and we must provide a differentiated product.
My suggestion is to abandon categories as a crutch. Make clear which window into the debate we are looking through at any moment in time, but don't pretend it is the only one. Let our consumers know that the extra strain of the ambiguity in our answers is worth it in the end and remind them of this often. I don't think anyone can win the category battle. It seems to take us away from the issue motivating the research rather than toward understanding the issue.
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