Categoric versus personal knowing is a cognitive axis independent of affect.

Evidence

My two sets of distinctions, in contrast, are concerned exclusively with cognitive experience, with “knowing,” to which affective states of one sort or another may or may not be attached. If love-at-first-sight is possible, then personal knowing is hardly a prerequisite for positive affect. On the other hand, personal knowing is also no guarantee of the existence of affect, positive or negative. In sum, then, the traditional sociological distinction between primary and secondary groups and relationships cross cut and are cross cut by my two sets of distinctions too extensively for any arguments regarding their essential isomorphism to be maintained. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1076

Categorization

• XREF: The cognitive-versus-affective point tethers directly to Cole’s dispassionate witnessing and to Simmel’s blase detachment, where knowing encounters remain stripped of emotional charge.