What is a concept ?

In the various threads on “existence” largely promoted by newer members I have posited the claim that “concepts are all we’ve got”. All talk about “reality”, “things”, “essences” and “phenomena” are predicated on “the concept”. So what is the substance of this claim ?

In the various threads on “existence” largely promoted by newer members I have posited the claim that “concepts are all we’ve got”. All talk about “reality”, “things”, “essences” and “phenomena” are predicated on “the concept”. So what is the substance of this claim ?

We can perhaps start with this Heisenberg quotation.

Quote:

What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

At one level, this seems to me to be self evident and follows from Kant. But Kant divided reality into “noumena” and “phenomena” (the “real” versus “the experience”), arguing that noumena were never directly accessible. I am arguing, like the phenomenologist Husserl that “noumena” can be dismissed as a priori since “reality” is a construction. But I do not claim that this construction has “phenomena” as its basis, I claim what we call “reality” is social construction because it is structured by language. I claim, that words reflect concepts which are used in dialogue about "reality". (Maturana)

This argument becomes clearer when we look once more at the Heisenberg quotation.
“we” = a social community
“observe” involves assuming “a standard human observer”
“nature” = everything including ourselves
“method of questioning” involves “dialogue”.

So what is a “concept”. A concept is a mental presentation or re-presentation of our interaction or potential interaction with “the world” which we cannot escape from in order to view it “objectively”. Most of the time we merely interact without dialogue. There is no conscious separation between “self” and “world” (Heidegger) and hence there is NO “observation”. Observation is a concept which is part of dialogue. Internal dialogue is “thought”. External dialogue is conversation.

Insofar as we share a common physiology and a common language, we can agree on what we call “reality”, i.e. we report "similar" interactions and expectations. In other words we subscribe to a semantic network whose nodes of meaning are “concepts” evoked by “words”. We argue about the status of concepts which we wrongly ascribe to “an objective world”.

fresco wrote:

In the various threads on “existence” largely promoted by newer members I have posited the claim that “concepts are all we’ve got”. All talk about “reality”, “things”, “essences” and “phenomena” are predicated on “the concept”. So what is the substance of this claim ?

question ;

what is the essence , the fundamentals , of a concept based on though ?

People can only see what they can conceive of as distinct from all other things... In addition, they conceive through moral forms of qualities, as meanings which have no being what so ever, or whose being is so infinite as to defy knowledge or true conception...

A concept is a word which evokes a mental event. That event is an internal "living" or "re-living " of an experience of interaction (physical and social) with "the world".

fresco wrote:

A concept is a word which evokes a mental event. That event is an internal "living" or "re-living " of an experience of interaction (physical and social) with "the world".

We use our concepts every time we think or speak, but I'm not sure that anything "comes before my mind" when I do this. Moreover, a mental picture/impression doesn't force any application of the concept that is supposedly represented upon me. What forces a particular mental picture to be about the shape of a vase rather than its colour? Or, of a cube rather than a square? We can always imagine a different method of projection such that the the mental picture does fit the use of the concept after all. So, I'm certainly sceptical about the use that any mental picture might have in describing our concepts, but I'm even more sceptical about the idea that mental pictures even exist. Close your eyes and try to imagine a tree; do you see it? I imagine some people have more imaginative minds than others, but when I have tree-thoughts, it is nothing remotely like seeing a tree, or seeing a representation of a tree, it is not like seeing, picturing or representing anything. In short, I think that this Cartesian view of the mental is very misleading.

Quote:

People can only see what they can conceive of as distinct from all other things... In addition, they conceive through moral forms of qualities, as meanings which have no being what so ever, or whose being is so infinite as to defy knowledge or true conception...

What do you mean by "being" ? I mean that "being" aka "having existence" is a concept which informs or characterizes our dealings with "the world". By implication, there can be no "existence" or "being" unless it is related to such interactions. "Things in themselves" have no independent existence. All segmentation of the world is specific to our needs and aspirations as a species.

mickalos wrote:

fresco wrote:

A concept is a word which evokes a mental event. That event is an internal "living" or "re-living " of an experience of interaction (physical and social) with "the world".

We use our concepts every time we think or speak, but I'm not sure that anything "comes before my mind" when I do this. Moreover, a mental picture/impression doesn't force any application of the concept that is supposedly represented upon me. What forces a particular mental picture to be about the shape of a vase rather than its colour? Or, of a cube rather than a square? We can always imagine a different method of projection such that the the mental picture does fit the use of the concept after all. So, I'm certainly sceptical about the use that any mental picture might have in describing our concepts, but I'm even more sceptical about the idea that mental pictures even exist. Close your eyes and try to imagine a tree; do you see it? I imagine some people have more imaginative minds than others, but when I have tree-thoughts, it is nothing remotely like seeing a tree, or seeing a representation of a tree, it is not like seeing, picturing or representing anything. In short, I think that this Cartesian view of the mental is very misleading.

To imagine and to conceive are two different things. Imagination often (but not always) involves some kind of mental picturing. Conceiving does not. Einstein could conceive of an object traveling faster than light. But there is no particular mental picture associated with that conception. How would an object going faster than light be pictured differently from an object moving more slowly than light. In his famous example of the difference between conception and imagination, Descartes pointed to the that fact that although a mathematician could not picture (imagine) a chilagon (thousand-sided figure) he could conceive of it, since the mathematician would understand what the logical implication were of such a figure. This illustrates that Descartes did not, at all, think the mental had to do with the imagination. In fact, he explicitly writes that the imagination is a bodily attribute. On the other hand, it is conceivability which is of the mind.

mickalos wrote:

fresco wrote:

A concept is a word which evokes a mental event. That event is an internal "living" or "re-living " of an experience of interaction (physical and social) with "the world".

We use our concepts every time we think or speak, but I'm not sure that anything "comes before my mind" when I do this. Moreover, a mental picture/impression doesn't force any application of the concept that is supposedly represented upon me. What forces a particular mental picture to be about the shape of a vase rather than its colour? Or, of a cube rather than a square? We can always imagine a different method of projection such that the the mental picture does fit the use of the concept after all. So, I'm certainly sceptical about the use that any mental picture might have in describing our concepts, but I'm even more sceptical about the idea that mental pictures even exist. Close your eyes and try to imagine a tree; do you see it? I imagine some people have more imaginative minds than others, but when I have tree-thoughts, it is nothing remotely like seeing a tree, or seeing a representation of a tree, it is not like seeing, picturing or representing anything. In short, I think that this Cartesian view of the mental is very misleading.

To imagine and to conceive are two different things. Imagination often (but not always) involves some kind of mental picturing. Conceiving does not. Einstein could conceive of an object traveling faster than light. But there is no particular mental picture associated with that conception. How would an object going faster than light be pictured differently from an object moving more slowly than light. In his famous example of the difference between conception and imagination, Descartes pointed to the that fact that although a mathematician could not picture (imagine) a chilagon (thousand-sided figure) he could conceive of it, since the mathematician would understand what the logical implication were of such a figure. This illustrates that Descartes did not, at all, think the mental had to do with the imagination. In fact, he explicitly writes that the imagination is a bodily attribute. On the other hand, it is conceivability which is of the mind.

I want to say that what differentiates somebody who does and somebody who doesn't understand the concept of a chilagon is not any particular mental state, but how they go on to apply the concept.

If god were to look inside my head, he would have no idea what I did or did not understand.

I may be wrong, but nobody responding has yet grasped my definition of a "concept". A concept is NOT A PICTURE OF PHYSICAL REALITY, rather PHYSICALITY IS ITSELF A CONCEPT. Physicality involves interaction with "the world" via the senses, but such interaction is both active and passive. And "physicality is only one aspect of our interaction with A "world" of inter-relations.

Consider for example the historical shift in the stated number of "colours in the rainbow". In earlier times the rainbow was said to have "four colours" ( reflecting the four gospels !) but by Newton's time it was extended to "seven" to reflect the main notes of the musical scale (music of the spheres) and this was achieved by the invention of "indigo". Physiology delimits the range of "physicality" and language segments that range according to "needs".

Note the difference between "representation" (a picture) and "re-presentation" (mental re-living/ interacting). I claim concepts are the latter, not the former.

mickalos wrote:

I want to say that what differentiates somebody who does and somebody who doesn't understand the concept of a chilagon is not any particular mental state, but how they go on to apply the concept.

This is behaviourism, as propounded by Ryle in The Concept of Mind. I have several problems with this view:
1. I know from direct experience that my understanding a concept is a different state from my not understanding it. And this is true even while I am not "applying" the concept.
2. Suppose two people learn about a chilagon, and some time later one of them applies the concept correctly and the other incorrectly. If they are not in different (mental) states between the time of learning and the time of application, how can the difference in their application of the concept be explained?
3. If you ask someone whether they have understood some concept, they may say something like "I didn't understand it during the lesson, but the next day something "clicked" in my mind and I suddenly grasped the idea". How is this to be explained, if understanding something is not a particular mental state?
4. It may be that someone never has occasion to "apply" a particular concept they have learned. Must we then say that it is neither true nor false that they understand it?

mickalos wrote:

If god were to look inside my head, he would have no idea what I did or did not understand.

I am not at all sure that this is right (even if you remove the reference to God). It is an empirical matter whether a particular neurological state is a sufficient condition of a particular thought. Have you any scientific evidence that thoughts do not correspond to neurological states?

Your statement that physicality is itself a concept is a denial that there is a thing behind that veil of concept that we can only begin to grasp abstractly with our concepts

Could it be, that instead of mental states, we are changed by all we learn, and that in our new conceptions we are ourselves conceived anew???

mickalos wrote:

I want to say that what differentiates somebody who does and somebody who doesn't understand the concept of a chilagon is not any particular mental state, but how they go on to apply the concept.

This is behaviourism, as propounded by Ryle in The Concept of Mind.

I have several problems with this view:
1. I know from direct experience that my understanding a concept is a different state from my not understanding it. And this is true even while I am not "applying" the concept.

2. Suppose two people learn about a chilagon, and some time later one of them applies the concept correctly and the other incorrectly. If they are not in different (mental) states between the time of learning and the time of application, how can the difference in their application of the concept be explained?

3. If you ask someone whether they have understood some concept, they may say something like "I didn't understand it during the lesson, but the next day something "clicked" in my mind and I suddenly grasped the idea". How is this to be explained, if understanding something is not a particular mental state?

4. It may be that someone never has occasion to "apply" a particular concept they have learned. Must we then say that it is neither true nor false that they understand it?

mickalos wrote:

If god were to look inside my head, he would have no idea what I did or did not understand.

I am not at all sure that this is right (even if you remove the reference to God). It is an empirical matter whether a particular neurological state is a sufficient condition of a particular thought. Have you any scientific evidence that thoughts do not correspond to neurological states?