How Do We Create Concepts?
A s concluded in “How to Observe Thinking Itself”, thinking must first become experience itself before one can arrive at a real understanding of the world through thinking.
Therefore, when the thoughts that arise in thinking become the object of observation or are consciously reflected upon, this is a form of ‘pure’ thinking (thinking about thinking).
The application of the so-called ‘mathesis principle’, i.e. the universally valid definition of a concept, is a first form of pure thinking.
This is because an ideal approach takes place that is exclusively mental, i.e. without external sensory stimulation.
However, before discussing a corresponding example, it should first be clarified at this point what is generally meant by a ‘concept’.
It should be noted in advance that although words can hardly do justice to the description of what a ‘concept’ is, it is very possible to point to its existence.
Or to put it another way: words can only draw people’s attention to the fact that they have concepts at all.
For example, when looking at an unknown animal, thinking is stimulated and an ideal counterpart is added to the physical animal.
In concrete terms, the first step is to create an image of the animal that remains in the memory after it has disappeared from the field of vision.
However, this alone is not yet a concept, but only an image, which is why this distinction is necessary.
It is also generally assumed, that as a child you learn concepts simply by being shown the individual phenomena of the world by your fellow human beings, with reference to the name of the respective phenomenon.
For example, as a child you discover a bicycle and your mother explains: “This is a bicycle”.
Now it is believed that the bicycle is stored in the child’s memory as an image together with the word ‘bicycle’ and serves as a memory aid for recognising a bicycle in the future.
So this assumes that the image of the bicycle and the word ‘bicycle’ already lead the child to recognise what a bicycle is.
But this is not the case at all, because the mere image of the bicycle and the word alone do not explain anything.
The experience itself does not contain its explanation, or rather, it is not possible to deduce its content from the experience alone.¹
This means that even the word ‘bicycle’ added by the mother is initially only a pure experience and does not yet cause any knowing.
Because a word does not contain any meaning, it only indicates such a meaning.
This therefore means that knowledge can only occur when the person concerned — in this example the child — calls the thought explaining the experience into consciousness and adds it to the experience.
In the case of the child, it often takes several attempts to come to an understanding because the child has to learn how to deal with it.
At first they only learn to repeat the names, the words, and only gradually does comprehension occur through thinking.
So it is neither the experience image of the bicycle nor the word ‘bicycle’ that leads to understanding, but the completely invisible thought that the child must first learn to form.
In this sense, thought is the concept that first contains the meaning of the respective object and thus conveys understanding.
The term ‘concept’ is therefore to be understood exclusively as the thought generated by human thinking and not, as is often the case today, as the word with which the thought is expressed linguistically.
Another example is to look at a circular object in your environment.
Then you turn away and keep the image of the circle in your mind.
At this point, you do not yet have the concept of the circle.
It only emerges when you say to yourself, for example: “A circle is a figure in which all points are equidistant from a centre point”.
This example makes it clear that you can only understand something once you have formed a concept of it.
There are many different circles; small, large, red, yellow, etc., but there is only one concept of a ‘circle’.
This means that once you have formed the idea of a circle, you can imagine it as many times as you like and it will not change.
No matter how many different and new circles you will see in your life.
The concept of a circle is therefore a single one that encompasses all the individual circles you have seen and always remains the same.
However, the more experiences a person lives through, the richer the sum of their concepts becomes.
Concepts could therefore be described as all the associated parts that are contained in the ‘idea’ of a thing², as Goethe (1749–1832) understood it:
“The idea is eternal and unique; that we also need the plural is not well done. Everything that we become aware of and can speak of are only manifestations of the idea; we express concepts, and in this respect the idea itself is a concept.”³
In this sense ideas are not qualitatively different from concepts, i.e. ideas are only richer and more comprehensive concepts.
Or in other words: concepts or ideas form the unity that confronts the diversity of the individual phenomena of the world and unites them in itself.
Therefore, the concept cannot derive its content from experience, since it does not incorporate the characteristic of experience, the respective particularity, into itself.
It must give itself its content.
However, this view contradicts the common opinion that one forms a concept — in the case of the circle example — by looking at one circle after another and, so to speak, making a photograph of its outline, its size, etc.
As a result, all these collected contents, from these views of circles, would then be contained in a conceptual counter-image.
In other words, an exact correspondence or photograph of the external appearance of all the circles under consideration, simply in conceptual form.
That this does not correspond to the facts at all can be easily verified by anyone on the basis of the preceding explanations.
In my next post I’ll touch on a example of the ‘mathesis principle’ as mentioned at the beginning: How a concept can be determined in pure thinking (thinking about thinking). Stay tuned.
[1] As shown in my article about the “Biggest Prejudice About Thinking”
[2] This is contrary to the common understanding of what an idea is, e.g.: “An idea is a rough mental impression. It could be a thought, suggestion, opinion, belief or intention.”
[3] Source: Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen. Aphorismen und Aufzeichnungen. Nach den Handschriften des Goethe- und Schiller-Archivs hg. von Max Hecker, 1907. Aus: Kunst und Altertum, 5. Bandes 3. Heft. 1826, Einzelnes.
Note: This text was originally written in German and translated into English using Deepl, because I am a native German speaker.
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