Conceptualizing...
Philo: Welcome back ‘stu’. Ready to learn how to use your mind?
Estudia: You bet. I’m got all these percepts from reality. So now what?
Philo: Well, your sensory material is only a baby step. You can’t do anything with it as percepts. You have to build on those percepts and form concepts.
Estudia: What’s the difference?
Philo: A baby first becomes aware of things. They automatically perceive objects in reality and understand in some implicit way that the world consists of entities. Animals are the same at birth but they both go on to learn to distinguish one object from another.
Estudia: Sure, my dog knows lots of trees and people and even other dogs at times. He must have a memory and perceive these things in his surroundings.
Philo: Yes, but you can generalize and your dog can’t. You can know things about all men not just particular ones. You can discover natural laws that describe how things interact in reality. You can form hypothesizes and test them out. You can picture things as they might have been in the past and as they might be in the future. Your conceptual faculty is a wonderful, powerful addition to your consciousness. No other species can even come close to having the power that you do with your mind.
Estudia: What is my conceptual faculty? I mean, I guess, what is a concept first of all, and how are they formed?
Philo: Patience my friend. I’m getting to that but we have to go slowly to discover the truth. You are so much above you dog or any other animal in the use of your consciousness. Take actions for example. You have to choose your values and think about your actions. How you act must be based on how you think, or fail to think. You have to think based on abstract principles to guide you. What goals to pursue and how to pursue them. You, as opposed to your dog, adapt nature for your own use. The animal can not, it must adapt to nature.
Estudia: So then, it is my conceptualizing ability that makes me human?
Philo: Well yes and no. You and your dog can differ in the manner in which you think, and act and survive because these things are determined by the attributes of your conceptual faculty. Your conceptual faculty is unique and different from any other species in that it gives you the ability to form concepts and we must know what they are to continue.
Estudia: Okay, so what is a concept?
Philo: We talked about existence before. We said that reality was composed of things and these things are called existents. As we develop from infancy we development the implicit concept of existent in three stages. First we simply become aware of them. We notice the objects around us and this represents implicitly the concept of entity.
Estudia: Then we begin to distinguish one thing from another, right?
Philo: Yes, this is still on the perceptual level, and involves mental actions like a baby noticing that something is like what it saw some other time before and it begins to recognize it. This is the implicit concept of identity. Animals can do this too. They can perceive things and learn to recognize them.
Estudia: So animals do form concepts!
Philo: No they don’t, not even implicit ones and I’ll tell you why. It is because of the third and uniquely human ability to grasp the similarities and/or differences that exist between entities. Animals do learn to recognize specific entities out of those that they perceive, but they can’t get beyond that stage. You have learned to regard objects as related to each other by how they resemble each other and so you can consider the objects as a separate mental group. You grasp the concept of “unit” implicitly.
Estudia: And, a unit is exactly what?
Philo: Ayn Rand taught us that “A unit is an existent regarded as a separate member of a group of two or more similar members.” She said that, “This is the key, the entrance to the conceptual level of man’s consciousness. The ability to regard entities as units is man’s distinctive method of cognition, which other living species are unable to follow.”
Estudia: Ah, yes, I can see that. Animals just see things and reacts to them in the order that they appear. But we organize the things we perceive according to how they resemble each other. Everything is jumbled together in reality, but we can mentally group similar things and consider them as groups of units, like all trees, rocks, people, dogs, et cetera. But we get confused some times and wonder about particular units and which group to put them in as well, like we wonder whether a particular object is say a tree or a big weed, or is that three legged thing a table or a stool or what.
Philo: Yes, but you are using words already now to discuss your concepts. Actually, in reality, units do not exist as such. There are only things, or existents, that make up reality. These things each have their own identities. Our consciousness allows us to identify and classify these things according to attributes we observe in reality. Things can be sorted in all sorts of ways. According to size, shape, color, density, and chemical or physical properties. The things are what exist, but consciousness views things in certain relationships to each other and considers that as a unit. You can do a lot more than any other animal with that ability. You specialize your thinking and can gain knowledge about all the objects in a particular unit by learning about just a few of the objects. You are capable of induction which is a way to know general principles from detailed facts. All trees have leaves, or are made of wood, or get their energy from sunlight and so on.
Estudia: So you are saying that we have this ability to grasp the idea of “unit” and that allows us to reach the conceptual level of knowledge?
Philo: Yes and without that implicit idea, the concept of unit, we could not count or measure in any way. Without the unit, we could not enter the conceptual or the mathematical fields.
Estudia: Really?
Philo: Really, but why don’t you mull over the unit idea and next time we’ll discuss more about this process of concept formation.
Estudia: Okay, but is it important or is this just academic?
Philo: No, it’s very important to the development of epistemology and hence to our philosophy. You want to eventual know what is true and what is right action in all kinds of areas and you need to know that your knowledge is valid. Believe me; you can’t learn anything about reality without first understanding your method of thinking in concepts.
Estudia: Okay, then I’ll stick with it. Au revoir.
Estudia: You bet. I’m got all these percepts from reality. So now what?
Philo: Well, your sensory material is only a baby step. You can’t do anything with it as percepts. You have to build on those percepts and form concepts.
Estudia: What’s the difference?
Philo: A baby first becomes aware of things. They automatically perceive objects in reality and understand in some implicit way that the world consists of entities. Animals are the same at birth but they both go on to learn to distinguish one object from another.
Estudia: Sure, my dog knows lots of trees and people and even other dogs at times. He must have a memory and perceive these things in his surroundings.
Philo: Yes, but you can generalize and your dog can’t. You can know things about all men not just particular ones. You can discover natural laws that describe how things interact in reality. You can form hypothesizes and test them out. You can picture things as they might have been in the past and as they might be in the future. Your conceptual faculty is a wonderful, powerful addition to your consciousness. No other species can even come close to having the power that you do with your mind.
Estudia: What is my conceptual faculty? I mean, I guess, what is a concept first of all, and how are they formed?
Philo: Patience my friend. I’m getting to that but we have to go slowly to discover the truth. You are so much above you dog or any other animal in the use of your consciousness. Take actions for example. You have to choose your values and think about your actions. How you act must be based on how you think, or fail to think. You have to think based on abstract principles to guide you. What goals to pursue and how to pursue them. You, as opposed to your dog, adapt nature for your own use. The animal can not, it must adapt to nature.
Estudia: So then, it is my conceptualizing ability that makes me human?
Philo: Well yes and no. You and your dog can differ in the manner in which you think, and act and survive because these things are determined by the attributes of your conceptual faculty. Your conceptual faculty is unique and different from any other species in that it gives you the ability to form concepts and we must know what they are to continue.
Estudia: Okay, so what is a concept?
Philo: We talked about existence before. We said that reality was composed of things and these things are called existents. As we develop from infancy we development the implicit concept of existent in three stages. First we simply become aware of them. We notice the objects around us and this represents implicitly the concept of entity.
Estudia: Then we begin to distinguish one thing from another, right?
Philo: Yes, this is still on the perceptual level, and involves mental actions like a baby noticing that something is like what it saw some other time before and it begins to recognize it. This is the implicit concept of identity. Animals can do this too. They can perceive things and learn to recognize them.
Estudia: So animals do form concepts!
Philo: No they don’t, not even implicit ones and I’ll tell you why. It is because of the third and uniquely human ability to grasp the similarities and/or differences that exist between entities. Animals do learn to recognize specific entities out of those that they perceive, but they can’t get beyond that stage. You have learned to regard objects as related to each other by how they resemble each other and so you can consider the objects as a separate mental group. You grasp the concept of “unit” implicitly.
Estudia: And, a unit is exactly what?
Philo: Ayn Rand taught us that “A unit is an existent regarded as a separate member of a group of two or more similar members.” She said that, “This is the key, the entrance to the conceptual level of man’s consciousness. The ability to regard entities as units is man’s distinctive method of cognition, which other living species are unable to follow.”
Estudia: Ah, yes, I can see that. Animals just see things and reacts to them in the order that they appear. But we organize the things we perceive according to how they resemble each other. Everything is jumbled together in reality, but we can mentally group similar things and consider them as groups of units, like all trees, rocks, people, dogs, et cetera. But we get confused some times and wonder about particular units and which group to put them in as well, like we wonder whether a particular object is say a tree or a big weed, or is that three legged thing a table or a stool or what.
Philo: Yes, but you are using words already now to discuss your concepts. Actually, in reality, units do not exist as such. There are only things, or existents, that make up reality. These things each have their own identities. Our consciousness allows us to identify and classify these things according to attributes we observe in reality. Things can be sorted in all sorts of ways. According to size, shape, color, density, and chemical or physical properties. The things are what exist, but consciousness views things in certain relationships to each other and considers that as a unit. You can do a lot more than any other animal with that ability. You specialize your thinking and can gain knowledge about all the objects in a particular unit by learning about just a few of the objects. You are capable of induction which is a way to know general principles from detailed facts. All trees have leaves, or are made of wood, or get their energy from sunlight and so on.
Estudia: So you are saying that we have this ability to grasp the idea of “unit” and that allows us to reach the conceptual level of knowledge?
Philo: Yes and without that implicit idea, the concept of unit, we could not count or measure in any way. Without the unit, we could not enter the conceptual or the mathematical fields.
Estudia: Really?
Philo: Really, but why don’t you mull over the unit idea and next time we’ll discuss more about this process of concept formation.
Estudia: Okay, but is it important or is this just academic?
Philo: No, it’s very important to the development of epistemology and hence to our philosophy. You want to eventual know what is true and what is right action in all kinds of areas and you need to know that your knowledge is valid. Believe me; you can’t learn anything about reality without first understanding your method of thinking in concepts.
Estudia: Okay, then I’ll stick with it. Au revoir.
posted by Rp | 10:08 AM
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