I suppose you mean that there is such a thing as the concept of elephant. I cannot imagine what else you might mean by, All of these elephants exists conceptually. And that some people see, etc. elephants.

Doesn't "we experience supposing" just mean, "We suppose things"? You don't really believe that each time someone supposes something, he has some particular experience called, "the experience of supposing" do you? But even if that were true (which it clearly is not) what is its relevance?

As a matter of fact, if there were elephants, but no people, then there would be elephants but not experience of elephants.

The Pythagoreans worshiped the meaning behind numbers, and maybe rightly so. Their concept of number was much different from ours today, as for them, numbers weren't used to differentiate, but to relate. The idea was that numbers are necessarily in each other, such as "1" being necessarily in "2" and so on. This way quantifiable data is an attempt to display similarities between things. I think this method of relatedness is ingeniously rational by its very definition.

The is an issue I've been intrigued with lately. What are concepts? Conceptualization and time are interdependent. The concept is what is left of a being that a passed. Elephant minus elephant = "elephant." Concept is nonbeing, but nonbeing isn't nothingness. "Non-spatial-being" is perhaps more like it. The future and the past can only exist in the spatial present as concept, or non-spatial being. A concept is the presence of an absence. Once the concept is formed, it can be associated with sense-data or considered devoid of this associated sense-data.

Yes, there is such a thing as the concept of an elephant. Our experience as elephants as elephants is impossible without this concept. This concept is the way we organize our sense-data into elephant and non-elephant.

Yes, to experience a supposition is just to suppose. I only mentioned it because you seemed to neglect mentioning it.

Let's suppose that I am an Eskimo, and I have never seen or heard of ladders. There are no ladders where I am, and I have never seen a picture of a ladder, nor have I ever seen a description of a ladder.

Now, I come to New York City, as I see a ladder for the very first time. Did I not see a ladder? Of course I saw a ladder (unless I am blind). What I did not see was that the object was a ladder. I could not have done that. If that is what you mean by seeing a ladder as a ladder, then I agree with you. But, certainly, I experienced a ladder.

What I would stress here is that you (the Eskimo) automatically organize your sense-date into a unity, an object. As you see the object used, you build a more complex concept of the ladder. If you see similar objects, you will soon have yourself an abstract or ideal ladder, the class of ladders.

I suppose the point I'm stressing is that sense-data must be cut into pieces (often moving pieces) in order to contain objects. Objects are these pieces. If we did not organize our sense-data into objects, we would have a mess of qualia on our hands that we would not know how to survive in. The basic move is to apply unity, substance, and causal relationships to the object, which is a concept. The object as object is this unity.

This mysterious phrase, X as Y, keeps popping up.

Let's use X is the presumed local cause of the qualia that are organized as Y, ladderness. Between X and Y is qualia, sense-data. X (noumena) is a limiting concept invented by Kant if not before him. Our mind projects/imposes conceptual organization on sense-data automatically. This makes it possible to distinguish between an apple and the table it sits on. This makes it possible to distinguish between an eye and nose.

Were it not for our conceptualization, which is largely transcendental/automatic, experience would presumably be a chaos of sensation/qualia, without logical/conceptual structure. I say presumably because we can't know, as this structuring is transcendental, prior to human experience. (Or so runs the theory that I currently find persuasive.)

Hmmmmm. And in English.....? I agree with Kant that concepts without percepts are empty, and that percepts without concepts are blind, which is what I think you are trying to say.

Hmmmmm. And in English.....? I agree with Kant that concepts without percepts are empty, and that percepts without concepts are blind, which is what I think you are trying to say.

The percept is a perceived form of external stimuli or their absence. Vivid dreams could also be considered as a form of perception without a clear source of external stimuli. The term is primarily used in philosophy and psychology as sense-datum to explain perception.

Ambiguous images


It is important to discern percept from stimuli or their absence. Stimuli are not necessarily translated into a percept and rarely does a single stimulus translate into a percept. Also, absence of adequate stimuli may be translated into multiple percepts, experienced randomly, one at a time, as in some sensory illusions. And the same stimuli, or absence of them, may result in different percepts depending on subject's culture and previous experiences.
Examples on the left illustrate how the same ambiguous stimuli could give rise to more than one percept. The same lines on the left of the image can be translated into a percept of transparent cube viewed from above or one viewed from below. The shape on the right could be interpreted as a vase or as two faces facing each other.
The percept also binds sensations from all of the senses in a whole. A picture of a talking person on a TV screen, for example, is bound to the sound of speech from speakers to form a percept of a talking person.
The example of transparent cube could also be used to illustrate the difference between cognition and recognition. If we are used to seeing a cube from above much more than from below, we will recognise the transparent cube viewed from above much faster and easier. The view from below would then need a significant cognitive effort that will take a noticeable moment.
In philosophy, ambiguity of stimuli is commented upon by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations (1953), and Rudolf Arnheim in Art and Visual Perception (1954). It is also a term used in Rudolf Steiner's theory of knowledge, which treats the relation of percept and concept.
Marshall McLuhan declared that he was more interested in percepts than concepts.
Percept is also a term used by Leibniz[1], Bergson, Deleuze and Guattari[2] to define perception gone independent from their authors. According to Deleuze, science uses percepts, while art works with affects and philosophy creates concepts.

Scientifically, that percepts themselves are constructed and reassembled data before the rational process of a deeper meaning takes over...we are speaking of an automatic organizing response to information and raw data of an unknown reality, and not, just of builded concepts on top of that..

Thank you. This seems like a crucial point to make. Reality as we humans know it is already partially processed.

(Sanskrit). 1. 'Imagining', an intellectual process which leads to the formation of concepts, judgements, views, and opinions. In Buddhist thought, the term usually signifies deluded or erroneous thinking which is tainted with emotions and desires and fails to grasp the true nature of things as they are. In this sense it is synonymous with the term , meaning 'mental proliferation', an activity of the deluded and unenlightened mind.

2. The process, according to Yogācāra, which sets up a false dualistic split that is imposed upon reality, and involves belief in the existence of a perceiving subject and perceived objects. Some sources consider both 'subjectivity' (grāhaka) and 'objectivity' (grāhya) to be the result of vikalpa (see grāhya-grāhaka).

Yes, but when I quoted that earlier, you didn't seem to recognize its significance. Percepts without concepts are blind, which is why a thing as thing is only possible with conceptualization. Conceptualization is what organizes qualia into things/objects/etc. The rest is, presumably, noise -- to speak in your favorite way, metaphorically.

I see no objection to saying that the natural World eludes conceptual understanding. Indeed, this would only mean that the existence of Nature is revealed by mathematical algorthm, for example, and not by concepts--that is by words having a meaning. Now, modern physics leads in the end to this result: one cannot speak of the physical reality without contradictions; as soon as one passes from algorthm to verbal description, one contradicts himself (particle-waves for example). Hence there would be no discourse revealing the physical or natural reality. This reality (as presented as early as Galileo) would be revealed to man only by the articulated silence of algorthm.....

What you mean is that our concept of a thing is possible only with conceptualization, not that things are possible only with conceptualization. The Moon is a thing, and it was not only possible before someone conceptualized it, but it was actual too. You make it sound as if people created the Moon.

Our brain automatically isolates and frames qualia. When a human looks at the world, a human sees objects. It was Kant if not someone before him that suggested that objects as objects (and not as qualia) are created by the human mind. No one is here denying that there are causes outside us (a moon), but this moon is only a moon (singular consistent organization of qualia) because man automatically organizes qualia into objects. It's because this organization is so automatic that it is taken for an actual property of noumena or "reality."