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Philosophers are Inventors of Concepts

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I think the creative aspect of philosophy is too often overlooked. Philosophers add new words with novel meanings to our vocabulary. They change our mental models of both ourselves and our experience.

We see existence thru the lenses of our concepts. So philosophers invent new perspectives on the world and also on past philosophers.

Here's a little oracular utterance (not for the uptight logic-chopper). Man is God and he's not to seventh day yet, for man continues to create the world with every new description of it, for man lives in his descriptions of the world.

@Reconstructo,

I disagree that concepts are invented. They are identified.

Take "tree" for instance. You can look at forrests from any perspective you'd like, the concept tree will still refer to exactly the same set of entities.

That's why what the French decided to call arbre is exactly the same concept as tree. They identified the concept, they didn't use their imagination to invent it.

@Stansfield,

Stansfield;109066 wrote:

I disagree that concepts are invented. They are identified.

Take "tree" for instance. You can look at forrests from any perspective you'd like, the concept tree will still refer to exactly the same set of entities.

That's why what the French decided to call arbre is exactly the same concept as tree. They identified the concept, they didn't use their imagination to invent it.

It seems to me that some concepts (especially technical concepts) are invented, like Kant's concept of the analytic or synthetic judgment, or Hegel's dialectic. But some concepts are identified as you say. Like the concept of tree or dog. And for the concept, mammal, it is a bit of both.

@Reconstructo,

We slice up reality with our concepts. We had to frame this complicated thing we call a tree. We had to separate it from not-tree. We had to decide that the roots were part of the tree but that the dirt was not. This is what Hegel means by abstraction. If we consider anything in isolation from the totality, we have abstracted it, pulled it out.

So I disagree even that a concept like tree is identified. But I also don't remember any particular philosopher inventing "tree."

Are these intentionally shallow responses? The question is asked in earnest. I thought this was a philosophy forum. I know it's Christmass time and all, but try to forget about trees and basketballs. Try to understand before you disagree.....

It's fun.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;109077 wrote:

We slice up reality with our concepts. We had to frame this complicated thing we call a tree. We had to separate it from not-tree. We had to decide that the roots were part of the tree but that the dirt was not. This is what Hegel means by abstraction. If we consider anything in isolation from the totality, we have abstracted it, pulled it out.

So I disagree even that a concept like tree is identified. But I also don't remember any particular philosopher inventing "tree."

Are these intentionally shallow responses? The question is asked in earnest. I thought this was a philosophy forum. I know it's Christmass time and all, but try to forget about trees and basketballs. Try to understand before you disagree.....

It's fun.

Are we talking about the concept of tree, or the word, "tree"? No philosopher invented the concept "tree", but, as I pointed out, Kant was a philosopher and he invented the concepts of analytic and synthetic judgments, and also invented the terms, "analytic" and "synthetic". And I am glad he did, too.

I don't know whether those responses are shallow. They are not obscure if that is what you mean by "deep". In any case, I hope they are true. "Shallow but true" is, I think, much better than "deep but false".

@Reconstructo,

Dodge the issue. I insist. You are so not false. You are so tuned in to the Truth which will set us all free.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;109071 wrote:

It seems to me that some concepts (especially technical concepts) are invented, like Kant's concept of the analytic or synthetic judgment, or Hegel's dialectic. But some concepts are identified as you say. Like the concept of tree or dog. And for the concept, mammal, it is a bit of both.

What the OP is implying is that concepts are not produced in accordance with the facts of reality, but instead by the "reality" of our own minds.

I agree with you that Kant and Hegel's reality is purely of their own mind's creation, and the rationalizations you mentioned are as well, but the concepts I use (such as mammal, morality, or dephasing gradient) reflect reality.

Reconstructo;109077 wrote:

We had to decide that the roots were part of the tree but that the dirt was not.

Discover, not decide. Is it your position that deciding the dirt is part of the tree would not have been a factual error?

Reconstructo;109077 wrote:

Are these intentionally shallow responses? The question is asked in earnest. I thought this was a philosophy forum. I know it's Christmass time and all, but try to forget about trees and basketballs. Try to understand before you disagree.....

Try arguments instead of presumptuous metaphors followed up by insults.

@Stansfield,

Stansfield;109104 wrote:

What the OP is implying is that concepts are not produced in accordance with the facts of reality, but instead by the "reality" of our own minds.

I agree with you that Kant and Hegel's reality is purely of their own mind's creation, and the rationalizations you mentioned are as well, but the concepts I use (such as mammal, morality, or dephasing gradient) reflect reality.

Discover, not decide. Is it your position that deciding the dirt is part of the tree would not have been a factual error?

Try arguments instead of presumptuous metaphors followed up by insults.

Sorry. I never said what you impute to me about roots and trees and dirt. I don't even know what it means. You are quoting the wrong bloke.

@Reconstructo,

The concept of "mammal" is a human creation. So is the concept of "morality."

We divide sense-data into objects.

We make the facts. A tree is only what we say it is. Another more holistic thinking species might not distinguish the dirt from the tree or even the tree from its environment.

Of course we will tend to divide reality at convenient points -- those points which give us pleasure. The pleasure of a meal. The pleasure of a victory at war. Aesthetic pleasure. The pleasure of feeling that we understand a world that would otherwise be a threatening flux.

We project being on becoming.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;109108 wrote:

Sorry. I never said what you impute to me about roots and trees and dirt. I don't even know what it means. You are quoting the wrong bloke.

I apologize, the last two quotes are of the other fella', as well as the responses. I'll try to edit them, if I still can.

The first part was for you though.

@Reconstructo,

When you say "reflect" reality, you hint at the mirror of nature paradigm. But it's not the only possible paradigm. And this reflection is the creation of our conceptual mind.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;109124 wrote:

When you say "reflect" reality, you hint at the mirror of nature paradigm. But it's not the only possible paradigm. And this reflection is the creation of our conceptual mind.

Oh, I bet I wasn't. (Since I never heard that term before.)

Like I said, I base concepts on reality, and paradigm (in the sense you're using it) is not a concept based on reality, so I wouldn't have bothered to explore its various aspects.

@Reconstructo,

Read much philosophy? Who do you like?

I respect your pride, but you seem almost anti-philosophical.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;109132 wrote:

Read much philosophy? Who do you like?

I respect your pride, but you seem almost anti-philosophical.

I am not anti-philosophical, I love the kind of philosophy that has a rational purpose and scientific rigour.

I prefer the philosophy that is spurred by honest inquiry about the Universe, our place in it, and relies on exact observation and logical arguments. (most Greek philosophers for instance do precisely that, so do Aquinas, Locke, Rand and many others. They all err, but not on purpose)

What you are doing is assuming that philosophy is the exact opposite of that (convoluted metaphor laden diatribes and ratinalizations), in which case you would be safe to assume that I am anti-philosophical (except for Nietzshe - while he did adopt the style of Kant and Co., his "diatribes" are quite enjoyable even when I disagree with the overall message).

@Reconstructo,

Thanks for the information.

---------- Post added 12-08-2009 at 02:42 AM ----------

You might as well go in for straight science, Stansfield. You cast yourself as the great hero of objective reality and logic, eh? Get in line. It's an old game. It reminds me of earlier stages of my intellectual development.

I'm not so sure about scientific rigor being a virtue of the Greeks. Aristotle's physics and biology are full of absurdities. He didn't know how many teeth his wife had. He didn't take the trouble to see that heavier objects fall at the same speed as lighter objects. And he was more rigorous than most of them.

Plato quite obviously ties into mysticism, despite his fascination with dialectic.

Heraclitus was obviously oracular, poetic, and metaphorical.

The stoics, cynics, and epicureans were strongly concerned with lifestyle. They stoics were metaphysical but not rigorously scientific in any modern sense of the word.

@Reconstructo,

It occurs to me that there are parallels between this discussion and the medieval debate about whether God created the universe ex nihilo.

@Reconstructo,

I like an organic view of the human race developing concepts and techniques in relation to human needs, and some of these needs are aesthetic/religious.

I think science is a descendant of monotheism. God as one unifying mind is reduced first to Deism and finally simply to "Laws" of "Nature."

And "Nature" is a sophisticated concept in itself, as it implies a unification of so much that is not otherwise unified.

---------- Post added 12-08-2009 at 03:36 AM ----------

"Reality" is itself the master-concept.

The individual can be described as a network of beliefs and desires. When he is offered a description of "reality," literal or metaphorical, whether or not he assimilates it depends on how compatible it is with his other beliefs and desires.

A theist doesn't want to hear about the death of God. And an atheist isn't eager to listen to a new "proof" of God's existence.

A homosexual doesn't want to hear that God hates them and a fundamentalist minister doesn't want to believe that homosexuality is not a sin.

A person who emotionally identifies with objectivity doesn't want to hear this same objectivity described as a quasi-religious attachment and the role play of a hero myth. A mystic doesn't want their experiences described as hallucinations.

It's a collision of descriptions. It's a battle to claim and define "Reality."

The sophists were aware of this, I think.

@Deckard,

Deckard;109173 wrote:

It occurs to me that there are parallels between this discussion and the medieval debate about whether God created the universe ex nihilo.

It does seem like an important question. How are the concepts that philosophy is impossible without created in the first place?

And isn't a linguistic philosophy shallow that doesn't historicize its own body? For linguistic philosophy is itself made up of concept. It's funny, that language describes itself, investigates itself.

@Reconstructo,

Words and their place in language are meaningful because they are common and to the extent they can be shared; you cannot have a private language.

But philosophers wish to present an uncommon or unique perspective about the world; and the more this perspective differs from the ordinary, the more difficult it is to find meaningful expression using words in the normal or common definitions.

Now the poet faces the same problems but stretches words and meanings by employing the techniques of his craft to produce an illusive and highly individual form of communication.

But the philosopher's vision is one that must be articulated and explained through argumentation. To do this, he often either invents new words or uses common words in very specialised senses that redefine them for his audience if they but take the care and time to read him carefully.

Even the Presocratics, in the slow separation of rational thinking from mythology, had begun to employ specialised uses of words---often in a poetical sense---used to descibe concepts: Heraclitos for example, often used war or strife to convey his perspective.

Sokrates was, if Plato's accounts are correct, always concerned that many common words were used without really thinking about what they meant; in searching for better definitions, he was in his own fashion, attempting to clarify and articulate (by rejecting common usage) philosophical concepts.

Plato, resorted to poetical myths (the cave) at times, but also began to use common words with very distinct meanings (the divided line); every schoolboy knows that he used a common Greek word "ideas" to describe the "Forms" in his attempt to provide an account of participation.

Aristotle, in his review of his predecessors in the first book of the Metaphysics, examines the concept of "cause" and finds it had been used (incompletely in his view) in different senses; he then proposed a more complete ("better") definition of cause (or definitions since cause meant four different things).

More recently, it was Hegel who built much of his philosophy on a special definition of "dialectic" as a specific process. Whitehead employed negative and positive prehensions, "occasion" and other specialised words to redescribe events.

@jgweed,

jgweed;112354 wrote:

But the philosopher's vision is one that must be articulated and explained through argumentation.

My only objection to this is that philosophers can also use metaphors. They can simply describe or redescribe, without argumentation. According to Kojeve, for instance, Hegel's method is not dialectical but rather only the non-dialectical description of something that was dialectical. According to Kojeve, Hegel was in the right place at the right time where such description/explanation was sufficient.

I found this on Wiki.
Explanations and arguments

Main article: Argument
While arguments attempt to show that something is, will be, or should be the case, explanations try to show why or how something is or will be. If Fred and Joe address the issue of whether or not Fred's cat has fleas, Joe may state: "Fred, your cat has fleas. Observe the cat is scratching right now." Joe has made an argument that the cat has fleas. However, if Fred and Joe agree on the fact that the cat has fleas, they may further question why this is so and put forth an explanation: "The reason the cat has fleas is that the weather has been damp." The difference is that the attempt is not to settle whether or not some claim is true, it is to show why it is true.
Arguments and explanations largely resemble each other in rhetorical use. This is the cause of much difficulty in thinking critically about claims. There are several reasons for this difficulty.

People often are not not themselves clear on whether they are arguing for or explaining something.
The same types of words and phrases are used in presenting explanations and arguments.
The terms 'explain' or 'explanation,' et cetera are frequently used in arguments.
Explanations are often used within arguments and presented so as to serve as arguments.

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