Curious:
"In the fewest words possible, concepts are: _capacities to think about
general characteristics._. The latter are sometimes positive, sometimes
negative.
"There are degrees of complexity in the activity referred to above as 'thinking
about general characteristics', and there are corresponding degrees of
complexity in what is meant by processing concepts. To start with the simplest
case: To process the concept of _red_ or the concept _dog_ is to possess the
capacity to think about the characteristics _red_ or _dog_, in the sense of
being able to recognize things as red things or as dogs when these are
perceived; more generally, it is the capacity to recognize characteristics in
perceived or otherwise intuited particulars. It is important to add that we
can exercise this capacity whether or not we use or even possess such generals
words as _red_ and _dog_, or such a proper name as _Cerberus_."
"This sort of case is the bare recognition of characteristics in particulars
when the latter are before us and we perceive or intuit them. But there are
more complicated kinds of thinking about characteristics that we can engage in
while we are perceiving. To illustrate the point: if we perceive three
apples, two of which are bright red and one a pale red, we can do all or some
of the following things. We can recognize that all three apples possess the
characteristic _red_; we can apprehend or judge that the characteristic _red_
is instantiated within our perceptual field; we can judge that the
characteristic instantiated in two apples is different from and brighter than
that instantiated in the third; we can judge that the characteristic _red_ is
instantiated together with the characteristic of being an _apple_. All of
these mental activities we can accomplish without the use of words or mental
images, and persons possessing neither language nor an ability to form men
tal images could engage in them.
(White, F. C., 'On Schopenhauer's Fourfold Root of the Principle of
Sufficient Reason',(Philosophy of History and Culture, Vol 8), pp.75-76)
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org/md/archives.html
