Quote:
Originally Posted by antialias
No. Why would it? Just because something can be used to formulate abstracts doesn't make that something abstract.
This notion of concepts being separate from real things isn't new, BTW. It's called 'Platonic ideals' in philosophy. (Or if you want to go religious you can go to Buddhism where they ask the question about whether X has "Buddha nature" or not - which is roughly similar in concept and incidentally was posed about the same time...give or take a century)
Well, that's a lot harder than answering why there is something rather than nothing. And there's an entire profession dedicated to trying to figure this out: physicists.
The nature of concepts are therefore in order and in reality calls for the nature of thinking.
If I am walking through the woods and come upon a tall brush and note that the branches quaver in disturbed manner and quickly following, a pheasant flies out of the brush I have made a "causal" connection through my thinking.
Therefore. the pheasant "caused' the bush to quaver.
What I have done is brought the "concept" causality to bear on the event and in this I gain knowledge. If I do not "think" at the time of the event the event, and the world around me, becomes and is, a disconnected gestalt of unconnectedness which only becomes clarity once I bring thinking into action.
What has happened is that through "thinking" the external event which is not complete is merged into the reality of knowledge with the arrival of "thinking". What we see, hear, taste, etc.. with our senses is only one half of the "real" and the human being breaks his sensory perceptions out of the grand or large gestalt and through thinking brings knowledge forth for himself and others.
In other words knowledge or what one will call the reality is not our first sensory perceptions but only the completion of the "real' through thinking. We see one half of the real and through thinking we complete the issue through our creative thinking ; Man stands within the exigent "real" with his ability to "think".
You mentioned the "concept", in your first post as no more than a "made up" thing and espoused the world of nominalism , or the name of our sensory projection or the "concept" having no reality , a mere tool to pragmatic thought .
The "concept" is that very "idea" noted in Plato's "forms" to which the individual man reaches through thinking and brings forth in his knowledge process. The "concept" isn't "made up" but within the realm of thinking and thought forms which are "concepts".
The "concept" of a horse is that which thinking brings to a man who translates it into his individual language. In Plato's "realm of ideas " is the "concept" horse to which the individual man brings into himself and this individual concept , within man, becomes his "mental picture'. the individual concept of horse, for the individual man, is his mental picture.
The "idea" horse, becomes an individualized concept within the individual man and becomes his mental picture.
Somewhere in the writings of Goethe he spoke of the "archetypal phenomena", or the "idea" horse to which we, in our sense bound reality, see one side of the issue with the other side being this conceptual "idea" of the horse.
We are in the supersensible when we "think" but thinking is not the creation of each and every man but is given to us through grace as we travel through the supersensible world.
"In thinking I experience myself united with the stream of cosmic existence."
Another look is that when I see the "horse" I am not seeing the full reality but I can glean that the combination of the "concept horse" and my sensory reality or "percept" horse, which are together prior to my search for knowledge are broken apart and then brought together by my organism as I think.
We see one half of reality and the real is appreciated by men through thinking. I would say that the perception of the horse has as its backbone the concept horse which in the real holds it together for us. Percept and concept are undeniably indivisible except through thinking to which we gain knowledge in bringing them back together again.
We live through the "grace of thinking" and each of us rides thinking as the sensory element of cosmic realities. Thinking is a "sensory" process, a supersensible activity to which we all can in some measure entertain , each to his own strengths.
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