Outline

            Foreword                                                                                                        

            I           Containment.                                                                                       

i) Formation of concepts.          Synthesis.

ii) Definition.                 Analysis.           Presuppositions.

iii) Taxonomy.   Subordination.

iv) Specialists.

            II          Universality.

i) Marks.          Abstraction.

ii) Concepts of Particulars.

iii) Particular concepts. Subjectivity.

            III        Linguistic (in)dependence.

            Closing Remarks

            Bibliography

 

Foreword

            The following work is not so much an essay trying to argue a particular point, nor a report on the ideas of Immanuel Kant, but a broad treatment of the concept of a concept. In it, I bring up several points which I feel will need to be dealt with if one is to compose a more exhaustive work on the subject, and I take into account specifically the position of Immanuel Kant on these points, offering criticisms and suggesting alternative views along the way. Due to constraints of time and space, I have not included a section on experience and cognition, and many paths I start down on only break a little ground before I move on to another topic.

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I: Containment

§1

            The first issue I need to deal with is the idea of “containment”. Throughout the Critique of Pure Reason Kant makes many assured-sounding statements regarding what is contained in a concept and what lies outside of it. It seems to be assumed that what is contained in a concept is known to anyone who knows the concept, but since the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions is such an important feature of the Critique, it probably would have been useful for Kant to explore the idea of containment a little more in its own right, rather than take it as a settled issue.

            Among the problems I can see with a poorly defined sense of containment are: whether some things which are taken to be independent concepts are actually only features of a larger concept; whether a concept contains its presuppositions; whether words in a definition are concepts (or marks) contained in the concept defined; whether it can be agreed upon by all thinkers what exactly is contained in a concept; whether it is even appropriate to speak of such an abstract thing as having the hard boundaries required to be a container.

§2

i)          In our search for the constitution of a concept, it would be appropriate to start with its foundations—how is it formed?

            According to Kant, concepts are either created (through synthesis) or are given. If given, they are either given in experience or are given pure (a priori). [1]The matter we encounter in experience is abstracted from, granting it universality (§10). A universal representation is a concept. Given pure are the categories. These given concepts can be synthesised with each other or synthetic concepts to produce new synthetic ones.

            “On the difference between analytic and synthetic judgements,” Kant says that an analytic judgement clarifies while a synthetic one amplifies.[2] So the only way to create a concept that is not given is synthetically. To analyse a concept will not expand its limits (problem #1), but only bring to clarity that which is already contained (problem #2).

            Problem #1: What its limits are is still unanswered.

            Problem #2: If a mark of a concept is not yet clear, can it be already contained? If no one who has had or used the concept so far has ever considered this particular mark to be part of the concept, has it ever been part of the concept? If so, just where is it being like this, since isn’t like this in anyone’s usage? I don’t see where things like concepts and language exist outside of usage.

§3

ii)         Now that the concept is formed, what is it? The common attitude to analysis seems to be that if two terms are interchangeable, one can be analytically derived from the other. The ultimate analytic statement is a definition. But here, for me anyway, the concept/language distinction (or non-distinction) becomes an issue.

            Are the words which are contained in a definition representative of concepts contained in the concept defined? Could it be that if “a bachelor is an unmarried male” is an analytic truth, the concept of masculinity is “contained” in the concept of a bachelor?

            I think Kant’s take would  be thus: the concept of a bachelor is synthetically formed from the concept of a male and the concept of being unmarried (problem #1). Anything we can pull out of this concept, without reference to any others (problem #2), will be an analytic judgement.

            Problem #1: Does the concept of being unmarried contain the concept of marriage? The morpheme “marry” is contained in the word “unmarried”. The concept of bachelorhood only makes sense in terms of marriage. But Kant would probably argue that to get marriage from not-marriage, one would synthetically have to apply the concept of negation. Then again, since negation stands on the same footing in the table of categories as assertion, perhaps he would have to grant that as soon as a proposition is given, so is its negation.

            Problem #2: This is the sort of thing Kant says a lot and it is just infuriating. We can only know when we are making reference to other concepts if we have already established what is or is not contained in the concept in question.

§4

            Following from the observation above that bachelorhood (is this a different concept than “a bachelor” or a different grammatical form of the same?) can only be understood in terms of marriage, I am led to ask; does a concept contain its presuppositions? If something can be understood only following the understanding of something else, then is the anterior concept analytically accessible from the posterior?

            Kant might point out that I am here confusing “analysis” and “a priori cognition”. By noting that if one understands a concept, they must also understand its presuppositions, I have only shown that the latter is accessible from the former a priori, but not that such a conceptual move is an analytic one.

            So I test it using the principle of contradiction: can a bachelor be married? No. Contradiction. So: “a bachelor is unmarried” is an analytic truth. Can an unmarried person not be a bachelor? Yes. Not analytic.

            Analysis is not necessarily a two-way street. A move from the conceptus inferior to the conceptus superior (§6) or to one of its marks (§10) is analytic, but an inferior can only be drawn out of a superior by bringing in extra terms to determine a new species through synthesis.

§5

            It is true in math that the two terms on either side of  “=” can be exchanged for one another. But for Kant, this is not a mark of analytic identity. He is taking as his concepts individual numbers. If indeed numbers are distinct concepts from one another, then 7 + 5 = 12 is a synthetic truth.

But the statement “12 is not equal to 7 + 5” is a contradiction, not merely contingently false, since it is contained in the concept of addition that there is one and only one answer to the combination of two integers.

Here Kant would point out the way I have just spoken of the “combination” of “two” integers, and the concept (distinct) of addition. I will gladly allow seven and five to be two separate concepts, but hardly independent. To have the concepts of numbers is to have the concept of the number system itself (or a number system—the least which is required to have that particular number e.g. to have the concept of 2.5, my system must allow decimals). Even the child who can only count to ten understands that there are larger numbers. Each new number name learned is merely the clarification of another mark within the concept of numbers.

Numbers can also be conceived of as groups which can be redistributed in numerous fashions, so that four is exactly the same a two twos. Instead of Kant’s notion “here is two, then we perform the operation off adding two more”, I would say not that two plus two make four, but that two plus two are four. Redistribution is contained in the concept of numbers in general and individual numbers cannot conceptually stand on their own. The concept at stake is “quantity”. One could show me two objects and tell me that their quantity was “two”, and I would not yet be able to point at the doubled pair and say any more than “two twos” because I do not have the word four, but the concept of two twos is identical to the concept of four. One term is interchangeable with the other.

§6

iii)         Through part of my research, I was confused about the way Kant related concepts to each other. It seemed as though he was trying to claim in “The Blomberg Logic” that a genus contains its species.[3] My confusion turned out to be rooted in not understanding the difference between the phrases “contained in” and “contained under”. While marks and analytic features are contained in a concept, to be contained under a concept is to be a specialised member of a genus. Thus conceptus superiorum are contained in their inferiors as something held in common by all species, while conceptus inferiorum are contained under the former as synthetically determined members of the collection. To be contained under is to be inferior in terms of taxonomy, while to be contained in is to be inferior to the whole of the particular, that is picked out from the whole.

§7

In some cases the grouping of concepts is a clear-cut affair, but often the divisions can only be made arbitrarily. In “The Vienna Logic,” Kant claims that in dividing a concept, one always starts with a dichotomy[4]. His example for this is that the concept “triangle” is first divided into equilateral and non-equilateral. Non-equilateral is then divided into aequicura (isosceles) and scalena. Now the first problem with this neat arrangement that I see is that the equilateral triangle is itself a form of isosceles. So the concept of an equilateral triangle is contained under the concept of an isosceles triangle, while its isosceles character is a mark of equilaterality (since the concept of having two equal sides is contained in the concept of having three equal sides).

            To show the arbitrariness of Kant’s division, I need only to show that there are other valid ways of dividing things up. Kant has two ways of speaking of triangles, one is in terms of sides (as above) and the other is in terms of angles. For a more complete table, I would like to incorporate both aspects. Let our first division be isosceles and scalene. Each of these can be subdivided into three groups by angle: obtuse, right, and acute. Under acute isosceles is one more division: equilateral and non-equilateral. Now it could have been that we started with division by angle and then moved into divisions by side.

            Kant’s claim that each first division is a dichotomy is threatened by my threefold division by angle type. In his system of angles, he takes the first division to be right and oblique (which would then be divided into obtuse and acute). But this division fails to reflect an important feature of the concepts: that they stand beside one another on a spectrum, with the right triangle at the border of acute and obtuse. Of course, one could always create a dichotomy by picking out any species and putting “not” in front of it. That doesn’t make the division any more natural than any other.

            I do have to grant Kant one thing on this issue: his creating two tables for the triangle, one in terms of sides and one in terms of angles, is appropriate because it prevents the same divisions from appearing in different branches (divisions of my scheme are subdivided into the same three groups by angle),  thus making things neater. His failure to recognise the equilateral triangle as a species of isosceles, however, is significant, since it is an indisputably analytic judgement, whereas the acuteness of this triangle may (according to Kant) be known through synthesis.

§8

iv)        The next aspect of the concept problem that I wish to tackle is the possibility that a concept may contain far more marks for one thinker than for another. In the Prolegomena, Kant defines the concept of gold as “a yellow metal,” and says that it is an analytic proposition to refer to it as such.[5] Were Herr Kant a metallurgist, however, there would be far more contained in his most simple conception of gold, including atomic details, chemical and physical properties, under what sort of conditions it is found, etc. All of these are, to the specialist, just as vital marks of gold as its yellowness and metallic character, yet adding these details to the concept is by no means mere clarification of something obscure, but synthetic amplification. What I do not have an answer for is whether Kant would have it that the metallurgist’s concept of gold and the layperson’s are the same except that one contains more, or that they are different concepts of the same object in general.

 

 

II: Universality

§9

i)          Singular representations occur through the senses and the understanding. The coordination of representations in the understanding produces an appearance. Only when this is subordinated to a universal representation does it become a concept. This universality seems to be the distinguishing feature of a concept, which arises through reason.[6] How reason subordinates a singular representation to a universal one is by recognising marks and grouping the singular representations by these.

§10

            Marks held in common by concepts are contained in each and contained under the concept which is abstracted from these common marks. Concepts may be abstracted from experience or pure reason.[7]

§11

ii)         Can particulars be concepts? Or are they at most objects describable in terms of many concepts which do not actually relate to each other except in that they all adhere in the one object? There are cases where reference to particular people seems to be conceptual in nature. In such cases, though, the concept of the person seems to be far more abstract than the description of the person themselves. The concept of a Benedict Arnold contains far less than the description of the man himself.

            According to Kant, singular representations are not concepts. So is Elvis not a concept? No, when I say “the next Elvis” or “he’s a regular Dean Martin”, I am attributing certain distinctive marks of these characters to another, thus speaking of something that is universal. It is universal just because it can be applied to more than one individual. I am not asserting, “he is Dean Martin.”

            Despite universality as a requisite for conception, Kant allows for the existence of concepts of individual things. These he calls conceptus singulares and sites “Rome” as an example. Opposed to these are conceptus communes, such as “city”. He says that the representations of immediate experience are conceptus singulares,[8] but it would seem more consistent not to call them concepti at all, for how could it be that a particular object, taking into consideration all things that could be said of it, including those things that make it an individual i.e. not identical to any other object, could also somehow be universalised? Surely it can contain many universal marks, but these can only serve to place the thing under a suitable concept, not to make of it a concept in its own right.

§12

iii)         Can a concept stand in any mind without value impositions? Who is “neutral” about anything? Do the values actually become part of the concept, or do they attach like a sticky film? These questions arise when one considers the possibility (suggested in §8) that each different thinker uses a different concept of the same object. In one possible view, the concept is like a word, whose contents are fixed, whose usage can be proper or improper. This sort of concept I will call the conceptus linguus,[9] since it is subject to the same rules as language and may as well be the same thing. But, taking a concept to be something that has to do more with individual experience, a conceptus privus, it seems that an individual’s disposition to the object of the concept could not help but influence the character of the concept itself.

            Kant seems to allow for the existence of conceptus privi and calls them “aesthetic concepts”.[10] By contrast, the “proper concept of reason” is objective and universal. Upon closer inspection of Kant’s aesthetic concept, though, it may be culturally determined, like a conceptus linguus. He speaks, in a way, of poets using such terms, that suggests that the poets pick the words they do because of the standard aesthetic qualities they evoke. These concepts could not be utilised in a way that would predictably produce a feeling in another unless the values with which it is infused are held by a significant portion of potential readers of the poem.

§13

            Below I will examine the possibility of the existence of both a conceptus linguus and a conceptus privus for the same object.

Thesis:

            I feel fairly safe in assuming that a concept is mind-dependant. There is no mind which is not also a subject. Thus no concept (individual conception) can escape subjective pollution. I cannot say the phrase “right-wing” without a certain tone of disdain. There is a strong value judgement tied up with my concept of right-wing. As an academic, I can maintain a certain aloofness for the sake of “objective” discussion of economic theories, but this is precisely where the discussion (concepts made public) differs from the conceptual phenomenon which I am experiencing, for while I  may be able to speak objectively about the right, there is no point at which I will be thinking of the right without certain emotional marks being present in my concept.

Antithesis:

            My values are of a more transitory nature than my cognition and I think that Kant would say they have nothing to do with the concept itself, but that, rather, they are a way of approaching the concept. He would not allow, it seems likely, anything so particular as an individual’s political allegiances to qualify as a mark in a concept. Rather, the concept would be precisely that which is held in common by all thinkers. Value judgements on the thing that the concept is a concept of are made by first understanding the concept, then applying practical reason to it.

            The sense I get from the term “marks” also is not one that encompasses values. Marks are synthesised through the pure concepts of the understanding. Synthetic concepts are used in judgement. This is where values enter, not at the conceptual level. Values occur in post-conceptual judgements.

 

III: Linguistic (in)dependence

§14

The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy defines concept as, “that which is understood by a term.”[11] So can it be understood without a term?

It seems that, in philosophy, the standard take on concepts is that they are either language dependent or are actually equivalent to words, but from conversations outside the ivory tower, I’ve gotten the impression that the layperson’s view is that words only represent concepts, but those concepts could be “had” without the words. Is it that these people are thinking of some sort of “inner object,” or could this be referring to a phenomenon, the phenomenon of understanding itself (as verb)?

I have here the potential for a sort of Copernican revolution of concepts: that they are not language dependant, rather language is concept dependant. Words are the pointers for which concepts are the things pointed at. Different words are used in different (or same) regions to represent the same concept.

§15

Could it be that?:

            When one has a direct intuition of an object, they automatically form a minimal concept of it. This concept is the phenomenon that reappears when they are reminded of, or find things bearing similar marks to, the object. Without being able to describe the phenomenon to others, this remains a private concept. It is only through language that one can describe the marks of this concept to another, thus causing them to experience a similar (although not identical) phenomenon. The words are not the concept. The words do not “carry” the concept across to another mind. Rather, the words are that which guides the listener in the formation of their own version of the concept.

§16

            Does this theory allow for a concept to be more than an individual and subjective thing? Yes. For the purpose of talk about the concept in general, we can take the words most commonly used to describe the marks of a concept to be its definition. If the words used are ambiguous enough, or the concept in question of matter that tends to be approached rather arbitrarily, to produce different phenomena in different thinkers, then it may be said of the concept that it is by nature that flexible. It will also be shown in such cases that, since language is inadequate to produce identical versions of the concept, it would be futile to try to describe how these are different concepts, since language would also be inadequate for clarifying the differences between instances of comprehension.

Now, could it be that universal marks within these singular representations could be recognised in their universal aspect without the use of language? Is it that the child whose early concept of “mama” is closer to “grown-up”, is, by using that word, attempting to refer to a concept that they had already formed before knowing how to communicate their knowledge about this type? It would seem to be an act of reasoning to expect that the referring term for one member of a type would be appropriate for other members. It certainly demonstrates that the child is recognising something universal in these singular appearances. It seems at least plausible that their enthusiastic attempt to use this word is motivated by their amazement at having formed a concept, i.e. they are anxious to use the word because they’ve had this notion in their head for a while and feel an urge to express it. If this is the case, then language follows from concepts. Its unique function, however, is to be able to facilitate the recreation of concepts (pardon the phrase) “in other minds”, or to check with others to see that their concept of that object or phenomenon is congruent with one’s own.

§17

An example of the independence of concepts from language is that Koko the gorilla forms her own compound words to describe things which she recognises as being different from yet the same as others. Her word for swan is “waterbird,” her word for duck is “bluewaterbird”. This is not just description as both the swan and the duck are in the same water. It is not the case that for one, the water is blue, and not for the other. This is an arbitrary way of distinguishing and suggests that Koko does in fact have two different concepts in mind without having the words to explain the difference. That they are concepts in the Kantian sense, exhibiting the universal, is shown by the morphology of her words. “Bird” is the root word (and the conceptus superior), “waterbird” is a species of bird, and “bluewaterbird” is a subspecies of that. While this may not agree with zoology, it seems reasonable for someone who may have seen the swan first, and then the duck, to assume that the latter is some sort of mutation of the former.

§18

Certain types of concepts cannot be learned linguistically. I am specifically thinking of concepts which have to do with extraordinary phenomenon, such as psychedelic experiences. What happens in such an experience is that the what-it-is-likeness for a person is altered. Thus a person on an acid trip who is seeing an extra

colour or making connections between ideas that just don’t relate to each other for the unaffected person, cannot hope to give the layperson an accurate concept of the experience. So while a subculture with similar habits and hobbies may have words or phrases that draw upon identical concepts in different thinkers within the culture, some of this may just be incomprehensible for an outsider. Words such as “peaking,” “epiphany,” or “emptiness,” can’t be fully understood by one who has not been through the experiences that the terms describe. An additional problem unique to psychedelic and psychotic experiences is that the faculties for understanding and describing are themselves being altered, so there is no hope for someone else to understand what the psychotic is trying to describe, since their own understanding is just working a different way.

 

Closing Remarks

            While the question, “what is a concept” may not have been satisfactorily answered in this paper, I feel I have clarified many important features of what Kant’s concept is. The Kantian concept seems to be of two main types: created and given. Created concepts include all inventions, the pure categories of the understanding are simply given as part of being a conscious creature, while other concepts are given empirically in experience. Excepting his self-contradictions (the allowance of conceptus singulares and aesthetic concepts),  concepts are drawn from that which is common (marks) among individual representations. They are formal predicates and only part of cognition when they refer to (are filled with) real objects.

            As for my own points in this paper, I am not sure whether the conceptus linguus or the conceptus privus is the ordinary sense of “concept,” but I think that both are worth pointing out and have their role. As for my theories of language independent concepts and language inappropriate concepts, I hope to expand on these after I have studied some philosophy of language.

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

Blackburn, Simon. Dictionary of Philosophy. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)

 

Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. trans. Gary Hatfield. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)

 

Kant, Immanuel. Lectures on Logic. trans. J. Michael Young. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 

           

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. trans. Paul Guyer, Allen Wood. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)