I’ve been trying to write my own version of the basics of concept formation for my website, but I’m having a hard time finding the right words. Looking for some help with it.
So far this is what I’ve got.
Concepts & Integration:
Human beings have the ability to think conceptually rather than just in terms of percepts. Without this ability one would have to treat every entity as entirely unique and different, allowing for no significant progression or development of knowledge. Concept-formation is a means to achieving a unit-economy, i.e. to economize an unlimited amount of information into a finite number of easily processed, abstract units. A concept then, is the integration of two or more particulars (units - i.e. a separate member of a group with two or more similar members) into a single mental classification, isolated and unified by specific characteristics. For example when you think of the concept “cow”, you don’t think of one cow in particular, you think of every cow that has ever been and that will be as a single generalized whole. Concepts aren’t bound to the particulars that they derive from, so if all cows were destroyed, the concept would still exist.
Concepts can be also be used as units themselves and integrated to form higher-level concepts, for example the concept of art requires the concepts of sculpture, painting etc., which themselves depend upon other concepts. Concepts are contextual, in that they can be expanded and / or made more specific or complex as one’s knowledge grows and as certain concepts become obsolete in light of new knowledge and must either be revised or become useless.
A concept is formed by a mathematical process, taking similarities between multiple entities, whilst discarding the differences and the particular measurements of the similarities (“measurement omission”). An attribute is a characteristic of a thing which is reducible to a unit of measurement, such as shape, size, velocity, weight, colour etc. A commensurable (commonly measurable) attribute is taken as the CCD (Conceptual Common Denominator) which allows differentiation and integration. The concept of table, therefore, is formed by isolating the attributes (CCDs) that constitute “tableness”, i.e. support(s) and a flat surface upon which items may be placed, and omitting the specific measurements involved, such as height, weight, color, number of supports, diameter of surface, etc. The process of concept formation is comparable to algebra: Specific measurements of perceptual concretes (such as the overall height of a given table) are replaced by variables (x, y, z etc.) which denote some quantity. It is in what relation the quantities are to each other, and whether the quantities fall within the range of the concept, which is of importance. For example a helmet would no longer be a helmet were it made from cotton (it would be a hat instead).
Definition:
The definition of a concept is the final stage of conceptualization. The basic function of a definition is to distinguish a concept from all other concepts and thus to keep its units differentiated from all other existents. A definition identifies a concept’s essential characteristics, which are the genus (CCD) and the differentia (differences from other existents that share the same genus). These characteristics must be fundamental, i.e. they must be responsible for all or most of the units’ remaining distinctive characteristics. An excellent metaphor for the term “definition” is that of a file folder with a label. The file folder represents the concept, while the label represents the definition. The contents of the folder can increase as more sensory knowledge of the concept is obtained, but the definition remains the same.
Would a twenty foot tall helmet actually be a helmet at all? Can the measurements of a concept be potentially infinite, as long as the relationships between the measurements of the attributes chosen as similar in the first place remain the same?