Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!lll-lcc!pyramid!thirdi!sarge From: sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode) Newsgroups: sci.psychology Subject: Re: Concepts and Semantics Message-ID: <375@thirdi.UUCP> Date: 30 Mar 88 02:02:05 GMT References: <344@thirdi.UUCP> <945@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <350@thirdi.UUCP> <968@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <357@thirdi.UUCP> <978@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <367@thirdi.UUCP> <997@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> Reply-To: sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode) Organization: Institute for Research in Metapsychology Lines: 128 Keywords: reality world facts ideas phenomena words concepts Summary: Concepts (i.e. possibilities) *do* exist -- as possibilities. In article <997@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn) writes: >[A lag in communication] allows me to devote my full effort to a response, >letting me rewrite, review, study. Yeah, that's nice too, sometimes. >>But I believe that it *is* useful, in >>that it helps to have a word to describe "a thing that might or might not >>exist." Rather than put a lot more verbiage on the net, let me try to summarize your major argument for the view that concepts must be MP's. You state that concepts may not exist, as I define them, since I have defined them as possible entities. Then you wonder how we can hold PSOF's (possible states of affairs, as you term my idea of concepts), since they may not exist. To hold them, we would have to hold something that *did* exist. And that would have to be some kind of mental representation (MR). My response is that a *possibility* may exist, even if the thing which is possible does not necessarily exist. The possibility exists that there is a purple car (not a purple cow) in my driveway. Though the car may not exist, the *possibility* of the car exists. Secondly, you use the term "hold", and the question is exactly what you mean by this term. If you mean that something hels must be perceptible in order to be held, then I would have to grant you that only some kind of presentation or representation would have to exist in order for something to be held. If, however, you substituted "have, as an existing entity" for "hold", then a thing like a possibility can be had, as an existing entity. I'm not saying that we hold conepts in our minds, as you define "hold"; all I am saying is that concepts (or PSOF's) *exist* for us, as part of our non-phenomenal world, just as Afganistan exists for me, even though I have never seen it or "held" it. The confusion is understandable and is partly a function of my choosing the term "concept", which has many different meanings. In my view, concepts are not "held" in the mind as mental representations. Now one could *define* a concept as a form of mental token. Such tokens certainly exist, I believe. But then, in my schema, concepts would be subsumed as a particular kind of phenomenon, and we would have to give another name to existing possibilities. That would be OK, I guess. But I would still say that possibilities may exist for a person without being represented by any particular mental token or representation. >>[I]n the ordinary view of things, people don't experience >>themselves as viewing mental pictures when they are looking at physical >>objects. >Then they are wrong! There are plenty of non-experienced true things in >the world, and one of them is that perception is a process of >representation. I fully agree that a great deal of interpretation is involved in the act of perception and that perception is not a pure act of contacting reality. But if one said that all perception is a form of mental representation, isn't that equivalent to saying "it's all in your mind."? It seems to me that a useful distinction can be drawn between sensory perceptions (however interpreted) and non-sensory ones (such as when we create a mental picture). that's the only point I waqs making. >>It may be that, in order to "entertain" a concept, it must be represented. But >>to me the concept is different from the representation (sort of like the >>territory is different from the map). After all, the same concept may be >>represented in a variety of ways, e.g., in a variety of languages, or by a >>variety of synonyms. So is the concept some kind of "core" form of >>representation to which all the other representations refer? It doesn't seem >>that way. One representation seems about as good as another to express a >>concept. In other words, a concept, experientially, is not bound to any >>particular representation. >Excellent point. Which is a "better" representation: 2+2, 2*2, 2**2, 4, >IV, four? Well, it all depends on your purpose in representing the >number, and no doubt the number is not the representation. At this >moment I am inclined to say that numbers, like Sargeian concepts, do not >exist. I'm not sure the point you were trying to win with this >observation. It seems to support my view that the concept does not >exist, as well as the view that the concept is not the representation of >the concept. The latter is true in general: the symbol is never >identical to the referrent, but always similar to it. I wasn't really trying to win any points! A number is probably not a metapsychological "concept", because a number is not something of which it could be said "this exists" or "this does not exist". One person couldn't say, "4!" (assuming that there wasn't an implied "The answer is ..." preceding "4!", or something of the sort), and another person say, "Yes. That's right!". On second thought, "the quality of having the same number as 2 + 2" might be a legitimate concept, in that "4-ness" might exist as a quality of something, like "yellowness". There is certainly four of *something*. I'm not sure on this point. But the point is, that in order for something to be a concept, it would have to at least make *sense* to say, "It exists" or "It doesn't exist." >Hmm, it is certainly true that not everything that exists is >represented. However, it need not be true that everything that is >represented does indeed exist, that is, it is possible to represent >PSOFs. So I do admit the existence of things that are not perceived. >In fact, we seem to have the general result that presentation and >existence are totally disjoint: that is, things presented to me can >either exist or not, and things that exist can either be presented to me >or not. What?? Everything that exists is represented?? That doesn't seem correct, somehow. I assume you mean *experientially*, that you are working within an experiential framework in saying that. But even so, it seems to be quite possible that something could exist as part of a person's world without being represented. I might know that there are papayas at the local Lucky's without having any particular representation of that fact. I don't necessarily get the sentence "There are papaya's at Lucky's", nor even a picture of papayas or Luckys, when I know that. This fact *may* bne represented in a number of ways, but it may *not* be represented, at any particular time. You *may* be right that, in order for us to put our attention on some fact or idea, it must be represented in some way, or that it just so happens that there is always some representation present when our attention is on a fact. I don't happen to think that's the case. But even if it *were* the case, that wouldn't mean that the representation *is* the fact or concept. As I said before, a concept may be represented in a number of ways and therefore the representations cannot be the concept. The concept must be something else, and it seems useful to me to think of it as the possibility of an entity. -- "The map may not be the territory, but it's all we've got." Sarge Gerbode Institute for Research in Metapsychology 950 Guinda St. Palo Alto, CA 94301 UUCP: pyramid!thirdi!sarge