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Full Idea
It is not a law of our intellect that in comparing things and noting their agreements we recognise as realized in the outward world something we already had in our minds. The conception found its way to us as the result of such a comparison.
Gist of Idea
We don't recognise comparisons by something in our minds; the concepts result from the comparisons
Source
John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.2.2)
Book Ref
Mill,John Stuart: 'System of Logic (9th ed, 2 vols)' [Longmans, Green etc 1875], p.196
A Reaction
He recognises, of course, that this gradually becomes a two-way process. In the physicalist view of things, it is not really of great importance which concepts are hard-wired, and which constructed culturally or through perception.
| 191 | Everything resembles everything else up to a point [Plato] |
| 17712 | General ideas are the connection by resemblance to some particular [Hume] |
| 8544 | Hume does not distinguish real resemblances among degrees of resemblance [Shoemaker on Hume] |
| 2210 | A picture of a friend strengthens our idea of him, by resemblance [Hume] |
| 15755 | Hume needs a notion which includes degrees of resemblance [Shoemaker on Hume] |
| 9081 | We don't recognise comparisons by something in our minds; the concepts result from the comparisons [Mill] |
| 5410 | I learn the universal 'resemblance' by seeing two shades of green, and their contrast with red [Russell] |
| 16934 | General terms depend on similarities among things [Quine] |
| 16938 | To learn yellow by observation, must we be told to look at the colour? [Quine] |
| 8486 | Standards of similarity are innate, and the spacing of qualities such as colours can be mapped [Quine] |
| 16947 | Similarity is just interchangeability in the cosmic machine [Quine] |
| 12661 | The different types of resemblance don't resemble one another [Fodor] |