| 22763 | We can only dream of a winged man if we have experienced men and some winged thing [Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: He who in his sleep dreams of a winged man does not dream so without having seen some winged thing and a man. And in general it is impossible to find in conception anything which one does not possess as known by experience. | |
| From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Logicians (two books) [c.180], II.058) | |
| A reaction: This precisely David Hume's empiricist account of the formation of concepts. Hume's example is a golden mountain, which he got from Aquinas. How do we dream of faces we have never encountered, or shapes we have never seen? |
| 12475 | All our ideas derive either from sensation, or from inner reflection [Locke] |
| Full Idea: External material things, as the objects of sensation; and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of reflection, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginning. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.01.04) | |
| A reaction: The obvious opposition comes from claims about innate ideas. That a great deal is innate is fairly obvious, but it seems very hard to demonstrate that any of it qualifies as 'ideas'. |
| 17735 | Simple ideas are produced in us by external things, and they match their appearances [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Simple ideas are not fictions of our fancies, but the natural and regular productions of things without us, really operating upon us. ...They represent to us things under those appearances which they are fitted to produce in us. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.04.04) | |
| A reaction: Quoted by Jenkins to support her arguments for empirical knowledge being encoded in our concepts (which then produce a priori knowledge). I approve. This is the sort of realism in Locke which Berkeley and Hume shy away from. |
| 21921 | Concepts are abstracted from perceptions [Schopenhauer, by Lewis,PB] |
| Full Idea: For Schopenhauer concepts are abstractions from perception, what he calls 'representations of representations', and are linked to the creation of language. | |
| From: report of Arthur Schopenhauer (Fourfold Root of Princ of Sufficient Reason [1813]) by Peter B. Lewis - Schopenhauer 3 | |
| A reaction: This is a traditional view which dates back to Aristotle, and which I personally think is entirely correct. These days I am in minority on that. This idea means that (contrary to Kant) perception is not conceptual. |
| 21475 | All of our concepts are borrowed from perceptual knowledge [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: The entire property of a concept consists in nothing more than what has been begged and borrowed from perceptual knowledge, which is the true and inexhaustible source of all insight. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], I:9) | |
| A reaction: Schopenhauer is usually seen as a sort of idealist, but this is a full endorsement of the empirical view of concepts, to which I largely subscribe. Note that he talks of 'knowledge', rather than of 'experience'. |
| 16518 | We conceptualise objects, but they impinge on us [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The mind conceptualises objects, yet objects impinge upon the mind. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: A very nice statement of the relationship, and the fact that we don't just make our concepts up. |
| 17710 | Aristotelian justification uses concepts abstracted from experience [Mares] |
| Full Idea: Aristotelian justification is the process of reasoning using concepts that are abstracted from experience (rather than, say, concepts that are innate or those that we associate with the meanings of words). | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (A Priori [2011], 08.1) | |
| A reaction: See Carrie Jenkins for a full theory along these lines (though she doesn't mention Aristotle). This is definitely my preferred view of concepts. |
| 17718 | Grounded concepts are trustworthy maps of the world [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: Grounded concepts are like trustworthy on-board maps of the independent world. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], Intro) | |
| A reaction: You'll probably need more than one concept for it to qualify as a 'map', but I like this idea a lot. The world, rather than we ourselves, creates our concepts. The opposite of the view of Geach in 'Mental Acts'. |
| 17739 | The physical effect of world on brain explains the concepts we possess [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: I think the physical effects of the world on the brain explain our possessing the concepts we do. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 8.2) | |
| A reaction: A nice slogan for a thought which strikes me as exactly right. |