What, precisely, is a "concept"?

[asphara]

Things in words? No. Things in head? Yes. Things in natural head? No - absorbed socially, accumulated historically. From what? Human forms of any kinds - words, actions, things and so sorth; we receive them as patterns of sensation, and our neurological network adapts to this; so conceptual development is really the effect of socially ossified forms. So the concept is not natural? Of course not. So consciousness - pretty much all of our thinking - is nothing but petrified emotional, sensuous thinking? Yes.

So the modern psyche, dissociative - i.e. whose emotional and social life are in dynamic conflict - the modern psyche; is it not really two rats fighting in the sack? One borne there and one grown in from the social world? Yes. Does this explain things like being-purge disorder, psycopathology (mind tyranises the body and excises emotion), suicide, multiple personality disorder, anorexia (mind starves body as messy nusence)? Yes.

Every thought is a bit of ossified life that has wormed itself into your in-itself. What do you - think?

[Captain Cosine]

How would a word create a concept? Wouldn't the concept come before the word, the word being a description? I can make up any word right now, but it has no definition, no meaning or concept behind it. A word seems to be our conscious' way of translating concepts and thoughts into a coherent explanation for others. Of course, technically a concept cannot even exist in our head without a word to describe it to ourself, right? How else would we know what we are talking about? But a word is meaningless without an idea behind it. Kind of like the chicken and the egg; which came first?

Words probably first came from sounds, in an attempt to describe it to others, they mimicked the sound, what ever that sound was associated with (like an animal running) then became the meaning of such a word. But the very act of imitating the noise and giving another noise (the word) a meaning is consciousness in itself, is it not? Other animals who lack consciousness don't communicate to others via imitating sounds they've heard.

What of the unconscious mind, though? consciousness, to me, seems to be the minds way of making unconscious material conscious. That in itself makes it seem that the unconscious is conscious itself, only hidden from our awareness.

An interesting thought though, I'll think more on it when I'm not so tired and reply again.

[asphara]

This is interesting Captain Cosine, because you actually have quite an orginal view when you say "How would a word create a concept? Wouldn't the concept come before the word, the word being a description?" - you're in a minority with this, but I agree with you. So the question is; where did the concept come from? The two extreme views are;

KANT/HEGEL - The concept is an in-itself, the original thing that creates the thing and the word.

Nietzsche/Adorno - that the concept is the effect of social forms like words, rituals, practices, tools and so forth; they entrench themselves in the mind by triggering of millions of repeated stimulations of a certain kind, that make us not just be able to see the thing, but to be able to think it without stimulation - it kind of bores a whole into your head.

You and I agree with Adorno and Nietzsche. When you say;

"Words probably first came from sounds, in an attempt to describe it to others, they mimicked the sound, what ever that sound was associated with (like an animal running) then became the meaning of such a word."

This is precisely the view of Adorno - he calls it memisis. I agree with you about accidental human sounds being the basis for sign recognition. A clear example is a ghasp at horror. It is accidental but you can imagine it developing into a warning signal. The thing is, when words accumulate through history they loose their relationship with what they actually refer to; and they become a world of their own - and I agree with you, that when you have words you have consciousness; thus our consciousness is a world of its own; a social and historical world - the dead history of our ancestors.

"the chicken and the egg; which came first?" - Same with all chicken and egg conundrams; you have to question the distinction between the two. The concept, word and thing are not three things, but a continuum. A gasp is its word is its concept. In other words, there is no concept, word and thing. They emerge when they accumulate culturally, and loose touch with the thing they refer to in real life - hence we think in the abstract; we live in the abstract.

"What of the unconscious mind, though? consciousness, to me, seems to be the minds way of making unconscious material conscious. That in itself makes it seem that the unconscious is conscious itself, only hidden from our awareness."

This is precisely Freud's view, and was my view, but I've changed my mind; I think the unconscious is all together an unhelpful idea. Our emotional and physical sensations are our unconscious - but they are not really unconscious - they are repressed, and they assert themselves in shooting moments like when we loose our temper or end up eating all the cakes or whatever.

Anyway interesting comments.

[shadyelshafie]

my own simple definition of concept is the view/landscape of the idea being expressed or portrayed in own personal view

[Captain Cosine]

This is interesting Captain Cosine, because you actually have quite an orginal view when you say "How would a word create a concept? Wouldn't the concept come before the word, the word being a description?" - you're in a minority with this, but I agree with you. So the question is; where did the concept come from? The two extreme views are;

KANT/HEGEL - The concept is an in-itself, the original thing that creates the thing and the word.

Nietzsche/Adorno - that the concept is the effect of social forms like words, rituals, practices, tools and so forth; they entrench themselves in the mind by triggering of millions of repeated stimulations of a certain kind, that make us not just be able to see the thing, but to be able to think it without stimulation - it kind of bores a whole into your head.

You and I agree with Adorno and Nietzsche. When you say;

"Words probably first came from sounds, in an attempt to describe it to others, they mimicked the sound, what ever that sound was associated with (like an animal running) then became the meaning of such a word."

This is precisely the view of Adorno - he calls it memisis. I agree with you about accidental human sounds being the basis for sign recognition. A clear example is a ghasp at horror. It is accidental but you can imagine it developing into a warning signal. The thing is, when words accumulate through history they loose their relationship with what they actually refer to; and they become a world of their own - and I agree with you, that when you have words you have consciousness; thus our consciousness is a world of its own; a social and historical world - the dead history of our ancestors.

"the chicken and the egg; which came first?" - Same with all chicken and egg conundrams; you have to question the distinction between the two. The concept, word and thing are not three things, but a continuum. A gasp is its word is its concept. In other words, there is no concept, word and thing. They emerge when they accumulate culturally, and loose touch with the thing they refer to in real life - hence we think in the abstract; we live in the abstract.

"What of the unconscious mind, though? consciousness, to me, seems to be the minds way of making unconscious material conscious. That in itself makes it seem that the unconscious is conscious itself, only hidden from our awareness."

This is precisely Freud's view, and was my view, but I've changed my mind; I think the unconscious is all together an unhelpful idea. Our emotional and physical sensations are our unconscious - but they are not really unconscious - they are repressed, and they assert themselves in shooting moments like when we loose our temper or end up eating all the cakes or whatever.

Anyway interesting comments.

I didn't even think about the word, thing, and concept being one, that's an interesting thought, and makes sense.

And, on the unconscious, are you saying the the what we call the unconscious, is just repressed pieces of consciousness?

[asphara]

I think actually that consciousness is something that emerges through emotional and sensuous experience, which is immediate; and this immediate sensuous experience, and the emotional response, survives, and is what we mistakenly call the unconscious. What makes it "unconscious" is the layer of conceptual modification that splits up the sensuous totality of experience into discrete moments - objects in perception, and thoughts in our head. Without consciousness we would experience life as an immediate sensuous totality - just as we do when we're having an orgasm or eating all the cakes. While we are experiencing the moment, there is no 'self' - to think about 'self' you have to leave the orgasm/taste. The precise orgasm or taste cannot be remembered consciously, because it explodes consciousess into pure sensation. Our memory of sex is merely the conceptual reconstruction for consciousness - but thinking about it, we might also get turned on - and this is a very noticable moment of what we otherwise call the unconscious. Emotion appear in consciousness, but not directly; it presses into thinking, and thus things like the concept of alienation, utopia, or artistic and aesthetic creations, come about as emotionally inflamed thoughts. Conscious thoughts are precisely the end result of socially ossified forms in experience, and these cannot recognise emotions, because emotions are not socially ossified experiences. However, feelings can move thought, if not move in thought. This is my view anyway.

[Captain Cosine]

I think actually that consciousness is something that emerges through emotional and sensuous experience, which is immediate; and this immediate sensuous experience, and the emotional response, survives, and is what we mistakenly call the unconscious. What makes it "unconscious" is the layer of conceptual modification that splits up the sensuous totality of experience into discrete moments - objects in perception, and thoughts in our head. Without consciousness we would experience life as an immediate sensuous totality - just as we do when we're having an orgasm or eating all the cakes. While we are experiencing the moment, there is no 'self' - to think about 'self' you have to leave the orgasm/taste. The precise orgasm or taste cannot be remembered consciously, because it explodes consciousess into pure sensation. Our memory of sex is merely the conceptual reconstruction for consciousness - but thinking about it, we might also get turned on - and this is a very noticable moment of what we otherwise call the unconscious. Emotion appear in consciousness, but not directly; it presses into thinking, and thus things like the concept of alienation, utopia, or artistic and aesthetic creations, come about as emotionally inflamed thoughts. Conscious thoughts are precisely the end result of socially ossified forms in experience, and these cannot recognise emotions, because emotions are not socially ossified experiences. However, feelings can move thought, if not move in thought. This is my view anyway.

So, you say consciousness is the experience, while unconscious is the memory of the experience?

And if thoughts like a utopia are just emotionally inflamed, what causes said inflammation? What allows us to take our experiences and push them forward into an idea not yet experienced?

[asphara]

"So, you say consciousness is the experience, while unconscious is the memory of the experience?" - actually I think the other way round, but perhaps thats what you ment. Another way of thinking about it is that looking at the development of the child. Freud says "an infant at its mothers breast does not, as yet, distiguishes himself from the external world, as the sensations flowing upon them". In this view, experience is a totality of sensuous stimulation, as yet undifferentiated into things. There is no memory and no form in thought.

Freud argues that the child experience certain patterns through the pleasure/pain principle. That which somes and goes, comes and goes, and offers warm and satisfying eperiences (mother) becomes regionalised through experience - the child begins to connect itself with the pleasure and become differentiated with displeasure as something to be avoided. Then the child has some parts of itself there all the time, and this pleasure part comes and goes, so the child begins to differentiate mother from self.

In neurological terms we can talk about the way neurological structuration is the consequence of repeated sense patterns - but if we think for a moment about natural animals, nothing repeats so prolifically as does objects, words, actions and so forth; so human production is always at the same time the production of more and more psychic differentiation - and if the unconscious was an emotional ocean, consciousness is like the iceberges falling on top. Before long, the iceberges are so tall and imposing, that the sea underneath is obscured.

Emotionally inflamed thoughts is like the neurosis, in the sense that emotional, sensuous needs agonize with such dissonance that they weaken the and penetrate ego (conscious) processes. In poetry we have the assonance, dissonance, allusion, repition, tempo, rhyme, metre and so forth. Emotionality and instinct does not speek in concepts, but shakes them as an inert dead structure, andf communicate through this shaking.

Anything in human discourse that communicates with resonance - music, tone and inflections in the voice, sex, and all the 'buzzing' feelings in our lives is the experience of what we mistakenly call the unconscious - but it unmasks itself when we regard consciousness not as the city and the emotion as the dranage system underneath, but emotion as the vast iceberge beneath the sea, and consciousness as the little spike protruding above.

Anyway, I can't communicate properly because my consciousness is insisting on coffee and my sunconscious is insisting on cannabis; its world war head!

[Captain Cosine]

I'll be honest, I do not completely understand this idea, but it the pieces I do get do make sense and hold water. I've never really thought about things this way before.