The concept as a form of thinking is one of the most important topics of science in the field of logic. The following article will provide the necessary information on this issue. This material can also be useful in preparing for the exam in general psychology, while studying the issue of thinking.
The science of perfecting human consciousness
A few hundred years before Christ, a new branch of knowledge arose within the framework of the Greek philosophical school. This science began to be called logic. Her founding father is considered the greatest ancient philosopher Aristotle.
This thinker said that it is necessary to study the processes taking place in the human mind. He explained the relevance of this as follows.
If we analyze how people think and identify the most significant components of the process, then we can subsequently achieve a more perfect mastery of this art by a person. And that means that science can develop in the future at a more rapid pace.
Thus, we can conclude that the subject of logic is the form of thinking and the concept as one of them.
Difference from other sciences
Unlike other branches of knowledge, which also have human thinking as an object, for example, psychology, physiology, and so on, logic studies the ideal forms of this process and potential ways to improve it.
Scientists working in this field are interested in the mechanisms of consciousness, but not at the molecular level, but rather in terms of mathematical calculations. Therefore, we can say that such a branch of knowledge is largely associated with the world of numbers and signs. As one of the goals of studying logic, they usually call instilling in people a culture of thinking. Many scientists spoke about the need for such skills for the younger generation.
In particular, the latest edition of the Law "On Education" and the Federal State Educational Standard approved the provision that modern schoolchildren and students need to instill universal learning skills instead of simply communicating knowledge in various disciplines to them.
Logic as a science is precisely engaged in the study of such processes. For example, the concept as a form of thinking is formed as a result of actions such as analysis, synthesis, comparison, abstraction, and so on.
Intellectual activity, as well as culture and art as products, is associated with such global phenomena as the formation of the social system, and various historical events, for example, revolutions, wars, and so on. From this position, a science such as social anthropology studies mental processes.
Three main forms of thinking
Intellectual activity of a person can be divided into the following components: judgments, conclusions and concepts.
The first two types of actions cannot be taken without using the third. A concept is a form of thinking, a reflection in a person’s mind of objects and phenomena of the surrounding life, as well as characteristics inherent in them. This action occurs by highlighting the main features of objects.
Concept structure
A similar form of thinking can be decomposed into the following components:
Each of them will be considered below.
The content of the concept is a qualitative indicator of such a phenomenon. It consists of the attributes of an object. There may be one or more. For a better understanding of the above, the following example can be given.
If you take the word "car", then its content will be something like this:
- vehicle;
- 19th century invention;
- a device having a steering wheel, pedals and headlights.
Each of the presented characteristics can be considered as a separate feature. And they, in turn, are also divided into several types.
A sign should be understood as a description of any properties of an object, recognition of the presence of individual attributes that distinguish it from a number of other phenomena. It is important to mention here that such qualities may or may not be present.
Therefore, the first criterion by which attributes are classified is their polarity. They are called positive in the presence of certain traits, and negative in the absence. Often the belonging of a sign to one or another category of this group is sometimes indicated in the very name of the phenomenon, for example, “innocence”.
It is worth noting that a negative or positive characteristic does not indicate an appropriate moral assessment of the phenomenon. An example is the word “independent”. Most often, this adjective is used to describe such qualities as love of freedom or independence. In most cases, it carries a positive connotation, despite the fact that there is a negation in the content: lack of dependence.
Also, the symptoms are divided into significant and non-essential. The first include traits that distinguish an object or phenomenon from a number of others similar to it. All other signs that are capable of belonging to several terms at once are considered insignificant.
The features of these groups will be more clear if we consider them on the example of the concept of “trolley bus”. An essential feature of this type of transport is this: a vehicle powered by wires. This explanation of the concept of the trolleybus distinguishes it from all other urban transport. If this item loses such a sign, then it will cease to be itself. A trolley bus that moves along the street not at the expense of electric energy, but, for example, on diesel fuel, turns into a completely different model of vehicles.
Its non-essential feature may be the following: an object having four wheels. Or such a car driven by a steering wheel and pedals. These definitions may apply to other types of vehicles. Therefore, the description of the trolleybus will not suffer much if they are excluded from it. Knowing the essential features of a concept, a person can quickly determine what is being discussed and imagine in his mind an image of a certain subject.
Application in science
The concept as a form of thinking is graphically presented in terms used in various fields of human knowledge. It should be noted that in such cases only essential features should be present in its content. Thus, conciseness and maximum accuracy of scientific terms and their formulations are achieved. The content of concepts with their names can be found in various kinds of dictionaries, for example, in explanatory, encyclopedic and so on.
How is it in Russian?
The name of a concept can consist of either one or several words. Ideally, the phenomenon should have its own term by which it is designated. However, many items do not have a specific name.
In such cases, it is customary to use descriptive phrases to indicate them, which often happens when translating texts from one language to another. An example is the now-popular English word "gadget." Today it has already firmly entered the Russian language. However, in the nineties of the 20th century, such a term did not exist yet, and when translated from English, this word was translated by descriptive phrases such as "electronic device" or "computer".
Quantitative characteristic
This chapter will discuss the scope of the concept. This term denotes a quantitative characteristic of the phenomenon. By volume here is meant the totality of all objects corresponding to the attributes that are given in its content.
It is better to consider this with a concrete example of a concept. The content “paper medium” refers to a book. The volume of this concept consists of the whole multitude of printed materials of this kind. This includes books of all genres, regardless of the style of cover design and other things. But the term “book” or “book” can also be understood as a bank document indicating that a particular person has an account with a bank.
The golden rule of the ratio of volume and content
The question indicated in the title is one of the main ones in the topic “Concept as a form of thinking”. Therefore, it is worth bringing the wording and consider its effect on a specific example. It is not known exactly who was the first to mention this rule, but it sounds like this: "The smaller the concept, the greater its content and vice versa." This law is universal and works in all cases.
If we take the following attribute as a content: a student of a secondary specialized educational institution, then the volume of the concept in this case will include students from all colleges and technical schools. Their number is measured by tens of thousands of people. With such a short content, the scope of the concept is quite significant.
If we increase the qualitative component of the concept due to the attribute “musical teacher”, then it will decrease, since only students from certain colleges can be assigned to this category.
For clarity, we can give another example of how these two elements of the structure of the concept relate to each other. The definition of "feathered, able to fly through the air" has a rather significant volume. Different species of these living creatures, of which there are a great many, can be classified as birds.
If you increase the content by adding such essential features as a bright color, and even more so the ability to imitate human speech, then this volume will decrease. It will include not only all birds, but only those belonging to a particular species. These are parrots. And if you reduce the volume even further by marking it with the phrase "white parrots", then the content will automatically expand, since now a sign talking about color should appear in it.
As already mentioned, concepts have a concrete embodiment in terms of science and simply in the words of a language. However, it often happens that the same name causes different associations in the minds of different people. Each person endows such a concept with his own content. So, in the first classes in English, students are often asked about what associations the word "Great Britain" evokes in them.
The answers can be completely different. Some students call the capital of this state - London, others list places of interest, such as Trafalgar Square, Stonehenge and Westminster Abbey, and someone recalls famous personalities with citizenship of this country, for example: Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and so on.
Application in practical psychology
On this feature of the concept as a structure of thinking, some methods of diagnosing personal and family problems, which psychologists conduct, are also based. For example, very often quarrels between spouses arise because they have different perceptions of the meaning of the phrase “cheerful rest”. The following situation may happen: the spouse gives this phrase such content - shopping, visiting cafes, restaurants and so on. At the same time, her husband perceives this concept in his own way. For him, a fun holiday is singing songs in the woods around a campfire with a guitar.
Classification
It's time to consider the types of concepts. Such a unit of logic, like many scientific phenomena, has its own classification. Concepts can be divided into separate varieties, depending on the characteristics that each of the components of their structure possesses. It should be recalled that this form of abstract logical thinking is characterized by a qualitative indicator - content. It also has a quantitative side - volume.
The concepts are divided into the following types depending on the content:
- They can be single or general.
- There is also such a thing as a universal concept.
- Some of them are called empty.
Next, the essence of each of these types of concepts will be disclosed.
Common can be called those that do not indicate a single object or phenomenon, but a whole group or class. For example, the word "planet" is usually understood as the entire variety of celestial bodies of this kind, regardless of the galaxy in which they are located and other features: the presence of the atmosphere, water, and so on, as well as the distance from them to the Sun. Therefore, such a concept, of course, can be attributed to the class of general.
If we consider the phrase “planet Earth”, then according to logic, it can be attributed to the category of single. This is explained by the fact that in the Universe there is no other celestial body that fits the same description.
In the Russian language, as in many others, there are concepts whose signs can be easily attributed to several phenomena. Those of them whose description is suitable for all concepts are called universal. As a rule, these include abstract phenomena from the category of philosophical categories. The following terms can be cited as an example: “being,” “essence,” “phenomenon,” and so on.
The third group represents the most interesting category of concepts. They are called null or false. These can include those in the volume of which does not contain a single element. It is important to note that this implies the existence of an object in the real, material world. If such a phenomenon does not actually exist, then the concept into which it enters is called false or null.
This class also includes those terms in the content of which there is an intentional or accidental error. For example, a concept that can be described with the words “hot ice” is absurd, which means that it cannot be realized. Therefore, we can say that its form contains zero elements.
Content Classification
Analyzing the question of what constitutes a concept as a form of thinking, one cannot ignore the topic of varieties of this phenomenon based on the characteristics of content. It is worth recalling that the qualitative component of a concept is the totality of its attributes.
So, depending on the content, the concepts are:
- Positive or negative.
- Relative or whatever.
- Concrete or abstract.
General characteristics of the concept as a form of abstract thinking
In fact, any concept can be called abstract, because it exists only in the minds of people. A thought capturing the image of an object from the material world, even if very specific, for example, the Luzhniki Sports Palace, is still not this object itself, but only an idea of it.
Moreover, this applies to the so-called general concepts. Indeed, in reality there is no such thing as a house, but there is only a specific task that has a specific address and is unique. Nevertheless, in logic, concreteness and abstractness mean something else.
Concepts, as a rule, are divided into those that designate certain objects and phenomena, for example, a table, sky, fountain pen, and so on, and those that are used to name not the things themselves, but their qualities. The last class includes the following: kindness, friendliness, beauty, and so on. Concrete concepts are those that designate real-life objects. This also includes those that are used for aggregates of certain phenomena. For example, a concrete, not abstract, concept is just a house and a building at number 2 on Sadovaya Street. Both that, and another evokes in the minds of people the image of really existing buildings.
Abstract concepts are those that designate real-life objects.
Life reflected in thought
In the previous chapter of the article, the question of concepts as a form of thinking was considered. Their education is also an important part of this topic.
So, how is the formation of ideas about a particular subject in the human mind? It is known that as they grow up and develop intellectually, people master such actions as analysis, synthesis, abstraction, generalization, and so on. The formation of the listed thought processes ends by the end of the elementary school course. It is these operations that serve as tools for the formation of the concept.
For a better understanding of the issue, the essence of each of the above thought processes should be revealed.
So, the analysis can be called knowledge of the properties of an object or phenomenon. How does this happen? Man, trying to study some object of reality surrounding him or some abstract essence, tries to divide the phenomenon into its constituent parts. A similar process can occur mentally. So a scientist with the help of logical thinking comprehends the essence of the problem.Separation can occur in reality. For example, in order to get an idea of what a chicken egg is, a child needs to cut it in half to see the components of this product: protein and yolk.
Synthesis is the union of a number of objects and their properties into a single whole. So, for example, what happens when a child comes to the realization that everything that he sees on the roadway can be reckoned with a single class - vehicles. Sometimes, in order to synthesize several phenomena, you should first analyze them, and vice versa.
Another thought process that serves to form concepts is abstraction. This is the name of an operation to extract one or more characteristic features of a particular subject or to distract from all its other characteristics.
The essence of such a process of thinking, as a generalization, lies in its very name. Therefore, to dwell on its description is impractical.
A concept is a logical form of thinking. Moreover, each of them can act as an integral element (feature) of the content for the other. After all, all definitions that characterize a particular subject also consist of separate concepts. It is on this feature that the theory is built that some terms are broader than others. If one concept can be expressed through another, then it is considered less than or already the first.
For example, the Volga car. This phrase can be rephrased using the word “machine”. Therefore, the second concept is broader than the first. Moreover, the term “car” cannot be expressed through the phrase “Volga car”. The relationship between concepts is sometimes depicted using Euler circles.
Another property of concepts is their connotation. This is usually called the semantic shade that they carry. In linguistics, a connotation determines whether a word belongs to a particular style of speech.
Conclusion
In the above article, the question was considered: "Concept as a form of thinking." The definition of this phenomenon is presented in the first chapter. This material can be useful in preparing for exams in a number of disciplines, as well as for general development.