Article #3
Subject: Concept of a Concept, Part I
Author: Andrew W. Harrell
Posted: 8/20/2008 06:04:08 PM

Concept of a Concept
Part I

First definition of a concept....

--concepts form the meaning of meaningful words;
--concepts, smaller than a judgement, larger than a sense impression are
units of thought;
--well-defined relationships between concepts are themselves concepts.

But beyond this, it is possible to list in more detail the most important
ways concepts work for us.

With development of appropriate practical backing they:

--Define object precisely, for our future reference and mutual communication;
--Abstract what different recurring experiences have in common, saving us
effort in the way we describe things;
--Make us able to imagine things, thinking about what isn't present;
--Spur problem solving, breaking us out of areas of mental confinement;
--Cue discoveries, the bright ideas we need to stimulate us forward;
--Help us learn how something works, and to remember what we have learned;
--Increase our understanding, making it easier to form still more concepts.

Stating a judgement involves conepts. Also, in making some decisions, we go
through a process of trials and errors performed mentally, before reaching a
decision. Concepts make this "idea testing" possible.

Even more fundamental than all this, is the way in which concepts develop
our first perceptions of the world. Some everyday examples of how concepts
do this include:

--the permanancy of concret objects;
--the switchboard of three-dimensional space;
--which way is [up] and right-handedness;
--the rules of logical thought.

II

Here are some objections, straight from Plato's dialogues, to studying
concepts for their own sake:

The first comes from the dialogue of Socrates with Meno:

MENO. But how will you look for something when you don't in in the least
know what it is? How on earth are you going to set up something you don't
know as the object of your search? To put it another way, even if you come
up right against it, how will you know that what you have found is the thing
you didn't know?

Indeed. And, this can be followed up with a second, more specific, objection
to studying concepts and though processes: It is held that the study of the
method of thought for its own sake is of no use, except when almost
superfluous. In otherwords, isn't it ridiculous to separate the study of
thought from the day to day problems which we use if for?

Plato, stated this in his Socratic dialogue Charmides:

SOCRATES. And if a man know only, and has only knowledge of knowledge, and
no further knowledge of health and justice, the probability is that he will
only know that he knows something, and has a certain knowledge, whether
concerning himself or other men.
CRITIAS. True.
SOCRATES. Then, how will this knowledge or science teach him to know what he
knows? Say that he knows health; - not wisdom or temperance, but the art of
medicine has taught it to him; - and he has learned harmony from the art of
music, and building, from the art of building - neither, from wisdom or
temperance: and the same of other things.
CRITIAS. That is evident.

Well, we won't try to hide it: in contrast to these carefully worded
sentences, the rest of this section of this book will list instances in
which the study of thought processes has value to us - instance in which it
has a very real value.


All along it must be kept in mind that steps forward in knowledge proceed
awkwardly. The initial coneption of a new discovery always has many details
that are wrong. Socrates takes a critical position in those two quotations.
But, he later states that for his part the desire to know what is good (not
necessarily the actual knowledge itself) is the most important thing. The
sum of what we don't know is so vast -- we will never get anywhere without a
lot of pure desire to step beyond what we don't know with what we aren't
sure of. There is no way to obtain knowledge without making mistakes and
blunders. There is no roal road to any difficult art or skill.

WE SUMMARIZE: Our progress will depend on how important we conclude that it
is to try to do what we aren't sure of; what we don't seem capable of; what
we haven't been prepared for; and to what extent the theory that we do
construct being built on hard-learned experience, does not outdistance our
capability to produce results.


III

Not attempting to formulate any new principles, we will work with familiar
ideas, elaborating them, the method can be called the study of concepts
through concepts. Lets lay this technique out in part before hand:


.... We trace out the definition of a lessor known concept by recognizing in
it the same elements as are present in a better known concept. In literature
this method is used in the form of metaphors and similies. In ordinary
speech it is the method of analogies.

....Since we are actually hunting concepts, we can bring one out in the
open, so to speak, by asking questions about. These questions will expose
what dols the concept together.

.... By seeking out those elements in concepts that constantly reoccur, we
obtain the most economical description of them.

.... We wait for it (the work) to mature; repeatedly changing its
presentation, searching for the best presentation of what [seems] profound;
convinced that simple and elegant solutions are the shortest distance
between two points. The work will be the product of many months, even years,
of stubborn thinking and the subject of pride.


In the dialogue Theatetus, Plato first considers the claim of sense
impressions (by themselves) to be knowledge. A rational argument is then
given to discount this possibility. It is asked how false judgements are
possible under these circumstance. A model is given that compares this to
sense impressions not fitting the patterns in wax formed by objects. Then
examples of false judgements are given which don’t fit into this paradigm of
knowledge.
Then the possibility of true belief being knowledge is considered.
First “having” knowledge is compared to holding birds (ideas) in cages in
our minds. The cages are the truths of experience which constrain statements
we can make about the ideas. In this situation it is argued that it is
possible to make false judgements when we depend on these cages to
interprete our factual
experience. An example of a lawyer twisting the facts of a case to make the
jury come to the wrong conclusion is given.
Finally a definition for knowledge is given which is somewhat better.
Knowledge is said to be true belief along with an account or logos. This
account justifies our thoughts by making a sound (based on sense
impresssions) rational argument about the experiences we have had. In order
words we are saying that in some sense knowledge is “assured belief”. Here
we see the importance of having a logos about God if we are to hope to be
able to know him.
However, the limitation of even this definition of knowledge is explained
further on in the dialogue. If an account is a rational logical
demonstration (two different methodological approachs to do this will be
explained later in this discussion), it must start with
certain “unknowable”, “first order facts”. This is because we have already
declared knowledge based on objects ( or sense impressions) not be knowledge
by themselves. But any argument will then just be a series of rational
exercises (tautologies) which come to no new conclusions about these
unknowable starting points. The conclusions cannot be new because they cannot
be any more knowable or true than what we started with.
It wasn’t until Immanuel Kant that human philosophy explained how it was
possible to have synthetic a priori truths. It we assume we humans have
certain abilities (what Jesus called talents) in our minds Then, by
postulating the truth of these God given abilities the truth of these
postulates themselves can
be determined and influenced by the way we perceive reality. The objects
that Plato called unknowable in themselves are this way because we don’t
have access to studying their true nature. This is because they are in a
sense outside of us. But our postulates about what is inside our selves are
accessible through our subjective intuitive and common sense minds. So these
talents can be good
starting points along with our experience about the World they can help form
knowledge when we have a logos (or account of the connection between what
has happened to us and what situation we started with). They then form an
innate nature common to all of humankind.


IV

THE MIND AS A SWITCHING YARD----PASCAL "ONE MUST

SUBSTITUTE DEFINITION FOR THE DEFINED."


Names are associated with objects; so are their meaning. But an objects's
name can be one the tip of the tongue when a corresponding meaning isn't:
how else do we know sounds when we hear them, or other things when we see
them. The answer is that our mind automatically deals with things by sorting
them into pre-established groups. We have, in our mind, a switching yard. If
we want to know what a song or anything else is, we must ask ourselves
question about the mental defintion of it. It will be helpful to discuss the
nature of this mental switching yard, in order to understand how to ask
these questions.



Suppose that pieces of information start off in the mind like freight cars
start at the high point in a railroad switching yard:

-- They coast down the hill; switches guide each one into its proper siding.
There the cars wait, with others of the same destination to be sent to form
a train [ see classification type expert system which is defined below];

-- Each time we send a "new" object rolling down the hill, new switches are
added, and the network becomes better at sorting out information;

-- As we look at a scene of things in front of us, the mind couples thought
onto the corresponding parts of the scene -- and all of a sudden, what isn't
a blur, is a series of meaningful images moving through the mind [ see
backward oriented reasoning as defined below].

In a freightyard the starting points of the cars is on a hill. But, before
getting to the bottom of the tracks the cars may reach resting places. To
get out of these resting places often requires some extra help [see genetic
algorithm as defined below]. This is the case if there are substantial
depressions in the ground: or it may be that only a little push is needed;
if they, (the thoughts) are stuck on a rise in the ground level.

As images come through the mind to be sorted into concepts, they too reach
resting places. These are resting places in the switchboard of the mind,
speaking figuratively. If the route doesn't take us the full distance (does
not give us enough understanding), there may be valleys; and in this case
the help of other concepts needs to be introduced (more new switches added-
things we haven't classified yet). There may be rises. In this case we just
need to reflect on the situation. We must conciously give the cars a little
push in our mind.

It is possible to push this metaphor too far. But it does provide the means
to understand the quotation at the beginning of the section. The quotation
in French is "Substitutuer mentalement les definition a'la place des
definis". this means "Substitute mentally the defining facts for the
defining terms".

Faced with a problem, not sure how to solve it, there is a reason for much
of the uncertainity that occurs. We often fail to spell out the meaning of
the ideas involved in the problem. This is when we should go back [see
examples below] to the definitions of the ideas that we have in our minds:

-- Since the switching patterns branch out as they get more specific; our
questions go from the general to the particular, the identification process
quickly sorts one thing out of myriads of possiblities;

-- The "unknowns" in the problem are interpreted in terms of the conditions
and data that are given; new connections are formed mentally; we see things
clearer and in a concious sense;

-- By varying the conditions of the problem, the mind searches for a related
problem that it has solved before; the general idea of a solution emerges;
patiently, the problem solver waits until all the troubling points are dealt
with, to insure that all the information is accounted for.


Second definition of a concept----

A concept is a rule that may be used to decide if a object falls in a
certain group. It is an abstract way of grouping thoughts. It deals with the
information associated with the object of thought by asking questions about
it. This may be a simple process like the way we classify concrete objects
by the "marks" of sense impressions: such as physical size or texture (this
process is instinctual in simplier animals). Or it may be a more complicated
process using a lot of other concepts.

Article #40
Subject: opposing arguments against this basic methodology
Author: Andrew W. Harrell
Posted: 9/18/2009 01:19:54 PM

Auguste Comte the French philosopher and founder of the science of
sociology , if he was alive today (and I hope he is),would not agree that we
need to discuss what the meaning of meaning is. He believed that because
different viewpoints of people are often irreconcilable our human nature
falsely leads us to get in useless destructive arguments which lead to
endless warfare and much destruction. He believed,
"The goal of knowledge is merely to describe the phenomena rather than debate
their existence."
Paradoxically during the first half of the last century his followers
created a philosophical movement called "Positivism" based on an assertion of
the logical implications of this fundamentally negative assumption about our
human potential for reconciling different metaphysical viewpoints and our
capacity for tolerating them.

Article #62
Subject: Concepts and Scriptual Interpretation
Author: Andrew W. Harrell
Posted: 2/24/2011 02:20:26 PM

In the Hebrew Bible passages are interpreted according to the “PARDES” scheme,
Which works using 4 Hebrew letters.

“P” Peh means Pesh or direct meaning
“R” Resh means Remez or implied meaning
“D” Dalet means Drosh or associated meaning
“S” Samech means secret meaning
cf 1)

According to Hindu/Sanskrit theology the “concept of a concept” which we use
for scriptural interpretations is classified in terms of whether we are
discussing the:

1) Primary meaning of a word (Vachyaartha)
2) the implied meaning (Lachyaartha)
3) the suggested meaning hinted at by word associations (Vyanyaartha)

And, there is a further classification:
Indirect meanings are or three types:

1) When only the direct meaning of the word is considered (Jahallakshana)
(This corresponds to the Pesh in the Hebrew Bible method_
2) When both the direct and indirect meanings are operable (Ajahallakshana)
3) (Jahadajahallakshana) Here a portion of the direct meaning is retained and
a portion discarded.

cf 2)

Comparing the two approaches (Hindu and Hebrew) we see that there are at
least five dimensions
Of freedom of interpretation in prophetic conceptual meaning made available
in the Hindu/Sanskrit while the Hebrew is not quite as delineated in terms of
the above explanation of its Biblical Scholarship (cf 3.) . It must be said,
however, that the Kabbalah does have five dimensions of metaphysical
contemplative meaning inside of its tantric Tree of Life language scheme.

The Hindu/Sanskrit scriptural interpretation schemes relate directly to the
traditional Upanishadic methods of teaching tantric meaning.

We have the four Mahavakyas:

Tat Twam Asi (That thou art…directly in terms of the reality not of our
bodies, but of the experience of the meaning I am transmitting to you).

Ayam Atma Brahma (Thou, Soul art Brahma…reality interpreted indirectly
through meaning of the experience that I AM transmitting to you).

Aham Brahma Asmi. (I AM …myself… Andrew William Harrell… am Brahma… because
Brahma is associated meaningfully and indirectly with the source of my own
reality that can be created or added to, transformed and sustained, destroyed
inside of my own and also your identity) .

Prajnam Brahman (The wisdom contained in that/those concepts of a concept is
itself its own reality…independent of me and inside of you and hopefully all
of us).


1. David Cooper, “The Handbook of Jewish Meditation” Jewish Lights
2. Yoga and Meditation, page 130 Swami Vishnudevananda.
3. That is not to say that there are not other Hebrew Biblical schools of
thought that do allow this additional freedom inside of their “concept of a
concept”

Article #63
Subject: Christian Biblical Interpretation
Author: Andrew W. Harrell
Posted: 2/25/2011 12:47:33 PM

The explanation of the main parallel themes to follow (in relation to the
above themes) for Christian Biblical interpretations was given to us by Jesus
Christ himself in his parable of the sower and the seeds.

1) The incarnation of Christ himelf as basic seed thought for our meditaitons
is the direct meaning.

2) The redemptive meditations that occur later (the 2nd time around the
yearly liturgy sequences) are the parallel indirect meanings that relate back
to what we already have prayed for and thought about in the previous year.

3) Finally the 3rd coming of Christ in our thoughts and prayers is the hidden
meeaning in our experiences that have already happened during the past three
years in the Biblical readings liturgy.
They depend on a previous knowledge of the deeper metaphysical dimensions of
what has happened to our human/divine souls and spirits.

"Be careful you do not miss them."

Otherwise you and I and God and Jesus may have to go back in time on the
cross again in order to keep all our promises to each other.

May God Bless continue to bless us all in these subtle ways forever.

Amen

Article #226
Subject: further thoughts on how this relates to our heavenly spiritual bodies
Author: Andrew W. Harrell
Posted: 1/9/2014 06:56:03 PM

The Buddhist’s and some of us Christians and Jews believe that Heaven on
Earth is the world of concepts here inside of humans and God dwelling on
earth that we get resurrected to and from the as our soul’s go through a back
and forth continual process of dying and being ressurected or reborn again or
just staying as they are here.



If this is so then it must be pretty important to try and understand what
the “concept of a concept” is if we want to Know about God and understand
ourselves, our heavenly spirits and souls.



If we know who #1 Faith is… Our Faith in God inside of itself.. (the
concept of a concept, mindfulness and faith, God’s creative light in us
inside of itself, the substance of things hope for, the evidence of them as
they remain unseen),.. who is #2 Faith and #3 Faith? Why, that would be
Goodness and Beauty (the concept of a concept as the concept of a concept)
*and righteousness and truth (three concepts in one and one in three).
Wouldn’t it is #3 Faith?



• For Goodness is Grace, Love that gives, and Beauty is a reflection
of what is good

• And, truth is a correspondence between what is ( mindfulness and
faith) and what is (beauty and goodness).

• And, Righteousness is a four-fold divine order of the 1) Light of
the One increasing (Faith), 2) the Light of the One without a second
(Equality), 3( the Light of the One Transforming, Glorifying God and Healing
Itself and us inside of us and God (Freedom), 4) The Light of the One
Discriminating Itself from God and us (Justice).

And, if all of this is true then is it wrong to ask Who among the archangels
would be #1, #2, #3 Faith. I challenge you to tell me its not true that
Gabriel is #1 Faith our father archangel of Prophecy, Jesus Christ, His and
God’s only Son, our faither archangel of healing and goodness and beauty, and
Michael #3 our father archangel of Justice and Righteousness ,

.

Article #239
Subject: Jnana Yoga understanding of concept of a concept
Author: Andrew W. Harrell
Posted: 11/17/2014 11:22:53 AM

In his book Meditation and Mantras Swami Vishnu-Devanda gives some interesting
and helpful definitions of philosophical meanings that elaborate and help
explain our definition (see above) of a concept of a concept as the 'meaning
of a meaningful word.'

In the sense he explains in his chapter on Jnana Yoga, the concepts that
determine our knowledge of words in the sense of spiritual meaning can be
distinguished in terms of ways empirical knowledge is reflected and
understood in a deeper sense inside of deep language structures (deep meaning)
that we carry with us inside our souls when God (in the sense of the Divine
order of the Sanskrit word OM or Pranava) dwells in them.

Primary meaning is the meaning we carry with us obtained from direct sense
experience.

Implied meaning is the meaning we carry with us and have inside of us when
logical knowledge statements are backward or forward chained together as we
instantiate them with the facts of our sense experience. For, we know that
all knowledge begins with sense experience, but does not necessarily end with it.

Suggested meaning, or 2nd order implied meaning, is the 3rd order of meaning
in Divine Truth that requires the three assertions of a logical syllogism to
instantiate itself as Truth for us.

Suggested meaning itself can be of three types:
'When the direct meaning of a word is dispensed with and only its implied
meaning is taken into account, it is called jahallakshana meaning in Sanskrit.'

'When both the direct and implied meanings are operative it is called
ajakallakshana meaning in Sanskrit.'
And example of this type of 'concept of a concept' would be a man at a horse
show asking 'which horse is jumping?' and receiving the reply, 'the white
horse is jumping'. A color cannot jump, but in this case the direct meaning
'white' refers to the implied meaning "horse", both of which are relevant of
the whole meaning of the sentence.

'When a portion of the direct meaing is retained and a portion is discarded it
is called jahadajahallakshana meaning in Sanskrit.

"Assume that ten years ago a certain Dr. Smith lived in New York City and was
last seen by a friend at the opera. Now imagine that this same friend sees
him, ten years later, as a derelict on Skid Row in San Francisco. He exclaims
, "This is the same Dr. Smith". The discrepancy in this statement comes from
the word "this" to the Dr. Smith being seen here and now. But, the word "that"
refers to the Dr. Smith known before."

This is perhaps the best explanation I have found of how we can explain what a
'concept of a concept' is in terms of meanings of words.

It is very interesting to think of the implications of this epistomological
philosophical teaching to the philosophy of religion. And, to also compare it
with the Jewish Passover teachings about the four ways we can know things
represented in four types of sons at the Passover table:

1) know that we know them
2)know that we don't know them
3) know them and don't know it
4) don't know them and don't know it

See elsewhere in the ourprayergroup blog for more detailed discussions of this
Jewish Passover teaching

Andrew

Article #338
Subject: Jacque Lacan and Miller's ideas about suture's
Author: Andrew W. Harrell
Posted: 2/5/2018 11:43:13 AM

According to the psychologist Jacques Alain Miller's article in "The Symptom" Freud and Lacan's ideas
about the subconscious and the conscious that be better understand by thinking about "The Logic of
the Signifier". What is this logic or logos or principle of truth of the signifier as it corresponds to Frege's
and L. Kronecker's ideas a about how God created the integers. How interesting it is to think, meditate
and pray with God about this.

First of all, "What is Zero and One?", What functions are there in our thought to which we can assign
their progression?

"What is the genesis of their progression? (When God is One, His Truth is One, YHWH Christ?)"

"What is the function (the predicates or relations involving two arguments) of the subject (a set)
misconitisized and hence operating?"
(When God is Two, His Truth is Two, YHWH Christ)

"The passage of a thing ( a reality) to a unit, and of the set of units, and hence to the unit (or reality) of
number, is the function of the subject (a concept and a reality), as support of the operations of
abstraction (conception as a reality) and unification (substitution of one conceptual reality into another."

"You will be aware that Frege's discourse (ins book Foundations of Arithmetic) starts from the
fundamental system comprising the three concepts of the concepts (so actually we have three truths,
three parts of what the concept of a concept is in so far as it is determined by the creation of the
integers and hence the creation of all concepts as far as they are imbedded in the creation of all
thought).


"But, if it is held that the subject i not reducible, in its most essential function, to the psychological,
then its exclusion from the field of number is assimilable to repetition, which is what I have to
demonstrate."

So, 'The three concepts are: " 1) the concept, 2) the object thought about, 3) and the number or its
principle of three way truth, and 4) two relations (or functions with two arguments, not one.' (When God
is Three, His Truth is You, YHWH CHRIST).


"It is clear that the concept which operates in the system, formed solely through the determination of
subsumption, is a redoubled concept: the concept of identity to a concept"...

"What is specifically logical about this system is that each concept is only defined and exist solely
through the relation (backward in though, faithfully and hopefully, unified function with two arguments)
which it maintains with its subsumer. Similarly, an object only has existence in so far as it falls under a
concept, there being no other determination involved in its logical existence, so that the object takes its
meaning from its difference to the thing integrated, by its patio-temporal localization. to the real.."

and hence, is a concept of a concept (added by Andrew)

What a wonderful explanation of what the concept of a concept is, Mr. Miller!

Article #339
Subject: Frege as a part of all of this further explained
Author: Andrew W. Harrell
Posted: 2/5/2018 12:13:59 PM

What is a function? According to Frege it is not just a function,"It is an extension of a concept"
"Frege Explained" by Joan Weiner.

So, a function, a logical function, has to be of not just one argument but have two arguments and be a
relation between the two arguments, one of which is a concept and have a means for the concept in the
second argument to define and redefine, or extend itself.
This type of function in mathematics and the theory of computer science, we call a 2nd order logical
predicate nowadays, and use a different type of identity, or logical subsumption and instantiation in
order to generate itself both backwards and forwards logically.

Numbers, like zero and one for instance, become extensions of concepts which use this way of defining
themselves and their ordered successors recursively, indefinitely, infinitely. This understanding of what
numbers are, is key to our understanding of how concepts are meanings of meaningful words, not just
in mathematics but I believe and claim, faithfully and hopefully, also in our own experiences, even our
ethics, even in the way we understand who we are, as selves, men and women of God who see
ourselves in ourselves.