• Concepts in theoretical thought: an introductory essay

    Author(s):
    Lajos Brons (see profile)
    Date:
    2010
    Subject(s):
    Idea (Philosophy), History, Intellectual life, Philosophy
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    History of ideas, Intellectual history
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6F387
    Abstract:
    The idea that our language somehow influences our thought can be found in various philosophical and scientific traditions, but beyond the mere theoretical, explorations of the idea are relatively scarce, and are mostly limited to relations between very concrete conceptual categories and subjective experiencing and remembering – to some kind of ‘psychologies of folk-ontology’. Thought as process, reasoning or ‘thinking’, and the role of more complex or abstract concepts in (such) thought tend to be mostly ignored in psychology and philosophy. Conceptual and intellectual history, on the other hand, cannot be accused of such neglect, but the common lack of a comparative perspective in those fields precludes any generalized inference. Furthermore, while a comparative study on the role of complex or abstract concepts in thought as process and its products (the aggregate ‘thought’ of schools, ages, and regions) could result in a considerable enrichment of our understanding of the relationships between language and thought, it would not necessarily be recognized as such because of a fundamental difference in the nature of the concepts involved, affecting the boundary of ‘language’ in the pair ‘language and thought’. More concretely, while the concepts of the ‘psychologies of folk-ontology’ are rather concrete categories of ‘things’ or aspects of experienced reality (hence, ‘folk-ontology’), the abstract concepts of (comparative) conceptual history, such as ‘society’ or ‘reason’, are categories of ideas. Consequently, conceptual history is inseparably tied to the history of ideas, and there is no strict boundary line between concepts, theories, ideas, and aggregate thought in general.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. Date:
    2010
    Journal:
    CARLS Series of Advanced Study of Logic and Sensibility
    Volume:
    3
    Page Range:
    293 - 298
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    6 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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