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 question of thinking.
Science of the improvement of human consciousness
Several hundred years before the birth of Christ, a new branch of knowledge emerged within the framework of the Greek philosophical school. This science became known as logic. Its founding father is considered to be 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 you analyze how people think and identify the most significant components of the process, then you can subsequently achieve a more perfect mastery of this art by a person. This means that science can develop more rapidly in the future.
Soone can come to the conclusion that the subject of logic is the forms of thinking and the concept as one of them.
Different from other sciences
Unlike other branches of knowledge that also have human thinking as a subject, for example, psychology, physiology, and so on, logic is concerned with the study of 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 connected with the world of numbers and signs. One of the goals of studying logic is usually called instilling in people a culture of thinking. Many scientists spoke about the need for such skills for the younger generation.
In particular, the latest version of the Law "On Education" and the Federal State Educational Standard approved the provision that modern schoolchildren and students need to be taught universal learning skills instead of simply teaching them knowledge in various disciplines.
Logic as a science just deals with the study of this kind of processes. For example, a concept as a form of thinking is formed as a result of such actions as analysis, synthesis, comparison, abstraction, and so on.
Intellectual activity, as well as culture and art as its products, are associated with such global phenomena as the formation of a social system, and various historical events,for example, revolutions, wars, and so on. From this position, such a science as social anthropology studies mental processes.
Three basic forms of thinking
Intellectual human activity can be divided into the following components: judgments, conclusions and concepts.
The first two types of action cannot be taken without using the third. A concept is a form of thinking, a reflection in the mind of a person of objects and phenomena of the surrounding life, as well as the characteristics inherent in them. This action occurs by highlighting the main features of objects.
Structure of the concept
This form of thinking can be decomposed into the following components:
- Content.
- Volume.
Each of them will be discussed below.
The content of a concept is a qualitative indicator of such a phenomenon. It consists of features of the subject. There may be one or more. For a more solid 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 that has a steering wheel, pedals and lights.
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 separate attributes in it, distinguishing it from a number of other phenomena. It is important to mention here that such qualitiesmay or may not be present.
Therefore, the first criterion by which signs are classified is their polarity. They are called positive in the presence of certain features, and negative - in the absence. Often, the belonging of a feature to one or another category of this group is indicated in the very name of the phenomenon, for example, “innocence”.
It is worth noting that a negative or positive characteristic does not indicate a corresponding moral assessment of the phenomenon. An example is the word "independent". Most often, this adjective is used to describe such a quality as a love of freedom or independence. In most cases, it carries a positive connotation, despite the presence of a negation in the content: the absence of dependence.
Also, signs are divided into essential and non-essential. The former include features that distinguish an object or phenomenon from a number of others similar to it. All other features that can belong to several terms at once are considered insignificant.
The features of these groups will be clearer if we consider them using the concept of "trolley bus" as an example. An essential feature of this type of transport is this: a vehicle powered by wires. This explanation of the essence of the concept of "trolleybus" distinguishes it from all other urban transport. If this object loses such a sign, then it will cease to be itself. The trolleybus, which moves along the street not at the expense of electric energy, but for example, on diesel fuel, turns into a completelyother vehicle model.
An insignificant sign of it may be the following: an object with four wheels. Or this - a car controlled by a steering wheel and pedals. These definitions may apply to other types of vehicles. Therefore, the description of the trolley bus will not suffer much if they are excluded from it. Knowing the essential features of the concept, a person can quickly determine what is at stake and present in his mind the image of a certain object.
Application in science
The concept as a form of thinking is clearly presented in terms used in various areas 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, explanatory, encyclopedic and so on.
How do you say it in Russian?
The name of the concept can consist of one or more 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 denote 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 termwe did not yet exist, and when translated from English, this word was translated by descriptive phrases such as “electronic device” or “computer”.
Quantitative characteristics
This chapter will discuss the scope of the concept. This term denotes a quantitative characteristic of the phenomenon. The volume here means the totality of all items that correspond to the features that are given in its content.
It is better to consider this with a specific example of the concept. Content "hard copy" means a book. The scope of this concept consists of the entire set of printed products of this kind. This includes books of all genres, regardless of the style of cover design and other things. But the concept of "book" or "book" can also be understood as a bank document, indicating that a particular person has a bank account.
Golden rule of volume-to-content ratio
The question indicated in the title is one of the main ones in the topic "The concept as a form of thinking". Therefore, it is worth giving the wording and considering 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 scope of the concept, the greater its content and vice versa." This law is universal and works in all cases.
If we take the following sign as the content: a student of a secondary specialized educational institution, then the scope of the concept in this case will include students from all colleges and technical schools. Their numbermeasured in tens of thousands of people. With such a short content, the volume of the concept is quite significant.
If we increase the qualitative component of the concept due to the attribute "music teacher", then it will decrease, since only students of certain colleges can be attributed to this category.
For greater clarity, we can give another example of how these two elements of the concept structure correlate with each other. The definition of "birds capable of flying through the air" has a rather significant volume. Birds can include various types of these living creatures, of which there are a great many.
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 just all birds, but only those belonging to a certain species. These are parrots. And if you reduce the volume even more, denoting it with the phrase "white parrots", then the content will automatically expand, since now it should have a sign that speaks of color.
As already mentioned, concepts have a specific embodiment in terms of science and just in the words of the 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 English classes, students are often asked about what associations the word “Great Britain” evokes in them.
Answers can be completely different. Some students name the capital of this state - London, others list sights such as Trafalgar Square, Stonehenge and Westminster Abbey, and someone remembers famous personalities who have citizenship of this country, for example: Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and so on.
Application in practical psychology
Some methods of diagnosing personal and family problems, which are carried out by psychologists, are also based on this feature of the concept as a structure of thinking. For example, very often quarrels between spouses arise due to the fact that they perceive the meaning of the phrase “fun vacation” differently. The following situation may happen: the spouse endows this phrase with 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 by the fire with a guitar.
Classification
It's time to consider the kinds 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 features 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.
Concepts are divided into the following types depending on the content:
- They can be single or general.
- There is also thisphenomenon as a universal concept.
- Some of them are called empty.
Next, the essence of each of these types of concepts will be revealed.
General can be called those that denote not just one object or phenomenon, but a whole group or class. For example, the word "planet" is usually understood as the whole variety of celestial bodies of this kind, regardless of the galaxy in which they are located and other features: the presence of an atmosphere, water, and so on, as well as the distance from them to the Sun. Therefore, such a concept can certainly be classified as a general one.
If we consider the phrase "planet Earth", then according to logic, it can be classified as a single one. This is explained by the fact that there is no other celestial body in the Universe that fits the same description.
In the Russian language, as in many others, there are concepts, the signs of which can be easily attributed to several phenomena. Those of them, whose description is suitable for all concepts, are called universal. These, as a rule, 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 is the most interesting category of concepts. They are called zero or false. These 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 in fact there is no such phenomenon, then the concept, in the scope of which itenters is called false or null.
This class can also include those terms in the content of which there is an intentional or accidental error. For example, a concept that can be described by the words "hot ice" is absurd, which means that it cannot be realized. Therefore, we can say that its form contains zero elements.
Classified by content
When examining the question of what a concept is as a form of thinking, one cannot avoid the topic of varieties of this phenomenon based on the characteristics of the content. It is worth recalling that the set of its features is called the qualitative component of a concept.
So, depending on the content, the concepts are:
- Positive or negative.
- Relative or irrelative.
- Concrete or abstract.
General characteristics of the concept as a form of abstract thinking
In essence, any concept can be called abstract, since it exists only in the minds of people. A thought that captures the image of any object from the material world, even if it is very specific, for example, the Luzhniki Sports Palace, is still not this object itself, but only an idea about it.
Especially it concerns 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. However, in logic, concrete and abstract mean something else.
Concepts are usuallyare divided into those that denote certain objects and phenomena, for example, a table, the sky, a 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 denote real-life objects. This also includes those that apply to sets of certain phenomena. For example, a concrete, not an abstract concept is just a house, and a building at number 2 on Sadovaya Street. Both that, and another causes in consciousness of people an image of real-life buildings.
Abstract concepts are those that denote 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 theme.
So, how does the formation of ideas about a particular subject in the human mind? It is known that as people grow up and develop intellectually, they master such actions as analysis, synthesis, abstraction, generalization, and so on. The formation of the listed thought processes ends by the end of the primary school course. It is these operations that serve as tools for the formation of the concept.
For a better assimilation of the question, the essence of each of the above thought processes should be revealed.
So, analysis can be called the knowledge of the properties of an object or phenomenon. How does this happen? Man trying to studysome object of the reality surrounding it or some abstract entity, tries to divide the phenomenon into its component parts. A similar process can occur mentally. So the 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 one whole. So, for example, it happens when a child comes to the realization that everything that he sees on the carriageway of the street can be attributed to a single class - means of transportation. Sometimes, in order to synthesize several phenomena, one must first analyze them, and vice versa.
Another mental process that serves to form concepts is abstraction. This is the name of the operation to highlight one or more characteristic features of a particular object or abstract from all its other characteristics.
The essence of such a thinking process as generalization lies in its very name. Therefore, dwelling on its description is inappropriate.
A concept is a logical form of thinking. Moreover, each of them can act as a constituent element (feature) of the content for the other. After all, all the 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 widerothers. If one concept can be expressed through another, then it is considered less than or narrower than the first.
For example, the Volga car. This phrase can be rephrased using the word "machine". So 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 connotation that they carry. In linguistics, connotation determines whether a word belongs to a particular style of speech.
Conclusion
In the above article, the question was considered: "The 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.
