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Re: [xmca] perception/conception etc

I am finding the 'percept' term useful in discussing concepts. I may have a slightly different take than David, but it isn't really that much different. I look at the abstraction/generalization relationship differently - I would apply these to distinguishing different kinds of concepts, not percepts from concepts. More importantly, I think David puts us on the right track when he suggests that percepts are not ideal, but concepts are. I don't know if Martin would find my take cognitivist. All sensory input comes to us as percepts - same as animals. I am thinking Mike is leaning that way, not sure. With humans, attaching cultural mediation (words) to percepts transforms them into concepts. That of course is Vygotsky's influence. Continuing along Ch 6 lines, concepts come in four varieties, based on how abstraction and generalization processes are combined - syncretic formations, complexes, preconcepts (culturally-processed complexes, aka everyday concepts, or common sense knowledge) and true concepts (expert and ruling knowledge). The latter, true concepts, contained in expert and core cultural knowledge, and based on the concrete generalizations of precisely that society, embody the socially- ordained categories of a given culture and are passed on to future generations by rulers, experts, scholars, shamans, etc. In modern society, true concepts are called academic or scientific concepts (although they get mixed in with preconcepts all the time). It is a very modern innovation to advocate passing on true, scientific concepts through mass, public schooling - an idea that has been promoted by communist conspirators like Vygotsky and other dangerous troublemakers. Luckily for society as we know it, this plot to get the population to think scientifically has only been minimally successful. Meanwhile, most adults function using preconcepts (both pseudoconcepts and abstract notions) as best they can under the circumstances. 

- Steve


On Jul 8, 2010, at 2:59 PM, Martin Packer wrote:


What do others think?
mike
Well to me, for what it's worth, this way of talking of percepts and concepts as constructions used by individual minds sounds quite cognitivist. Where is the real world?
I'm going to steal this wonderful quotation from an article by Tim Koschmann:
"If we shut up thought in the mind, how does it come to know reality? If we let it loose in the world, how does it preserve its virginity?" (Jones, W.T. (1969). A history of western philosophy (2nd Ed.), vol. 3, p. 189)
...and add that since we socioculturalists know that social intercourse is crucial for ontogenesis, the second concern is not a real issue. 

Martin


1. Object of perception
*a1856* W. HAMILTON<http://dictionary.oed.com/help/bib/oed2-h.html#w-hamilton > *Lect. Metaphysics* (1860) III. iii. 42 Whether it might not..be proper to 
introduce the term percept for the object of perception.




On Jul 8, 2010, at 4:21 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
a) Percepts are constructions (of course, socioculturally generated) that individual minds put on perception. They are therefore representational generalizations and not abstractions of ideal relationships.
b) Concepts are constructions (of course, stored and used by individual minds) that sociocultural groups put on idealized relationships. They are therefore abstractions and not simply generalizations of percepts. 

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