Second Step: Definition, from Objects to Concepts

Abstract

The cognition process does not end at the first step examined in Chap. 2, namely, the construction of technical descriptions (perception of “objects”), but applies the operations of identifying differences and similarities among the same descriptions in a process of “analogical generalization” through which the differences found in the various technical descriptions of objects are evaluated by the “mind” (calculating differences of differences) in order to “conserve” the analogies/similitudes and to form a general class of objects that we can then associate with a “generic object”, or “concept”, O∗.

The second step in cognition thus involves moving from the technical descriptions to the technical definitions (concepts): each technical description can thus be considered a “particular case”, an “example”, of a technical definition (Sect. 3.1). In the operationalization process, for the “knowing mind”, the object “O” is part of the concept “O∗” if [des O] ⊂ [def O∗]. More simply put, each specific object can be considered an “example” of the “idea” of a “generic object”. I describe “that” particular chair, but I define “chair”; “that” chair is an example of “chair”.

The perceptual selection of sensed characteristics may create objects. There is also strong evidence for creating visual characteristics from what is accepted as objects … We know too little about the criteria for assigning data to objects and creating object-hypotheses from data. What science describes as an object may or may not correspond to what appears to the senses as an object; different instruments reveal the world as differently structured. Further, general theories change what are regarded as objects (Gregory 1980 , p. 187).

A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind (Antoine de St-Exupery).