Concept

A concept is a mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristics, with their particular measurements omitted. Objectivism holds that concepts are neither arbitrary labels nor perceptions of a separate realm of universals, but objective identifications of relationships that exist among the things a person observes.

“A concept is a mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristic(s), with their particular measurements omitted.”
   ~ Ayn Rand, "Concept-Formation", Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

What a concept does

A concept is not a picture, a word, or a list. It is a single mental unit that stands for an unlimited number of existents of a kind — every one that has existed, exists or will exist, whether or not the person holding the concept has met any of them.

That is its point. A consciousness restricted to particulars can hold only what it is perceiving or can immediately recall. Integrating particulars into concepts collapses an open-ended number of them into one item that can be held, filed under a word, and used in further thought. Rand called this unit-economy, and treated it as the reason a conceptual consciousness can deal with a world larger than its perceptual range. See Crow-epistemology.

Once formed, a concept can be treated almost as a perceptual object. It carries a great deal of implicit knowledge that need not be held explicitly in mind — everything known about the kind is available through the word without being rehearsed.

The three problems it solves

The Objectivist account is a position in an old dispute about universals, and it is best understood by what it rejects on both sides.

• Intrinsicism (Platonic realism) holds that universals exist as such, in the things or in a separate realm, and that the mind perceives them. This makes concepts objective at the cost of making them mysterious: nobody can say where the universal "table" is.
• Nominalism holds that only particulars exist and that concepts are names attached to groups by convention. This is intelligible but makes classification arbitrary, and cannot explain why some groupings work and others do not.
• Objectivism holds that the referents are the particulars, that the similarity among them is a fact, and that the integration is performed by a consciousness according to an objective method. A concept is therefore neither in the object alone nor in the subject alone: it is a relationship, correctly identified. See Objectivity.

The mechanism that makes this work is measurement omission. Similarity, on Rand's analysis, is the relationship between existents that possess the same characteristic in different measure or degree. Concept-formation retains the characteristic and drops the particular measurement, on the principle that the measurements must exist in some quantity but may exist in any. This is what allows one mental unit to cover cases never encountered.

Definitions and essentials

Once a concept exists it is given a definition, which names the characteristic that distinguishes its units from other things within the same wider group — the conceptual common denominator.

The characteristic chosen is the essential one: the one on which the greatest number of the thing's other characteristics depend. That is not a matter of taste but of the known facts, which is why definitions are contextual without being arbitrary. A child's definition of "man" and a philosopher's differ in the knowledge they integrate, and if both were formed properly the later one will expand the earlier rather than contradict it. See Fundamental and Rule of Fundamentality.

Kinds of concept

Concepts are formed in a hierarchy: some cannot be reached until others are in place.

• Entities come first. Concepts of perceptual things are the base of the structure, since everything else is a concept of something about an entity.
• Attributes and characteristics presuppose the entities that possess them.
• Actions presuppose the entities that act, and characteristics of actions presuppose the actions.
• Materials are formed by isolating what entities are made of.
• Relationships, spatial and temporal, relate existents already conceptualised.
• Concepts of consciousness isolate the actions of awareness from the content those actions are directed at. See Axiom of Consciousness.
• Concepts of method retain the purposive course of action and its goal while omitting the measurements of both. Logic is the fundamental concept of method, and every other one depends on it.

An alleged concept formed outside this structure, with no route back to perceptual concretes, is a floating abstraction; one that groups things not genuinely similar is an invalid concept. See Rand's Razor.

Common misunderstandings

• That a concept is the word. The word is a perceptual symbol that lets a concept be held and manipulated. The concept is the integration; a person who has the word without the integration has a floating abstraction.
• That a concept is a definition. The definition identifies the concept's essentials in a given context. The concept subsumes all the characteristics of its units, known and not yet known — which is why discovering something new about man does not mean the concept "man" has changed its referents.
• That measurement omission means measurements are unknown or unimportant. They are known to exist and are deliberately not specified. Omission is an act, not an absence.
• That concepts are approximations of a reality we cannot reach. Objectivism denies the premise. Concepts are not a screen between the mind and things; they are the form in which a mind holds things. See Perception and Realism.
• That the theory reduces to conventionalism because classification depends on purpose. Context determines which distinctions are relevant, not whether the similarities are real. Two groupings can both be valid for different purposes without either being arbitrary. See Context.

See also

• Concept formation · Unit · Measurement omission · Conceptual Common Denominator
• Existents · Identity · Perception · Consciousness
• Objectivity · Nominalism · Realism · Intrinsicism · Subjectivism
• Hierarchy · Fundamental · Rand's Razor · Unit-economy · Crow-epistemology
• Invalid Concept · Floating Abstraction · Frozen Abstraction · Package-Deal · Reification of Zero
• Analytic-synthetic dichotomy · Logic · Induction · Knowledge
• Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology — the primary source

Discussion

• Attribute vs quality
• A criticism of Objectivist epistemology
• Objectivist epistemology and metaphysics

References

• Rand, Ayn. "Cognition and Measurement", "Concept-Formation", "Abstraction from Abstractions", "Concepts of Consciousness" and "Definitions", Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. The Objectivist, 1967.
• Peikoff, Leonard. "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy", appendix to Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
• Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chapter 3.

External links

• Concepts at the Ayn Rand Lexicon