Let's imagine we're in the middle of a conversation with a friend, with a topic along the lines of:
- So, how's John been doing lately, any news?
- Well, i heard he just bought a new car, as for his wife, she [...]
What is it that we think of when we hear the word 'car' in the example above? Or, in other words, what was our mental representation for 'car'? Let's try to make this question more explicit:
- do we mean 'what "mental image" do we see'? If this is the case then the answer is: we see absolutely nothing.
- do we mean 'what "mental sound" do we hear'? Again, if this is the case then the answer is: none.
- do we mean 'what characteristics that are all common to the concept of car are we thinking of in that moment'? And yet again, if this is the case then the answer is: none.
The reason for which we can so easily talk about concepts without actually having a definition of the term (e.g. this note on the concept of concept) might be that, apart from being able to perform cognitive operations (e.g. memorizing, making associations, etc) with data that we can somehow be aware of, we can also perform similar operations with synthetic data that we are not aware of. One such kind of synthetic data is what we call 'concepts'. In other words, while concepts may indeed represent a specific kind of data that is operated upon by the cognitive processes, this special kind of data is hidden from our direct awareness and no direct sensation of any kind is biunivocally associated with it. While we can infer the fact that we operate with something-we-call-concepts from the patterns in our mental processes, we cannot actually feel the presence of a concept in our minds.
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