continued…

Plato claimed that concepts (or “ideas”) were actual objects in another “dimension/world/reality”; specifically the World of Ideals (ideal shapes, forms, structures) and that this other world was (of course, as always) “higher/more important” than the one we actually perceive. Humans only get a shadowy glimpse, a bad filtered representation of the “real” existence of “things as they are”. Why can’t any of these wise guys ever claim that humans perceive the most important aspects of reality and the other dimensions that humans can’t perceive are less important? The only answer I have for that is that they hate humanity. Anyway…..So, for example, any given triangle that we perceive in our sad, little, lowly world is just a reflection of the great Ideal Triangle in the Sky.

This amounts to the idea that concepts exist as literal objects outside of the actual things they represent.

Aristotle claimed that concepts are in the nature of the object that they represent. A human mind perceives that an object contains certain specific characteristics and therefore categorizes these objects mentally accordingly. Therefore a chair can be red or blue, made of wood or metal, have three legs or four, but it’s essential characteristic is “an object that humans use to sit on as furniture” regardless of it’s other characteristics that help make it a specific, individual chair. All chairs then, regardless of other lesser traits and even though they retain these traits, contain the actuality of the concept “chair” (or that it has “chair-ness”).

Actually, Aristotle’s idea was improved upon by novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand. She pointed out that a concept doesn’t actually physically reside in an object or it’s characteristic traits. A concept is a mental unit of two or more concretes that each possess an essential, retained characteristic (Rand called it the Conceptual Common Denominator).  Rand held that concepts only exist in the individual man’s mind.  All that physically exists in reality are concrete objects, actions and relationships.  An individuals uses his senses and mind to perceptually and cognitively isolate various aspects of those objects, actions and relationships.

So, Plato said concepts are objects in fairy-land. Aristotle said concepts are in the nature of the object (i.e. in reality, in this world). Then Rand clarified Aristotle by saying that concepts are cognitive units that humans use to mentally identify and classify concrete objects (and actions) in reality.

This is the origin of the Raphael painting of Plato and Aristotle walking at the Greek “university”; Plato is pointing at the sky, “Look to the heavens (fairytale land) if you want to know” while Aristotle is pointing at the ground, “Look around (at the world you perceive) you if you want to know”.