Conception

• “There are three aspects of thinking as more or less complete stages of it. These are, conception, judgment, and reasoning. They are not to be considered three distinct acts; not even three successive stages. No one of them could occur without each of the others.”

• “Concepts have meaning only if we can point to objects to which they refer and to rules by which they are assigned to these objects.”

• “Concepts can only acquire content when they are connected, however indirectly, with sensible experience. But no logical investigation can reveal this connection; it can only be experienced. ...this connection ...determines the cognitive value of systems of concepts.”

• “All concepts, even those which are closest to experience, are from the point of view of logic freely chosen conventions.”

• “Often it is only after immense intellectual effort, which may have continued over centuries, that humanity at last succeeds in achieving knowledge of a concept in its pure form, by stripping off the irrelevant accretions which veil it from the eye of the mind.”

• “Kant says that concept without percepts are empty, percepts without concepts are blind; it would perhaps be truer to say that concepts and percepts are inseparable; and if torn asunder, they are nothing.”

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.

Overview

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Conception across IJR