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The origin of the concepts

שו”תCategory: generalThe origin of the concepts
asked 6 years ago

peace,
I wonder what the origin of the concepts we use in everyday life is, do all concepts originate only from categorization based on memory and the abstraction capabilities of the imaginative power. Following the multitude of events in which we, as a whole, have encountered each other? Or is there an external source for basic concepts (God who imprinted them in us/Platonic ideas, etc.).
For example, when we come to examine a basic concept such as area or volume, which our ancestors undoubtedly used intuitively, we will not be able to define it except for the claim that if we define a square of 1cm*1cm=1cm^2. Area is the number of times we can fit it into the space given before us by approximating as necessary.
So it doesn’t seem that the claim that the concepts came from outside gives us better explanatory capabilities in examples like these.
On the other hand, when talking about more abstract concepts like beauty and morality, it seems that it becomes harder and harder to base them on real-life cases. But on the other hand, they are much less defined and subject to more controversy, which makes them more subjective.
So I wanted to ask what the Rabbi thinks, where do concepts come from? Did we create them or did we receive them? Also, does the Rabbi think that enough time has passed since the beginning of humanity that we can create all the concepts ourselves from scratch.. Because it is difficult to understand how it is possible to think without cataloging the life around us under different concepts. This seems like very different thinking from what we know today?

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מיכי Staff answered 6 years ago

It is certainly not universal. There are concepts that are drawn from human conceptualization and generalization, and there may also be concepts that are inherent in us. But at the same time, there is a division between concepts that are conventions and concepts that exist in reality (= in the world of ideas, in Platonic terminology).
In my opinion, these are two independent divisions. There may be concepts that exist in the world of ideas and were not planted in us from above, but we observed them. And perhaps there may also be concepts that do not exist and were planted in us (but that is a joke). See Two Carts in the second chapter.

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