Concept Formation, Knowing, Interpreting

 

 

I want to get into some philosophy today by exploing concept formation and subsequent philosophical deepening, and to what extent interpretation and translations (themselves concepts) play in this process. The examples I would like to work with are: apple, concept/idea, interpretation, and translation. First Apple.

 

 I assume one learns by eating them, pointing at pictures and naming them, picking them from a tree, etc. We learn apple through embodied, situated encounters. The child sees the round, red (or green) object; touches its smooth or slightly waxy surface; bites into it (crispness, sweetness, sometimes sourness); smells it, etc. [My grandparents had next door neighbors who were German immigrants. They had apple trees. The (to me as a child) elderly woman (probably early 60’s) often gathered apples in the autumn. I recall very clearly – I must have been around 5 – that see called me other and offered me one. It was great. I remarked that she talked differently, and she explained she was from Germany. I asked her to teach me some German words, and she taught me “Apfel.” My first German word associated with the first apples trees in my experience and the first delicious apple right from the tree.]

   This is not yet a “concept” in the strict sense. Recurring patterns recognized by the child (unconsciously) as patterns and associated with different experiences and interwoven into the child’s language. The apple is not just perceived but used: eaten when hungry; picked from a tree; placed in a basket; perhaps cut by an adult, etc. So the apple is embedded in forms of life (to use Ludwig Wittgenstein’s phrase) practices. And an adult says: “apple” and in my case also “Apfel.” At first, this is not a definition but a gesture within a shared situation: pointing + word; repetition across contexts. The child begins to grasp this kind of thing, i.e., “apple.” Not a fixed essence at this point but a family of similarities across situations.

     What Is the “Concept” at This Stage? Certainly not a definition (e.g. “a fruit of the genus Malus”) and not a mental image (since apples vary widely). More like an ability to recognize, use, and respond appropriately within a shared practice. Therefore, concept formation is clearly not primarily theoretical. More practical, normative. The child learns what counts as an apple; what does not (a tomato may be confusing at first!); what one does with apples, and the like. This is already a kind of implicit interpretation of the world because the child must do things like group different appearances together (red apple, green apple, sliced apple), ignore differences (size, color variations), attend to relevant features, etc. This is an active structuring of experience. So even “apple” involves a primitive, pre-reflective act of interpretation.

     Later, the concept becomes more explicit: “Apples grow on trees”; “Apples are fruit”; “Apples have seeds,” etc. The concept enters networks of other concepts expressing hierarchical relations (fruit → apple) and causal and biological understanding. At this point, the concept is no longer tied only to immediate perception but becomes something that can be thought about even in the absence of apples.

   And even in this simple case, there is already something like translation. The child “translates” from sensory experience to linguistic category, from one situation to another. Recognizing an apple in a new context requires translating past experience into present judgment. The word “apple” is shared such that my experience gets translated into your experience and vice-versa. Language functions as a bridge across private worlds. In what I am loosely calling translation, the logic of analogy is constantly at work (more on analogy later).

     So even in these early stages it seems clear that concepts come from lived engagement, not imposed on a neutral world, nor simply extracted from it. Interpretation is there from the beginning, the very condition of forming a concept at all. Translation , moreover, is not something that happens after concepts are formed; rather, concept formation itself is already a kind of translation of world into meaning, of experience into shareable form.

 

. . .

 

How to distinguish interpreting vs. knowing what an apple is? Begin with a distinction that does not separate too sharply what in life is intertwined. Knowing what an apple is, at the most basic level, to know what an apple is means, I suppose, one can reliably identify apples, distinguish them from non-apples, use them appropriately (eat, buy, pick), answer simple questions (“Is this an apple?”), etc. i.e., practical, classificatory competence. It is largely unreflective and embedded in action. Knowing (kennen) is a kind being at home with the thing within a shared practice. To interpret the apple is something different in kind, though continuous with the first. It means to take the apple as something, to situate it within a meaningful horizon. Or to see it under a description that is not forced by mere recognition. The apple as been seen as temptation, gifts of nature, symbols of knowledge, products of labor, etc. The question is no longer “Is this an apple?” More like “What does the apple mean in this context?” Knowing recognizes what it is; interpreting discloses what it is as i.e., unpacks the in principle vast range of meanings that are also part of the phenomenon’s being. Knowing stabilizes identity; interpreting opens significance.

     But interpretation is not simply added later. Even the child treats the apple as food, prefers sweet apples and rejects rotten ones. Already, the apple is taken as something. So the distinction is real, but the priority may be reversed. Interpretation is implicit from the beginning; explicit interpretation is its deepening.

 

. . .

 

 Concepts I maintain deepen not first through philosophy, but through narrative, symbol, and shared imagination. Some examples from my childhood and youth. It is clear to me that the meaning of apple was different from pre-sugar cultures and this helps to understand their importance for the imagination of our predecessor cultures. There is the apple in the Garden of Eden.

 

                       

 The apple (even if not explicitly named in the Hebrew text, it becomes so in tradition) becomes forbidden fruit, temptation, knowledge of good and evil, loss of innocence. The concept is no longer merely botanical or practical.It now gathersexistential, moral, and theological significance.

   I recall also the apples of Idun (from Norse myths).

 

 Here apples signify renewal of youth, continuity of life, dependence of the gods on a sustaining gift. The apple becomes a bearer of vitality and cosmic order.

     I also remember the legend of Johnny Appleseed.

 

Now the apple is tied to cultivation and settlement, generosity and wandering life, human shaping of nature. The apple becomes a symbol of culture, care, and transmission across generations.

   What is happening in all these cases? The same concept apple is thickened, extended beyond immediate perception. But this is not merely subjectively projecting aspects of human psyche onto an arbitrary object!

Each story selects aspects of the apple (sweetness, growth, nourishment, renewal), amplifies them, and integrates them into a vision of the world

So pre-philosophical deepening is the enrichment of a concept through its participation in meaningful wholes. These myths and legends reveal possibilities of meaning already latent in the thing: nourishment/life immortality; attractiveness/desire/temptation; growth/cultivation/culture. Meaning for us can reveal being and heighten it. I totally reject the subjectivism that sees this an arbitrary projection of human subjectivity onto the blank screen of nature.

 

     Now we reach the deepest layer. How is it possible that an apple can mean temptation, immortality, or cultural cultivation without becoming arbitrary? The answer lies in analogy. Analogy is not mere similarity. It is

a structured correspondence between different domains of meaning. For example: Apple nourishes the body, knowledge “nourishes” the mind; apple is attractive and desirable, temptation draws the will; apple sustains life; immortality sustains being. Not random associations. Rather understood proportions or relations carried over into new domains.

   Analogy enables the translation I mentioned above. Translation, whether between languages or between levels of meaning, depends on analogy. Translation requires recognizing that two things are not identical and yet comparable in structure or function. In this case, the movement is from apple as fruit to apple as symbol of knowledge or life. That is a kind of translation from the sensory-practical domain into the moral, existential, or metaphysical domain. And that is only possible because nourishment (physical) is analogous to fulfillment (intellectual or spiritual). Or sensory sweetness is analogous to desirability (moral/existential). If there were no analogy, symbols would be arbitrary, myths would be unintelligible, translation between domains would collapse. But with analogy we get continuity across levels of meaning, intelligibility without reduction, and plurality without chaos.

   The whole movement like this: 1) concept formation begins in lived encounter (apple as fruit); 2) interpretation opens the thing to meaning (apple as something); 3) myth and story deepen and stabilize these meanings communally; 4) analogy makes this deepening intelligible and translatable across domains.  I think philosophical concepts (like “idea,” “interpretation,” “translation”) are ultimately refined versions of this same process. They, too, are grounded in lived experience, deepened by analogy, and stabilized by shared forms of life.

 

. . .

 

Then the move to philosophical reflection. Stick to the concept apple for now. The concept get metaphysically interpreted in different ways: as substance (Aristotle) or participating in an Idea (Plato), in the mind of God (Augustine), as a particular only (Nominalism), as a collection of molecules (science) etc. Here a bit unpacked.

 

1) The Apple as Substance (Aristotle)

For Aristotle, the apple is first and foremost a substance (ousia).

This means:

•             it is a this, an individual thing

•             it persists through change (green → red, unripe → ripe)

•             it has an underlying unity (not just a heap of qualities)

Its redness, sweetness, roundness are accidents; they belong to it, but are not what it is most fundamentally. Thus the apple is a unified being that has properties.

 

2) The Apple as Participation in an Idea (Plato)

For Plato, the apple we perceive is not fully real in itself. It participates in the Form (Idea) of Apple. That is, it is an imperfect instance of a more perfect intelligible reality. So the apple becomes a visible manifestation of an invisible intelligible structure. Note there is both knowing and interpreting (as explained above) involved here (and in all these philosophical accounts). Knowledge is a grasping of the universal: that is, what makes all apples apples. Interpretation understands the sensible apple as pointing beyond itself to a higher, more real order. From this apple to what-it-is-to-be-an-apple. The apple is known within a framework, but it is interpreted into a world.

 

 3) The Apple in the Mind of God (Augustine)

For St. Augustine, the intelligibility of the apple is grounded in eternal divine ideas. The apple exists because it is known by God; its form is a participation in divine reason (ratio). He give Plato’s Ideas an address (Kreeft). Therefore, the apple is a created being whose intelligibility reflects the mind of God.

 

4) The Apple as Particular Only (Nominalism)

With thinkers like William of Ockham, the picture shifts radically. There is no real universal “apple.” Only individual apples exist and “apple” is just a name (nomen) we apply. The apple is only this individual thing; “apple” is a linguistic convenience. The underlying claim is that similarity does not imply shared essence, only practical grouping. Here interpretation reduces the metaphysical weight of the concept.

 

5) The Apple as Molecular Structure (Modern Science)

 In a scientific framework, the apple becomes a complex arrangement of molecules, i.e., cells, sugars, acids, water as describable in terms of chemistry and physics. The apple is a biochemical system governed by natural laws. The unscientific, metaphysical move is then to take what is most real about the apple to be what is quantifiable and analyzable. Other dimensions (taste, meaning, symbolism) become subjective.

etc.

    These philosophical accounts are different ways of taking the apple as something fundamentally. Within each view, knowledge consists in correctly describing, explaining, and classifying the apple according to its principles. Philosophy (interpretation in general) goes beyond this and beyond experience per se. It involves interpretation in the sense that the prior act by which the apple is taken as this kind of being rather than that. It thus determines what counts as relevant, what counts as real, or what counts as explanation. 

      This raises the question of whether there is a way to adjudicate between these interpretations? Or are we moving among different, incommensurable “world-versions”? (Nelson Goodman.) Interpretation is not arbitrary (think Goodman would agree). It is constrained by experience, coherence, explanatory power, and perhaps something like adequacy to the fullness of the thing. So we might ask which interpretation does most justice to the apple, not only as object of science but as lived, meaningful, intelligible reality? Knowledge operates within a framework; philosophical interpretation establishes the framework itself. Knowledge answers the question What is this, given our way of understanding? Philosophical interpretation asks (or decides) What is it to be, such that this counts as understanding at all? Each account claims to be knowledge of what the apple really is and yet each depends on an interpretive stance that could be otherwise.

 

. . .

 

I could multiply such accounts, also by bringing in theology. Apple is a gift of God’s love, Creation, etc. Apple as commodified in capitalism. Apple as aesthetic object, etc. (Cezanne’s apples).

      

     Myth, religion, art, and metaphysics are not separate domains but different ways in which the same reality becomes intelligible to us. Myth gives narrative shape to fundamental patterns (origin, loss, renewal) showing in story what cannot yet be said conceptually. Art intensifies perception, allowing things to appear in their depth and presence beyond mere use. Religion takes up these disclosures into lived orientation, shaping how one stands in relation to what is ultimate through practice, reverence, and moral formation. Metaphysics seeks to articulate in clear concepts what must be the case for anything to appear and matter as it does. Each domain makes explicit what is implicit in the others: myth and art disclose, religion affirms and inhabits, metaphysics clarifies.

     Because reality exceeds any single mode of access, these domains depend on and correct one another. Without myth and art, metaphysics becomes abstract and thin; without metaphysical reflection, myth and religion risk confusion or unexamined assertion; without religious seriousness, both art and thought can lose existential weight; without art, religion and metaphysics can lose contact with lived experience. They are thus best understood as distinct but interrelated forms of attunement – narrative, perceptual, existential, and intellectual – through which reality shows itself under different aspects. Truth thus lies not in choosing one over the others, but in holding them together so that what is can be seen, lived, and understood with greater fullness.     

   The concept apple does not merely get defined once and for all; it unfolds into an entire world, or rather into many overlapping worlds – religious, aesthetic, economic, scientific – each of which is, in a sense, an open-ended set of meaning. Therefore, any philosophical or pseudo-scientific attempt to close the concept by reducing its meaning must be wrong-headed. So something fundamental: the apple does not have one meaning, plus optional interpretations. Its being is disclosed differently within different horizons of interpretation. Not relativism, but plurality of disclosure. These are not simply competing opinions. Each domain brings out real aspects of the apple while concealing others. For example, science reveals structure, art reveals presence, religion reveals giftedness, etc.

     Now I hope the distinction between knowing and interpreting becomes sharper. Knowledge within each domain aims to be precise, rule-governed, verifiable (in different ways). Philosophical interpretation explores which mode of disclosure is primary. It asks whether the apply is fundamentally a resource, a created good, a perceptual phenomenon, a molecular structure, commodity - the latter two being reductive (bad) interpretations in my view.

I think this is consistent with Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Aquinas. Perhaps even Goodman?

p.s.  One of my favorite apple interpretations, a fragment of a poem by Sappho

Sappho fr. 105a:

Like a sweet apple reddening on a high branch,
high on the highest branch - 
and the apple-pickers forgot it.
No, not forgot: they could not reach it.