Types of concepts: logic for all

We are constantly confronted with the logical laws in everyday life. But, unfortunately, only a few faculties in higher educational institutions fully study this science.

There are different kinds of concepts, the logic of which has been traced since ancient times. Everything begins with the "Organon" of Aristotle (this is the traditional title of six treatises on thinking, proposed by Andronik of Rhodes - publisher of the works of this philosopher).

Subsequently, the ideas of Aristotle were modified by the thinker of the Renaissance Francis Bacon, one of the first empiricists of his time. The philosopher gave his treatise the name "New Organon". He considered Aristotle's reflections with a grain of skepticism, believing that the task of science was to design a new method of cognition and benefit all people. Bacon criticized the old logic, which, in his opinion, brought only confusion in the general system of knowledge about thinking. He put above all experience and an inductive method.

It is worth noting that the logic developed in the 20th century in a particularly intensive way, turning into a probabilistic, mathematical, clear and harmonious system. But up to now formal logical laws have great methodological significance for all sciences.

Formal logic

Its laws include types of concepts. Logic constructs a scheme of presentation, which is a chain of "concept - proposition (or statement) - inference". The simplest, but at the same time, fundamental is the concept. Before constructing a statement and making a conclusion (conclusion) on its basis, it is necessary to have the concept of an object, to comprehend its essential features. These are not individual images of sensory perception, on which creative thinking is most often built . Speaking of signs, they mean specific features of difference or similarity. A distinctive feature is a property that is inherent only in this particular subject.

The concept is a conceivable reflection in the form of a general aggregate (or unity) of the essential and common features of a particular object.

Logic views types of concepts, examples of which are very easy to find. Saying the word "cat", we imagine a specific set of characteristics: claws, wool, mustaches, meow, catching mice. This set itself is a separate concept, so we can say that the concept of "cat" is complex. It includes other concepts, which have already been mentioned above.

Types of concepts

Concepts can be:

1. Registrants (answer the questions "what kind of individual?", "When?", "Where?"). Examples of such concepts are: "people who live for today in Ivanovo", "Madagascar Island", "Fedor Dostoevsky". They, in turn, are divided into single (those that mean one specific subject - "Jack London") and general ("writer", "state").

2. Unregistering ("word", "animals", "man"). They can be defined only qualitatively, have an infinite volume of concepts included in them, as a result of which many of their elements can not be accounted for. These kinds of concept logic sometimes also divides into open (non-registered) and closed (registrants).

3. Non-empty and empty on the basis of conformity or inconsistency of a concrete concept to anything in the real world.

4. Abstract and specific. The first are concepts about the relationship or properties of the object ("honor", "dignity", "courage"), while the latter speak of specific objects ("pillar", "hive").

5. Negative (speaking of the lack of properties of a particular object, for example, "not a person", "not a cat") and positive ("cat", "man").

6. Relative and irrelevant. These types of concept of logic characterize as dependent and independent of each other. That is, for example, the concepts of "grapes" and "leg" do not depend on each other in any way, therefore they can be considered irrelevant.

Conclusion

Formal logic has a number of shortcomings that several centuries have been revealed by the most experienced thinkers. Therefore, modern logic, while respecting the principles of formal, but still different from the latter by its more perfect structure. This science also widely uses mathematics for various calculations. But the types of definitions of concepts in logic do not lose their relevance to today. Therefore, every thinking person simply needs to become familiar with the structure of the term "concept".