Concepts

The most basic unit of logical thinking, and a form of thinking that reflects the essential properties of things.

Concept is the product of rational knowledge and the reflection of common and general characteristics of similar things. On the basis of perceptual knowledge acquired in social practice, people gradually reveal the unique properties of objects, especially essential properties, through making comparison, analysis, synthesis, abstraction, generalization and other thinking methods, thus realizing a leap from perceptual knowledge to rational knowledge, and forming concepts that reflect the unique properties of things. Concept is different from sensation, perception and impression in nature. With the help of concept, people can distinguish the things they know from other things by revealing the essential properties of things. Since the essential properties of something distinguish it from other things, and are shared by one kind of things while not being possessed by others, the concept that reflects the essential properties of a thing (including all thinking objects) must have the characteristics of indirection, abstraction and recapitulation. Lenin revealed the nature of the concept from the height of materialist dialectics, emphasizing that “human concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source”. Knowledge is the reflection of nature by man. But this is not a simple, not an immediate, not a complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the formation and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws, etc. (thought, science = “the logical idea”) embrace conditionally, approximately, the universal law-governed character of eternally moving and developing nature.

Words are the language expression form of concepts. Concepts are the contents (meaning and connotation) of words. The generation and expression of concepts must resort to and rely on words. Different words can express the same thing and the same concept. Connotation and denotation are the two basic logical features of a concept. The connotation of a concept refers to the essential attribute (or unique attribute) of the thing reflected in the concept, explaining what kind of thing the concept reflects and the qualitative stipulation it has. The extension of a concept refers to the things that have the essential attributes (or unique attributes) reflected by the concept, that is, the scope of application of the concept, which things are reflected and the quantitative stipulation of the concept. To clarify a concept is to define its connotation and extension.

Concept is the cell of thinking and is the most basic element that constitutes judgment and then reasoning and argumentation. People must have the concept of something in order to make judgments, reasoning and arguments about it. Concept is the reflection of objective existence and the crystallization of thinking. New knowledge acquired by people through judgment, reasoning and argumentation on the basis of practice is condensed into concept, which enriches, perfects and exacts the formed concept and forms new concept. Lenin pointed out that man by his practice proves the objective correctness of his ideas, concepts, knowledge, science. people use their own practice to prove the objective correctness of their own views, concepts, knowledge and science. This judgment process draws a clear line with the subjective arbitrariness of the concept standard. Concept is the dialectical unity of certainty and flexibility. Because all real concepts, especially scientific concepts, reflect the real things and their evolution process. Concept has both certainty (the relatively static side) and flexibility (the absolute movement side). Formal logic and dialectical logic study concepts in different ways from different sides. Formal logic studies the certainty of concepts, disregarding the specific content of concepts, and studies concepts only from the aspect of the formal structure of thinking. Dialectical logic focuses on the flexibility of concepts on the basis of the unity of certainty and flexibility, and studies the dialectical process of the generation, development and transformation of concepts from the organic combination of form and content. The certainty and flexibility of dialectical logic are based on the dialectics of objective things rather than subjective assumptions. Lenin pointed out that the relations of notions (= transitions = contradictions) = the main content of logic, by which these concepts (and their relations, transitions, contradictions) are shown as reflections of the objective world. The dialectics of things produces the dialectics of ideas, and not vice versa. Concepts always have certain relations and connections with any other concepts. By saying this, Lenin profoundly revealed the materialist and dialectical nature of concepts.