Plan:
1. General description of the concept.
2. The content and size of the concept, their interrelationship.
3. Types of concepts.
4. Relationships between concepts.
1. A concept is a form of thinking that reflects general, important features of objects and events.
Signs are the aspects and features that distinguish objects from each other and express their similarity to each other. each object has many symbols because it is in contact (directly or indirectly) with other objects in the universe. Some of them are characteristic of only one subject and constitute its individual, singular signs, while others belong to a certain group of subjects and are considered general signs. For example, each person has unique spiritual experiences and such individual characteristics. Therefore, at the same time, it has general characteristics that are characteristic of a certain group of people (belonging to the cocktail community, nation, etc.) or to all people (making cocktails, thinking skills, participation in social relations, etc.).
Some of the individual and general signs are necessary for the existence of the object and represent its nature and essence. Such signs are called important signs of the subject. For example, the existence of a state requires that it has its own territory, population, and authorities.
Insignificant signs do not constitute the essence of the subject. With their disappearance, the nature of the subject does not change. For example, what race, nationality, gender belongs to is not important for the existence of an individual as a human being.
It should also be said that whether the sign of the object is important or not is determined depending on how we treat the object in practice. In particular, characters that are not important in one relationship may be important in another relationship. For example, a person's ability is important for what career he chooses, but not for his existence as a human being. Such important signs are called important signs of the object in a certain relationship, and differ from objective important signs (signs that are necessarily related to the existence of the object).
Finally, since the object is in constant movement, in progress, its significant sign may become a non-significant sign over time, or, conversely, a non-significant sign may become a significant sign.
For example, directly observable facts are of great importance at the stage of empirical knowledge, while at the stage of theoretical knowledge they are referred to less.
So, in the concept, the subject is thought through its important signs, and these signs can be general and individual signs of the subject. For example, in the concept of "Khamza Khakimzoda Niyazi", in addition to the general features of the subject (person, writer), individual important features (in particular, the author of the drama "Boy il Servantchi") are also considered.
It is necessary to pay special attention to the fact that the concept is fundamentally different from the forms of emotional cognition. Intuition, perception, and imagination are vivid images of an object. We can only perceive or have an idea about a concrete object, for example, a pen with which we are writing. "The pen at all" cannot be perceived. Because the concept is not a clear image of the object, but an abstract image. while the concept of pen includes all concrete pens, it expresses their common, important signs, discarding the individual signs characteristic of each of them. At the same time, these signs also serve as specific signs that distinguish a pen from other objects, for example, a book.
As the concept deviates from the imperfect signs of the object, it cannot fully reflect it. In this sense, it stands far from existence in relation to sensory forms of cognition. However, the understanding expresses the existence more deeply and fully compared to the forms of emotional knowledge by perceiving the important signs of the object and reflecting its essence.
Concepts, unlike emotional forms of cognition, are not directly reflected in the human brain. It is generated using certain logical methods. These methods consist of comparison, analysis, synthesis, abstraction, generalization.
With the help of comparison, objects are compared with each other, and their similar, common aspects and individual characteristics that differ from each other are determined.
Comparison requires analysis. Because subjects cannot be compared as a whole. They should be compared according to one or another property. For this purpose, those properties should be separated. With the help of analysis, the subject is divided into its parts and sides, each of which is studied separately.
Synthesis is a method opposite to analysis, which consists in bringing the subject into a whole by mentally combining the parts and aspects separated during the analysis. If there is no synthesis, it is impossible to form a comprehensive opinion about the subject. Analysis and synthesis are inextricably linked.
In order to create a concept, it is necessary to distinguish the important general and individual characteristics of the subject, determined by the above methods, and exclude the non-important ones. This is done with the help of abstraction.
In generalization, objects are combined into classes according to some of their common, important characteristics, and in this way, it is possible to think of all objects of the same kind in one concept.
The formation of the concept is inextricably linked with the word. The connection between them is a concrete manifestation of the connection between thought and language.
Concepts are expressed using words and phrases. For example, it consists of such words as "student", "faculty of history", "national university of Uzbekistan". But it should not be concluded that the concept and the word are exactly the same. One concept is expressed in different languages, sometimes even in the same language with different words. The occurrences of homonyms and synonyms in our language indicate the relatively independent existence of words and concepts.
It should also be said that the word having multiple meanings sometimes leads to confusion of concepts in the process of thinking. Therefore, more terms are used in science and technology. A term is a word that expresses strictly one concept and is used in the same sense in a certain field of scientific knowledge.
2. The concept has its own content and size. The content of the concept is a set of important features of the subject under consideration. For example, the content of the concept of "science" is formed by the important signs of science, that is, its connection with practice, the fact that it consists of a system of objective true (real) knowledge in the form of concepts, laws, principles related to any field of subjects, participation in the formation of worldview, and so on. does.
The size of the concept consists of the sum of the objects that are considered in it. For example, the scope of the above-mentioned concept of "science" includes all existing sciences: mathematics, physics, logic, etc.
The content and size of the concept are inextricably linked, and it is expressed using the law of inverse proportion between the content and size of the concept. According to this law, if the scope of the concept is expanded, the content will be narrowed, and vice versa, if the size is narrowed, the content will be expanded. For example, by adding the sign of "belonging to logic" to the content of the concept of "Science", the term "science of logic" is narrower in terms of size.
By expanding the scope of the concept of "science", the concept of "form of social consciousness" is created, which is narrower in terms of content. In this case, specific signs that are unique to science and not in other forms of social consciousness, such as art, are excluded from the content of the concept.
This law is based on a series of logical operations carried out with concepts.
3. In logic, concepts are divided into several types according to their content and size. In particular, individual and general concepts are distinguished according to size.
In the scope of a single concept, one subject is considered. For example, "Planet Earth", "UzMU main library" and so on are individual concepts. General concepts represent a group of subjects. The concepts of "Planet", "Library" are considered general concepts. The number of subjects reflecting general concepts can be limited or unlimited. For example, the number of subjects considered in the concept of "chemical element" is limited. They can be counted. The number of objects that make up the concept of "star" is unlimited and cannot be counted.
It is also important to distinguish between subtractive and additive concepts in the process of thinking. A distinguishing concept is such a general concept that it is characteristic of each subject of a given class. For example, the opinion that "students of UzMU are studying the materials of the first session of the second convocation of the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan" belongs to every student of UzMU. So, the concept of "UzMU students" is a subtractive concept here. In the opinion that "UzMU students are discussing the results of the first session of the second convocation of the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan", the concept of "UzMU students" is a gathering concept. does, because the point is made relative to their set.
According to the content, concepts are divided into abstract and concrete concepts. In concrete concepts, the object is thought together with its signs. In abstract concepts, the signs of the object are separated from it and reflected separately. For example, the concepts of "Man", "Nature" are concrete concepts, the concepts of "heroism" (represents a characteristic of a person), "Beauty" (represents a characteristic of existing objects) are abstract concepts.
According to the content, it is also possible to distinguish non-proportional and relative concepts. Non-relative concepts reflect relatively independent, separately existing objects. "State", "Work of art" are such concepts.
Relative concepts reflect objects that necessarily require the existence of each other. For example, the concepts of "teacher" and "student", "Positive character" and "Negative character", "Cause" and "Consequence" are relative concepts.
In some cases, positive and negative concepts are also distinguished. In the content of positive concepts, the subject is thought through its specific signs, while in the content of negative concepts, the subject is thought through signs that are not characteristic of it. For example, "Elite person", "Conscientious person" are positive concepts, "Illiterate person", "Unscrupulous person" are negative concepts.
We have already introduced several types of concepts. Determining which of these types a concept belongs to means giving it a logical description. For example, "Student" is a general, subtractive, limited, concrete, disproportionate, positive concept; "A. The state library of Uzbekistan named Navoi" is a single, collecting, limited, concrete, disproportionate, positive concept.
4. Since all objects and events in the objective world are interconnected, the concepts that reflect them also exist in certain mutual relations and relations. These relations are different, and in order to define them, first of all, it is necessary to distinguish between comparable and non-comparable concepts.
Comparable concepts are concepts that have common features and are close to each other in terms of content and size. For example, the concepts of "Metallurgist" and "Worker" are considered comparable concepts.
Non-comparable concepts are concepts that reflect objects that are distantly related to each other, and in many cases do not have a common feature other than being material or ideal. The concepts of "Social progress" and "Venus star", "Ideal gas" and "Beauty" are considered incommensurable concepts. In logic, logical relations between incomparable concepts are not studied. Comparable concepts are compressible and non-compressible in terms of size.
The size of the concepts that fit together are completely, completely or partially compatible with each other. There are three types of relationships between them: compatibility, partial compatibility and subordination. Concepts in relation of compatibility are concepts reflecting one subject (class of subjects) and they differ from each other only in their content. For example,
The concepts "IA Karimov", "President of the Republic of Uzbekistan" exist in the same relationship. This can be shown using the following scheme.
AI.A. Karimov.
President of the Republic of Uzbekistan.
the size of the concepts in the relation of partial compatibility has a partial commonality. For example:
A-Sportsman.
V-Student.
The dashed part of the circles indicates those who are both athletes and students at the same time.
In the relationship of subordination, the size of one of the concepts completely penetrates the size of the other and is considered its constituent part. For example:
A-Science.
V-Logic.
One of the concepts in this relation is the subordinate (A) and the other (V) is subordinate, and they are in a gender-species relationship. The genus concept reflects a class of objects, and the species concept reflects a group or one of the objects belonging to this class. In logic, the fact that this or that concept is a genus or species has a relative character. each concept is a species with respect to a more general concept, and a genus with respect to a less general concept. For example, there is the following relationship between the concepts of national idea, idea, and thought: the concept of "idea" is a species compared to the concept of "Idea", and the concept of "National Idea" is a gender.
Incompressible concepts are concepts that have no commonality in terms of size and represent different objects or a group of objects belonging to the same class. That's all they have in common. There are three types of relationships between these concepts: co-subordination, opposition, conflict.
A mutual subordination relationship exists between the following concepts.
A-Science.
V-Logic.
S-Physics.
In this case, the concepts of "Logic" and "Physics" are jointly subordinated to the concept of "Science".
the sizes of the concepts in relation to the opposition are mutually exclusive. They reflect opposite signs of an object (a group of objects), that is, if one expresses a certain sign of the object, the other reflects another sign that negates it. Concepts in the relationship of opposition cannot fully occupy the size of the concept to which they are subordinated. For example, the concepts "Tall man" and "Short man" cannot fully cover the size of the concept "Man".
A-Man.
V-A tall man.
S-Short man.
If one of the concepts in the relation of contradiction expresses a feature of the subject, the other negates it and remains ambiguous in terms of content. Concepts in the relationship of opposition, unlike concepts in the relationship of opposition, completely cover the size of the subordinating concept. For example,
A-Man.
V-Tall man,
S-Not a tall person.
Determining the relationship between concepts helps clarify their content and size, connect them, and move from one form of thought to another form of thought. For example, based on the definition of the relationship between the concepts of "Student" and "Excellent", it is possible to form an opinion in the form of reasoning that "Some students are excellent".
