Editing Concept (section)

==== ''A priori'' concepts and ''a posteriori'' concepts ====
{{Main article|A priori and a posteriori|Category (Kant)}}

[[Immanuel Kant|Kant]] maintained the view that human minds possess not only empirical or ''a posteriori'' concepts, but also pure or ''[[a priori and a posteriori|a priori]]'' concepts. Instead of being abstracted from individual perceptions, like empirical concepts, they originate in the mind itself. He called these concepts [[category (Kant)|categories]], in the sense of the word that means [[predicate (grammar)|predicate]], attribute, characteristic, or [[quality (philosophy)|quality]]. But these pure categories are predicates of things ''in general'', not of a particular thing. According to Kant, there are twelve categories that constitute the understanding of phenomenal objects. Each category is that one predicate which is common to multiple empirical concepts. In order to explain how an ''a priori'' concept can relate to individual phenomena, in a manner analogous to an ''[[Empirical evidence|a posteriori]]'' concept, Kant employed the technical concept of the [[schema (Kant)|schema]]. He held that the account of the concept as an abstraction of experience is only partly correct. He called those concepts that result from abstraction "a posteriori concepts" (meaning concepts that arise out of experience). An empirical or an ''a posteriori'' concept is a general representation (''Vorstellung'') or non-specific thought of that which is common to several specific perceived objects (Logic §1, Note 1)

A concept is a common feature or characteristic. Kant investigated the way that empirical ''a posteriori'' concepts are created.
{{Blockquote|The logical acts of the understanding by which concepts are generated as to their form are:

# ''comparison'', i.e., the likening of mental images to one another in relation to the unity of consciousness;
# ''reflection'', i.e., the going back over different mental images, how they can be comprehended in one consciousness; and finally
# ''abstraction'' or the segregation of everything else by which the mental images differ ...

In order to make our mental images into concepts, one must thus be able to compare, reflect, and abstract, for these three logical operations of the understanding are essential and general conditions of generating any concept whatever. For example, I see a fir, a willow, and a linden. In firstly comparing these objects, I notice that they are different from one another in respect of trunk, branches, leaves, and the like; further, however, I reflect only on what they have in common, the trunk, the branches, the leaves themselves, and abstract from their size, shape, and so forth; thus I gain a concept of a tree.|Logic, §6}}