Second Response to Joe MacMaster: How Does One Conceptualize Outside of Conceptual Space? Eris-Jake Donohue, Texas A&M University For my response I want to focus on this particular passage from the presentation: Something that must be clarified with this idea [of 4D forms] is whether or not it is to be interpreted literally or as an analogy. I think it must be taken literally, since if it is just an analogy, the forms must only exist within our dimension, or within conceptual space. I do not think conceptual space serves as a complete model here, since the existence of objects in conceptual space depends on human thought. Since the forms need to have existed prior to, and independent of human thought, I believe they must have existed outside of conceptual space. We are left with no choice but to accept that the forms reside in a higher spatial dimension. This raises my central question: How does one conceptualize a concept outside of conceptual space? Now, I know this passage is referring to ‘conceptual space’ in the sense of the conceptualizing of space itself, and therefore the 3D objects of the forms within said space. Or it could be referring to the ‘conceptual space’ of cognitive scientist Peter Gärdenfors, although with Gärdenfors’ account pertaining to much more than space in the 3D sense, I can’t make this attribution with any absolute certainty.1 In any case, what I am interested in is the signified double entendre of ‘conceptual space’ here (which, even if its author is unaware of it or didn’t intend it, signifies all the same): that being, ‘conceptual space’ not as the conceptualizing of space but the space of conceptualizing; in other words, the dimension wherein the forms as a concept is conceptualized. For indeed, the concept of the forms does not exist prior to or independent of human thought. Rather, it is a product of thought (philosophical thought specifically). In their joint text What Is Philosophy?, French poststructuralists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari articulate that “philosophy is the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts” (2). They specifically target Plato’s forms as one such philosophical See Peter Gärdenfors, “Conceptual Spaces as a Framework for Knowledge Representation.”
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