Concept, Percept - Essence, Accident.


William Arthur Heidel (1868-1941), a philosopher son of a preacher, makes these interesting observations. His booklet "The necessary and the contingent in the Aristotelian system (1896)" is a very lucid treatment of concepts (and percepts).
  • The Sophists then appeared, men of no system but surveying all, only to find a multitude of ineffectual predicates applied to the world.
  • It is quite true, Aristotle admits, to say that chance is irrational; for reason deals only with what occurs always or at least for the most part, whereas chance lies in the reverse of these.
  • Thus the contingent and the necessary, which possess a true meaning only within a limited scope defined by a particular end, are generalized and erected into absolute fact. But, really, absolute necessity is as unmeaning as absolute contingency. For both conceptions we shall do well to substitute that of less or greater completeness in the definition of fact.
He advances the idea that concepts are made with a end in view
  • The concept, in other words, is to be gained by defining the particular: But just here we discover the bad influence of the Socratic induction, proceeding as it did by the elimination of the non-essential, without being fully conscious of the meaning of this exclusion...It was the nature of the particular, in fact, which constituted the concept.
  • Viewed from a practical standpoint the exclusion of the non-essential from the concept is not only justified, but it even indicates a truth which ought to lead to the destruction of the theoretical category of "things" and so of the "given." When we are engaged in realizing an end which we have set up after a preliminary review or examination of our means, we find in our experience as presented in memory certain clusters of qualities which \ve commonly denote as things. These clusters are the net results, so to speak, of innumerable previous experiences, in which these "things" did service as ends in themselves or as means toward further ends. We cannot too gratefully acknowledge the serviceableness of this our minds' economy, by which our experience and, therefore, our whole fund of materials or means for future action is definitely organized so as to obviate the fatality of depending on more or less chance suggestions.
  • The essential point, on the theoretical side, is to recognize that .. [he] readjust[s] these clusters of qualities, according as this or that content is peculiarly desirable for a particular end... 
  • The previously discarded qualities, now again seen in the "things," are classed as "accidents" as opposed to the "essence." This once done, the arena is prepared for all the fruitless battles that have been fought over substance and attribute and inherence. ... I shall hope to show later on that this psychological fallacy is at the base of the distinction between the necessary and the contingent.
  • ... the contingent and the necessary, which possess a true meaning only within a limited scope defined by a particular end, are generalized and erected into absolute fact. But, really, absolute necessity is as unmeaning as absolute contingency. For both conceptions we shall do well to substitute that of less or greater completeness in the definition of fact.

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