Talk:Conception
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Concept vs Conception
I'm editing the page on concepts at the moment, and found this page when I was trying to explain the differences between the two words. Technically, a concept is the mental representation of the class of things in the world where as a conception is our beliefs or construal of that class.[1] I wish that was more clear on this page. Also, this was deleted from that page for irrelevance. But perhaps it is relevant here:
"John Stuart Mill argued that general conceptions are formed through abstraction. A general conception is the common element among the many images of members of a class. "...[W]hen we form a set of phenomena into a class, that is, when we compare them with one another to ascertain in what they agree, some general conception is implied in this mental operation" (A System of Logic, Book IV, Ch. II). Mill did not believe that concepts exist in the mind before the act of abstraction. "It is not a law of our intellect, that, in comparing things with each other and taking note of their agreement, we merely recognize as realized in the outward world something that we already had in our minds. The conception originally found its way to us as the result of such a comparison. It was obtained (in metaphysical phrase) by abstraction from individual things" (Ibid.)."