What is a Concept? What is an Abstraction?
A concept is formed in such a way that from an indefinite number of objects, which agree in at least one Relation, the characteristic common to all these objects is picked out mentally and held for itself alone. Thus, for example, the concept "white" is formed by mentally separating this common color (color sensation) from all possible objects that are different in themselves but are connected by the same color, such as swan, chalk, snow, alabaster, milk.
This mental activity process of selecting the common feature we call Abstraction.
With the abstraction it has now its own meaning. In nature there is no "white" per se, but only objects of "white" appearance. Therefore, when man forms the concept "white" by abstraction, he does something quite peculiar: by taking the common characteristic out of its natural connections, he forcibly blows up the complex visual images of the objects as nature presents them to him, and the consequence of this is that he is left with something completely unapparent.
If therefore the "concept", as the product of the act of abstraction, can no longer be presented vividly, but only "thought" in a raw way, it owes its wide field of action to its very lack of vividness. For it is only through this that it becomes possible for it to encompass the whole large number of the otherwise totally different basic objects, which agree only in one or in some Points.
In itself, the "concept" has only their "common characteristic" as content. But since this is a component or property of the individual basic objects and therefore remains inextricably bound to them, the concept must, at the same time as the common characteristic, also include the basic objects that are inseparably bound to it. Thus, with the concept "rose" I hold all kinds and specimens of roses in my hand.
Only now do we understand what a meaningful and purposeful procedure abstraction represents: By picking out the "common" from a series of objects, it replaces the many objects with a single thought-formation, the concept, which holds their common and at the same time grasps the objects by the reins of their commonality.
Now we also understand why man, although he is able to perceive the colorful world of things and events with his sense organs only vividly, each for itself, could arrive at a uniform system, clearly arranged by superordination and subordination, and thus at a mental comprehension of the world connections. He put "in the place" of the vividly perceptible things the non-vivid concept, which served him as a practical handhold to string all the many individual perceptions on the string of their correspondences like pearls and to connect them to ordered chains.
With this realization we have advanced to the core of the concept problem: The concept takes the place of its basic objects, respectively of the perception of them. Thus, the concept also proves to be a "tool", an artificial means for the liberation of the body.
As with language, it is again the sense organs that are switched off. But with the concept the liberation from the natural limitation of the sense organs is essentially different. The (concrete) word eliminates the sense organs with respect to the perception of a single object, the (abstract) concept with respect to the perception of all objects connected by a common characteristic. The concept is consequently the more comprehensive tool, for which reason it has also pushed back the "concrete" word in the language use more and more. But despite the developmental connection of the concept to the "word" and the conceptual character of our language, the difference in essence between word and concept is always noticeable: Where a word refers to a single specific object, it takes the place of this object and conveys a vivid idea of it; where, on the other hand, a word appears as a "concept," it takes the place of all objects encompassed by the concept and is not vivid. In the extraordinary achievement of the concepts, to transfer all the incoherent, manifold, incalculable within the nature meaningfully into order, unity, control, the enormous material superiority of all artificial tools over the physical possibilities asserts itself again.
That the concept, although it can only be thought, is therefore not a "psychic" (bodily-functional) experience, but rather an artificial, extracorporeal structure, should not cause any more difficulties for the understanding after our same-sense explanations about the nature of language. Above all, we have to distinguish sharply also here between the finished concepts as "tools" and the formation and operation of the concepts as bodily-functional performances. The "raw material" for the concepts (idea of the objects and their common characteristic) again originates from our brain function, is therefore of "mental" kind and characterizes the concept equally as a mental tool. The formation of the concepts (abstraction) as well as their "operation", namely all those mental activities, by which the concepts are transferred into higher concepts or are connected to judgments or are subjected to the conclusion procedure, are also based on Gehimfunktion. But also the thinking of the concepts belongs to their "operation" (analogously as in the language the "speaking" of the word). The already pre-existing concept is not formed by the thinking of it, but only put into action. It is the spirit, which sets the tools built up by itself for the fulfillment of its purpose performance into activity. A concept that is not thought is like a word that is not spoken, or like a hammer that is not used: all three of them are "tools", i.e. means for the liberation of the body, and as such in constant readiness, but without their mere possibility for the elimination of the body also already being put into action. Only when the hammer is swung, the word spoken, the concept thought, do they go into action as tools. This is in itself a self-evident fact, but in the case of the "concept" it needs a special emphasis, so that the "thinking" of the concept (certainly a "psychic experience", but still nothing more than its "operation") is not taken for the concept itself and thus its tool nature is misjudged.
In the concept, therefore, everything that builds it up and handles it is of a functional (mental) nature. However, as we have seen, this does not in the least affect the tool nature of the finished concept, but rather becomes the determining factor only for the specific kind of its performance.
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ALSBERG, Paul, 1975. Der Ausbruch aus dem Gefängnis: zu d. Entstehungsbedingungen d. Menschen. Bearb. Neuaufl. von “Das Menschheitsrätsel.” Giessen: Focus-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-920352-62-6, p. 70–72.