3.7.2 Conceptual thinking
But if our sensible representations would, in themselves, present a simple, partless, Parmenidean object beyond time and space, how is it that they in fact seem to represent distinct things in our awareness? At first glance Herbart would seem to be presenting the Kantian picture of a chaotic sensible manifold, upon which a spontaneous Understanding could work its synthetic operations. But in keeping with his anti-faculty position, Herbart argues instead for a kind of “passive synthesis” avant la lettre (SW VI: 116), by which certain representations are connected and collected into separate unities, but spontaneously, motivated solely from within, in accordance with the laws of psycho-mechanics and psycho-statics (cf. esp. SW VI: 114, ff.).
Herbart proceeds by giving a “naturalized”[57] account of concept formation, that is, of representation-masses that, over time, develop into instruments by which we become conscious of things, and ultimately of ourselves. Thus, while there is “no doubt that just as concepts arise out of sense-perceptions [Wahrnehmungen], so, too, do clear concepts arise out of unclear[58] concepts”—nevertheless, these processes must be explained without recourse to a deus ex machina one calls “the Understanding” (SW VI: 117).
Anticipating the battles over logical psychologism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Herbart carefully distinguishes between a psychological and a logical sense of “concept” (SW VI: 119–20; cf. Stout 1888b: 477; van der Schaar 2013: 83). He writes:
Every thought [cōgitātum], considered merely according to its quality [sc. quā cōgitātum], is a concept in the logical sense. (SW VI: 119)
By “concept in the logical sense”, he means the represented
content considered apart from the psychological conditions and circumstances of its presentation at this or that time to this or that individual mind. (Stout 1888b: 477)
Thus, concepts offer “a common knowledge for all men and all times”, and, as such, are nothing psychological (SW VI: 120). Psychology, by contrast, investigates real thinking, and tries to determine how concepts come to be actually thought. As a thought-content of consciousness, then, a “concept” is a representation, namely one “which has as its represented [content] the concept in the logical sense” (SW VI: 120), or, as Weiss puts it, “that representation through which the repraesentandum[59] (i.e., the logical concept) is represented in reality” (Weiss 1928: 94).[60]
What, then, distinguishes a (psychological) concept from other mental contents, like sensations, imaginings, or memories? Because the soul is, ex hypothesi, a tabula rasa, there are neither original concepts (like Kant’s categories) nor faculties of concepts (like Kant’s Understanding or Reason): “all concepts are things that have come to be” (SW VI: 120; cf. esp. SW VI: 129, ff.). The incipient concept must therefore find its origin in the psyche’s attempt to preserve itself, that is, its inherent simplicity, in the face of an outside disturbance. A representation in the process of coming to be is called a sensation (Empfindung) or perception (Wahrnehmung) (SW VI: 120). Upon entering consciousness, it is immediately subject to inhibition by other, already present representations. When, under certain circumstances, it returns to consciousness, the representation is called an “imagining [Einbildung]”, and, as we saw in our discussion of representational reproduction, when this reproduced imagining connects with a series of fused (temporal) representations, it may become a memory (SW VI: 121).
When, then, do concepts arise? They are not generated as individual representations at a particular point in time, nor do we have them in addition to sensations and imaginings. Rather,
we ascribe concepts to ourselves insofar as we abstract from the entrance of our representations into consciousness, and instead reflect upon the fact that they exist there, and now in fact allow their repraesentātum[61] (the concept in the logical sense) to appear [in consciousness]. (SW VI: 121)
So, if the psychological concept is to have as its repraesentātum just the content of the logical concept (its repraesentandum) and nothing more, then the psychological concept would have to shed all its peculiar and contingent traits, all of the complexions and fusions that have inevitably accrued to it in its own generation and reproduction (SW VI: 121). How is this possible? First, through a process of isolation into a “crude” or “confused” concept (SW VI: 125); second, through the crude concept’s analysis by means of judgments; and third, through the classification of these judgments (cf. Stout 1888b: 477; Weiss (1928) overlooks the first step).
Isolation occurs as many representational series are progressively curtailed, in accordance with the laws of reproduction. Thus, if there we take two similar sensations, a and b, Herbart argues that as b is occurring, a reproduces itself as an