Second Response to Joe MacMaster: How Does One Conceptualize Outside of Conceptual Space? Eris-Jake Donohue, Texas A&M University

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. In any case, what I am interested in is the signified double 1 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

fabrication (although they refer to them as ‘Ideas’, but in Platonism these terms are synonymous). I will now give their account:

“[Philosophers] must no longer accept concepts as a gift, nor merely purify and polish them, but first make and create them, present them and make them convincing. Hitherto one has generally trusted one's concepts as if they were a wonderful dowry from some sort of wonderland,” but trust must be replaced by distrust, and philosophers must distrust most those concepts they did not create themselves (Plato was fully aware of this, even though he taught the opposite). Plato said that Ideas must be contemplated, but first of all he had to create the concept of Idea (5-6).2

So, connecting this back to the content of the presentation, that the forms themselves are a created concept means there is no interpreting them as either literally four dimensional or outside the dimension we are doing the interpreting. Forms only exist within our own conceptual space. I can exemplify this through another passage from the presentation: “I frequently describe the forms in the fourdimension using three dimensional terms. The use of these terms like describing a ‘form net’ arise due to a lack of appropriate language.” But I would contest that this postulated deficiency is in fact entirely appropriate. If the language used here to conceptualize the forms was inappropriate, this article would not be included here and I would not be responding to it; it would be based upon a misconceptualization. Accordingly, it is only through measures of conceptualization that we can even speak, write, or theorize about the forms at all, even if this leads to attempts at masking their fabricative conceptualizing (such as what Plato does with them from the outset). In conclusion, I would say that it is not the case that we are left with no choice but to accept that the forms reside in a higher spatial dimension. Rather, the forms reside right here—in this world and on this plane—within the very unfolding of philosophical thought itself.

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?. Translated by Hugh Tomilson &

Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia Press, 1994.

Gärdenfors, Peter. “Conceptual Spaces as a Framework for Knowledge Representation.” Mind

and Matter 2, no. 2, (2004): 9-27.