Steiner says

What a concept is cannot be expressed in words. Words can do no more than draw our attention to the fact that we have concepts.

The best way I think to understand this rather controversial claim is to argue against it.  So what is the conventional view of a concept?

Let's start with something simple, say a tree.  Steiner says:

...the growing human being only slowly and gradually forms the concepts corresponding to the objects which surround him.

This certainly accords with my experience.  Tomorrow I might find information about and photos of a new kind of tree on the Internet.  This may in a certain sense broaden my idea of a tree, but it builds on what I already know.

So what are these concepts I have like "tree"?  It sounds rather mysterious to say that "What a concept is cannot be expressed in words".  So how would we express what a concept is conventionally?  Here are some attempts that I might come up with:

1.  A concept is nothing but an abstraction from experience

2.  A concept is the result of neurons functioning in a certain way in your brain.  It's like a computer storing information and then retrieving it.

3.  A concept is just the outcome of an inner process which enables you to play with a kind of inner pattern reflecting the outer world.

Many other similar definitions could be thought of I'm sure.  But at this point in the book, are we convinced that such definitions are really meaningless?  For surely that is what Steiner is saying.

In the previous chapter, Steiner helped us to experience and observe for ourselves the reality of thinking.   We saw the difference between thinking about thinking - adding other thoughts onto thinking in thinking, which actually leads us away from the true being of thinking - and observing thinking.

Now I am at another crucial point as I try to determine for myself how to view concepts in the light of this experience of observing thinking.  I am certainly aware that I have concepts, that I can reason using concepts, connecting one concept with another and so on.  To being with, I can believe in the abstract idea that concepts themselves are "only" abstractions from experience.

But what if I try to discover what a particular concept really is?  Say, the concept "two".  If I see two trees, where is "two"?  Is it really "only" inside my head as an abstraction?  How can I say then that there are two trees there?  I seem to know "two" so well, but I can't seem to find it so easily...  is it really "out there"... or is it really only "in here"... or is it both.. or?

How about an abstract definition then... two equals one plus one... well, now I have more concepts... two... equals... one... plus... but I'm not really getting any closer to defining what a concept is...

Ah, now I see a way that the above "definitions" of a concept might be inadequate here... concept... is.. abstraction... from... experience... those are all concepts... maybe I'm just circling in thought around the reality of concepts...

What a concept is cannot be said in words...

Steiner says, "What a concept is cannot be expressed in words. Words can do no more than draw our attention to the fact that we have concepts." Then he proceeds to use quite a number of words to define "concept." Only he doesn't do it directly, but indirectly. So I guess he's not really using words to "express" what a concept is, in the way that Mr. Gradgrind of Dickens' Hard Times would approve (Of a horse: "'Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.") But he's using them to focus our attention on when and where our concepts appear.

I suppose that "Ideas," since they are larger than concepts, might be less likely to overflow than concepts. That is, if a tree overflows any concept we might have of it, perhaps that means that our Idea of the tree will grow and grow.

I still don't believe that there is some other mysterious ability that we can use to observe our thinking. At least not according to what Steiner says, over and over, in Chapter 3. As long as our thinking is directed on our thinking, then we're observing our thinking. Thinking and observation are then one and the same. We don't have to add a lot of extra thoughts to explain our thinking, which extra thoughts would then become suspect. We can just learn to observe it (think about it) correctly. Thinking about thinking isn't different than observing thinking. Otherwise we'll never feel confident about thinking about anything else either!

Hi Lori,

Yes I agree 100% in my opinion there isn't anything mysterious other than thinking that allows us to observe thinking - from my experience I would describe it as being somewhat like an intensification of the watchful aspect of thinking.

Watchful aspect of thinking?  What I mean by that is that thinking is not just in the moment - I find when it is at its best it is looking backwards and forwards, orienting itself by where it has been to determine where it is going out of itself.  For example, if we have to think through the solution of a difficult maths problem.  Or even think through the events of the day in reverse order.

Perhaps this is something like what is called thinking with the etheric body, I really don't know - but it's not something totally mysterious, it's the same ability we all have.

One thing I notice about this section is that two ways that concepts link up is mentioned. The first way is that of a more abstract concept, "organism", which links up with "orderly development" and "growth." Also with a lot of other ones like "reproduction," "death," etc. All these can appear separately from "organism", because you can speak about, for instance, the death of a dream, crystal growth, the reproduction of a photograph, etc. But it's hard to imagine an organism that doesn't include all of them.

The second way has to do with a living creature, "lion." Steiner says, Other concepts which are based on single objects merge together into a unity. All concepts I may form of lions merge into the collective concept "lion." All the lions I've known (from zoos, nature films, poems and stories) become part of my mental picture of a lion. Does that mean that each new lion that I encounter, as it adds to my mental picture, changes my concept as well?

I know there's some way to illustrate, graphically, the difference between these two different kinds of concept clusters. Maybe the first would be a big circle with a lot of little ovals clustered around whose tips stick out from the circle because they also have a life of their own, separate now from Nature thanks to our ability to make abstractions. Maybe the second would be like a blackberry that keeps adding more little circles.

There must be other ways that concepts link up as well, but maybe these are the most common ways or the ways that most pertain to what this chapter is about.

Looking at Chapter Four as a demonstration of Empiricism in action: Empiricism is all about experience, experiencing the facts of the world around us. The sun gives us the hard light of day by which we can make out the relationships in the world around us. (This is extremely difficult by moonlight!)

In Chapter Three we separated thinking from our notions of right or wrong; thinking, like a tree, is a fact (3.12). Now we shine the light of day on our thinking.

There's the tree again, and our thinking reacts to our observation of it. Tom Last told me once that he thought this chapter shows a lot of "reactive thinking," as we apply our thinking to the world that we experience, including our own inner life of thinking.

There's a lion too, which, esoterically, is linked to the sun. Leo is said to be ruled by the sun, and Steiner presented the lion elsewhere as the animal that most embodies the heart, which is where the sun makes its home in the body.

I'd expect a lot of the arguments in this chapter to be proved by life experience rather than by long chains of abstract reasoning. For instance, "the simple fact that the growing human being only slowly and gradually forms the concepts corresponding to the objects which surround him."

Hi Tim

You wrote, "In PoF it is made so clear that we are not to see thinking as limited to either subject or object but prior to both.
In light of that, does it necessarily make sense to conceive of thinking as limited to being in the moment?  Or are we still attaching our own preconceptions onto thinking and thereby possibly missing something important?
If thinking is really not limited to a single moment how does it appear that way to us?" 

That's a great question! I wrestled a lot with the idea that thinking is prior to the subject/object distinction. Then I realized that thinking is a verb, while subject and object are nouns. I remember reading somewhere in Steiner's lectures that in the spiritual world there aren't any nouns, only verbs. Thinking is an activity, and concepts are its byproducts. But I don't know how activity and time relate. Maybe it's just that we're limited in our perceptions to time, even though, strictly speaking, we supposedly can't perceive time at all, but only the spatial relations that we use to measure it.

Hi Lori,

Thinking as 3-dimensional, past/present/future - in thinking perhaps the concepts are the forms we create to enable us to align and organize our thinking. In a place where there is no time - might one see the puzzle as whole, as complete, even though one experiences the pieces as yet to be fit?

Cheers,
patri