개념, 의의 그리고 심적 표상

Yoo,Gwee-Yeol. 2004. Concept, Sense and Mental Representation. The British and American Language and Literature. 20-1. 21-51. People use language to communicate their meaning. Language is our means of talking about the world we live in. The world, however, can not be talked cf objectively. Its description needs the intervention of our conceptualization, which is realized as linguistic expressions. Concept is a definition or property, which is called conceptual meaning or sense, which in turn determines its reference. An expression's sense as property relates to the other expressions' sense or property. Sense can be understood with relation to the other properties because it is a property. If it is to be defined as a relation, its characteristic as property should be made explicit. Otherwise, it can not relate to reference, nor to other expressions' properties. Property both defines its reference and is defined among the various relationships with other properties. If we define sense like this, we don't have to say that an expression's meaning is the combination of its sense and its reference but that an expression's meaning is its sense. As sense determines reference, it has a direct relationship with reference, and as sense is a definition of an expression, it has a direct relationship with the linguistic expression. However, there is no direct relationship between a linguistic expression and its reference, but they are related to each other indirectly through the mediation of sense. Language and reality can not be related directly. They can only be related indirectly via our mental operation, thought, conception, or mental representation. We feel, categorize, abstract and conceptualize the world via our mental processes in order to live in it and to talk of it. Symbol is language by which we express our feelings. The world (reference) is classified and categorized through our senses, and is conceptualized or realized into language as symbols. Sense is not different from concept, which is the same as mental representation. Symbols or linguistic expressions form relational networks via sense. Relations among humans or symbols are not made nor maintained of themselves. There intervene various senses or feelings among each other. It is the same as in the case of the world. The world is there objectively. It has order or meaning, if any, which is defined by our senses.