Monthly Message, July 2021
In our thinking we use universals as a catalog of all the kinds of things we imagine. Some of the universals we imagine we call “real,” such as cat, dog, sand, gravel, small-pox, impetigo, foreigner, native, etc. Some universals are imaginary only, such as leprechaun, unicorn, the average man. Some we don’t know if they are real or not, such as “Bigfoot.” Some are used to measure things, such as pound and inch. Some are vague, like hot; some are precise like 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Some are personal, like boring and beautiful. Some are unique to ourselves, like our self-image.
Concepts are dynamic because we can change them at will, change how we feel about them, discard them if we feel like it, or invent them as we see fit.
We refer to our concepts using words. Every word that has a “meaning” to us does so because we associate it with a concept or a family of related concepts. But we can also have and use concepts without associating them with words, such as we do when we imagine a familiar landscape or build an imaginary object in our mind. We can assign words to concepts or not by our own desire to do so or not.
Some people have very large concept catalogs, others have very small ones. The size of our concept base is usually related to our vocabulary of words. One form of “intelligence” test is simply to give a person a vocabulary test, and suppose that the more words they are familiar with, the more intelligent they are. But vocabulary is a test for only one kind of intelligence. For instance, some people can take anything apart and put it back together again even though they may not have a very large vocabulary. But they do have the ability to form an accurate concept of what they are taking apart and to refer to that concept to reassemble the object.
We have the ability to refine and change our concepts. This is what doctors do when they study the anatomy and physiology of the human body. Connoisseurs of tastes have developed concepts of taste and smell that enable them to detect odors and tastes more precisely than ordinary persons.
Some people like to read a lot simply because in the process they gain new concepts. Others accomplish the same end by listening to music or watching plays or movies.
Probably no two people have the same concept base, and thus we all are isolated by our own thinking. Sometimes two people use a common word but have two different concepts related to that word, and thus communicate poorly, if at all. We try to solve that problem by “defining” our concepts to one another, and can “explain” what we mean by a variety of means.
It is a miracle that we communicate as well as we do.
But there is divine help for communication. The mission of the Holy Ghost is to bring us the meaning God intends us to have in reading a particular passage of scripture at a particular time. Of course it is impossible to say that any scripture has only one precise meaning, for God uses reading or remembering scripture as an occasion for revelation of a particular message God wants us to receive from him at a particular time. God builds and changes our concept base by directly planting the concepts he wants us to have directly in our minds. Every human being who has normal intelligence and is thus accountable sooner or later has communicated to him or her the concepts God wants them to have to be able to repent and have faith in Jesus Christ. This receiving of concepts directly from God is the true freedom and the true agency of each human being. Because God loves each of his children with a pure love, he makes sure that each one of them is given the correct concept base to be able to come to him and be saved. And each child of God uses that divinely given concept base to accept or reject their Father in Heaven and their Savior Jesus Christ. Through concepts God makes us all agents.