Trad. Logic- concept vs. judgement

[PlatoFunFactory]

I recall visiting a college campus where the student center was filled with various brightly-colored objects molded from hard plastic. Any one of them would have functioned as a chair, yet I was afraid to sit on them for fear that they might be, not furniture, but modern art.

In "Traditional Logic", chapter 1, Martin Cothran writes, "When you grasp the concept of something, like a chair, you understand what a chair is." Later he writes, "If we affirm or deny anything about a simple apprehension of the chair, we are going beyond simple apprehension...and engaging in judgement."

In order for me to have a proper concept of the brightly-colored plastic objects, wouldn't I first have to make a judgement about their function? Would it be fair only to say that I had a concept of a brightly-colored plastic object? But this, too, is affirming something about the simple apprehension of the possibly-a-chair.
What would properly be my concept of these objects?
If I had encountered them first with people sitting on them, could I then have had an unmediated experience of them as concepts?

I hope the several questions are not too difficult to untangle, and your help is much appreciated.

-J.P.

[magistra6]

Let's see if I can sort through some of your questions! I think when you observed the objects, you formed a mental image. Then you tried to determine whether or not these things were chairs by comparing the mental image with your concept (or definition) of chair. If you said, "These objects are chairs" or "These objects are not chairs" then you've made a judgment.

Did you form a concept of those objects? Well, forming a concept of a man-made object is often a problem because it doesn't seem to have a nature or essence in the same way that a created thing does. Artifacts sometimes are just materials formed in different ways for different uses and it's hard to determine the dividing line between one thing and another. What's the difference between a chair, a bench, a stool, a rocking chair, etc.? If a piece of plastic is molded into a bucket, a toy, or a chair, are these really different essences or just plastic in different shapes? To form a concept or definition of something, you have to be able to determine which qualities are essential, and make it what it is, and which qualities are only accidental.