Investigating Erkenntnis and its realization through the connection of perception and concept can leave us wondering where perception and concept are coming from, and how they appear. We find that perception comes through our physical senses and concepts somehow make their way into our minds, our thinking. The source for perception is observation, and the source for concepts can be named intuition. So we are given two sources through which the world streams into our mind. That is why the world at first sight appears dual. It is the task of Erkenntnis to unite those two streams into a harmonious unity. When we observe with our physical senses we are aware the we perceive something that appears without our participation. That is different for a thought. We are involved in the creation of our thoughts. They appear directly in our mind. To make them a reality in the outside world, we must become active.
Above paragraph conflicts with some worldviews that are common today. For example, thinking can be interpreted as a personal activity completely detached from the outside world, where everyone can come up with random self-made concepts. As an example for that we can take the speculative chains of thoughts unrelated to any perception and the empty concepts that humans are capable of thinking. It is possible to imagine thinking as a process caused entirely by the material world, although this theory is not rooted in perception. We observe that thoughts and feelings can trigger an activity in our body. However, we cannot observe that the thought itself is created by a chemical or physical process. The assumption that it should some day be possible to do that and then produce a machine that thinks is rooted in the belief that the entire world is made of matter and all phenomena in it are caused by matter. This worldview transfers the laws of physics to life and to thinking and cannot explain either of it. Such a thought structure cannot move beyond a description of material processes within living organisms and is therefore a dead end.
With our thinking we can grasp the world. We stand in the middle of it. The thinking follows rules as well, and they are universal rules. The rules or laws of thinking are in harmony with the laws of the cosmos and enable us to comprehend the laws of nature. The laws of nature are concepts that wie uncover. We did not create those laws, they are part of nature. But we find them, understand them with the power of our thinking and put them down in mathematical form. It is the ability and activity of mankind that let the concepts appear in the form of symbols, numbers and words. But the concepts are already there. We have a access to them through our intuition, and we give them names.
The starting point for all this is perception. Every perception triggers our thinking. The combination of both enables us to collect experience. Without thinking, all perceptions move past us without consequences, and without perception we have nothing that could fill our concepts with content. At this point a new perspective opens up on the concept of Vorstellung, which can also be found in the previous article. The Vorstellung initially positions itself in front of a concept and covers it up. Vorstellung stands between perception and concept. A concept gets a connection to a perception in our mind that outlasts the duration of the observation, and this process creates a Vorstellung. Vorstellung can be interpreted as and individualized concept, which represents reality in our Weltbild. My experience is growing with the number of Vorstellung that I have.
The uncovering of a concept begins with a Vorstellung. The Vorstellung is the result of attaching a perception to a concept and stays with us beyond the moment of Erkenntnis. However, when I have a Vorstellung, I am not necessarily already fully aware of the concept. If we remain in our Vorstellung, we are thinking naively. Starting with the Vorstellung we can make our way to the concept, to the idea behind the manifestation. That enables conceptual and critical thinking. The Vorstellung always requires a personal perception of a specific manifestation in this world, the concept on the other hand can also be explained to us. When I think with my individual Vorstellung, I feel as an outsider facing the world. When I think conceptual, I become a part of the world.