I receive a spoken message and interpret it. Ideally I will also remember the exact words spoken and the accentuation in the voice. It is important to be flexible with the interpretation of a message. The more interpretations I can come up with, the better. Based on what was previously said and my knowledge about the sender I can then choose the interpretation that seems most likely to be correct. Then I should keep in mind: these words were said, and the sender most likely wanted to express this and that. But there is a chance that the intention of the sender was a different one, and that another interpretation of the message would be more fitting. It is good to keep that in mind. During the continuation of the conversation it will at some point likely become more obvious what the sender wanted to express with the words that were chosen. It might become necessary to reconsider during a conversation, and select different interpretations of words that were previously said, so they fit together with what was said later on. What makes this more difficult is our habit or ability to add words and assumptions to a message when we interpret it. We can also omit words or entire sentences because we consider them redundant or not relevant. This results in a wide range of possible interpretations when receiving a message. During a conversation we constantly correct previously made interpretations so that everything fits together and becomes part of a harmonious bigger picture. To do so, asking questions can be very helpful to see if we interpreted correctly. Only then a conversation can be continued successfully.
There are some people who cultivate an efficient, machine-like way of thinking. They build their understanding linearly, add new input at the end of the chain. Changing something further back seems chaotic and unnecessary. The steps taken are clear and definite, and directed forward. There is steady progress. They expect unambiguous and clear messages. Words have unique and specific meanings, like numbers. The idea of not having one correct interpretation for a message but a zoo of possible interpretations, seems like an imposition to those people, like an unreasonable demand resulting from the incompetence of the sender of the message. Anyone who has got something to say shall express themselves in a clear and definite way, or remain silent. They hear a message, find the only possible interpretation, keep that in mind and forget what was said. There is no reason to keep the unprocessed message, it only takes up space in our memory. Often this process of interpretation and deleting happens subconsciously, and results in the conviction that the message was sent exactly like the interpretation turned out. This also happens with written text. The first interpretation when first reading a sentence remains untouchable, because there only is one correct interpretation and it is already done. If it does not make sense in combination with the rest of the text, an unsolvable conflict arises. When an interpretation cannot be integrated with what follows in a text or conversation, that results in frustration. A person thinking in this kind of structure will wonder why the speaker or author utters such a senseless gibberish. When the speaker repeats what was said before with other words, hoping to make it more understandable, this results in another interpretation by the receiver. For him, compared to the previously memorized interpretation, a completely different message is now expressed. He confronts the sender with the accusation of saying something different now. However, the sender is convinced that he said the same thing in a slightly different way. Both sides are now very unhappy with the course of communication.
Because a Vorstellung is very specific, it is easy to expect a word to be just as precise and specific, if we connect it directly to a Vorstellung and skip the concept. If we do not know about concepts, then we must assume a connection of a word to a Vorstellung, and we want others to have the same Vorstellung connected to the words. Otherwise communication gets confusing ans messy. The problem is that all Vorstellung is something personal, that we create individually based on our experience. There can be some resemblance and roughly common ground, but only if we are lucky. Concepts are the general foundation that proper communication is based on. Concepts are the ideas behind the specific things, and they are universal. It takes effort to grasp a concept, because we have to find it with our intuition. This process is triggered by the perception of a specific representation of a concept. But the concept itself is not visual in the sensory perception of that representation. We can see the connection (Erkenntnis) once we found the concept, but to do so we must take effort to find it. We find concepts based on the concepts that we already know. Our knowledge grows like a network. As a result different people may or may not be able to easily find a concept for something they observe, based on their experience.