Apprehension (understanding)
This article is largely based on an article in the out-of-copyright Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, which was produced in 1911. (November 2017) |
In psychology, apprehension (Lat. ad, "to"; prehendere, "to seize") is a term applied to a model of consciousness in which nothing is affirmed or denied of the object in question, but the mind is merely aware of ("seizes") it.[1]
"Judgment" (says Reid, ed. Hamilton, i. p. 414) "is an act of the mind, specifically different from simple apprehension or the bare conception of a thing". "Simple apprehension or conception can neither be true nor false." This distinction provides for the large class of
Similarly, G.F. Stout stated that while we have a very vivid idea of a character or an incident in a work of fiction, we can hardly be said in any real sense to have any belief or to make any judgment as to its existence or truth. With this mental state may be compared the purely aesthetic contemplation of music, wherein apart from, say, a false note, the faculty of judgment is for the time inoperative. To these examples may be added the fact that one can fully understand an argument in all its bearings, without in any way judging its validity. Without going into the question fully, it may be pointed out that the distinction between judgment and apprehension is relative. In every kind of thought, there is judgment of some sort in a greater or less degree of prominence.[1]
Judgment and thought are in fact
A good example of this process is the use of formulae in calculations; ordinarily the formula is used without question; if attention is fixed upon it, the steps by which it is shown to be universally applicable emerge, and the "schema " is complete in detail. With this result may be compared Kant's theory of apprehension as a synthetic act (the "synthesis of apprehension") by which the sensory elements of a perception are subjected to the formal conditions of time and space.[1]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Apprehension". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 227–228. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the