psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

, apprehension (Lat. ''ad'', "to"; ''prehendere'', "to seize") is a term applied to a

model A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure. Models c ...

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

in which nothing is affirmed or denied of the object in question, but the

mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...

is merely aware of ("seizes") it. "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 mental acts in which we are simply aware of, or "take in" a number of familiar objects, about which we in general make no judgment, unless our attention is suddenly called by a new feature. Or again, two alternatives may be apprehended without any resultant judgment as to their respective merits. Similarly, G.F. Stout stated that while we have a very vivid idea of a

character Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...

or an incident in a work of

fiction Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditi ...

, we can hardly be said in any real sense to have any

belief A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take i ...

or to make any judgment as to its

existence Existence is the ability of an entity to interact with reality. In philosophy, it refers to the ontology, ontological Property (philosophy), property of being. Etymology The term ''existence'' comes from Old French ''existence'', from Medieval ...

truth Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs ...

. With this mental state may be compared the purely

aesthetic Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed th ...

contemplation In a religious context, the practice of contemplation seeks a direct awareness of the divine which transcends the intellect, often in accordance with prayer or meditation. Etymology The word ''contemplation'' is derived from the Latin word '' ...

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

, wherein apart from, say, a false

note Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to: Music and entertainment * Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music * ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian * ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) shortened version ...

, 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 Validity or Valid may refer to: Science/mathematics/statistics: * Validity (logic), a property of a logical argument * Scientific: ** Internal validity, the validity of causal inferences within scientific studies, usually based on experiments ** ...

. 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. Judgment and

thought In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to conscious cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, a ...

are in fact

psychologically Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...

distinguishable merely as different, though

correlative In grammar, a correlative is a word that is paired with another word with which it functions to perform a single function but from which it is separated in the sentence. In English, examples of correlative pairs are ''both–and, either–or, nei ...

, activities of consciousness. Professor Stout further investigates the phenomena of apprehension, and comes to the conclusion that "it is possible to distinguish and identify a whole without apprehending any of its

constituent Constituent or constituency may refer to: Politics * An individual voter within an electoral district, state, community, or organization * Advocacy group or constituency * Constituent assembly * Constituencies of Namibia Other meanings * Const ...

details." On the other hand, if the attention focuses itself for a time on the apprehended object, there is an expectation that such details will, as it were, emerge into consciousness. Hence, he describes such apprehension as "

implicit Implicit may refer to: Mathematics * Implicit function * Implicit function theorem * Implicit curve * Implicit surface * Implicit differential equation Other uses * Implicit assumption, in logic * Implicit-association test, in social psychology ...

", and insofar as the implicit apprehension determines the order of such emergence, he describes it as "

schematic A schematic, or schematic diagram, is a designed representation of the elements of a system using abstract, graphic symbols rather than realistic pictures. A schematic usually omits all details that are not relevant to the key information the sc ...

". A good example of this process is the use of

formula In science, a formula is a concise way of expressing information symbolically, as in a mathematical formula or a ''chemical formula''. The informal use of the term ''formula'' in science refers to the general construct of a relationship betwee ...

e 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 Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemolo ...

's theory of apprehension as a synthetic act (the "synthesis of apprehension") by which the sensory elements of a

perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...

are subjected to the formal conditions of

time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

and

space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider ...

References

Cognition {{Psych-stub

See also

References