**Abstract**

The question asked in this paper concerns the relation between perception, the senses, and the human faculty of conceptualizing experiential values. I suggest that I came across data that exemplifies the *transition* from the sensing of an Umwelt to a conceptual grasp. The human faculty of conceptualizing experiential values obviously relies on experiential ontologies as a reference system. But the latter does not bring about the conceptualizing. The main question is then: How does conceptualizing work, and what is a concept? Do we know what conceptualizing is like? Do we know what thinking is? Of course, we experience the processual endpoints with words as convenient results. We seem to know how we learn words. Do we also know how we create their meanings? The meanings of *iteration* and *infinity* are in focus here. The passage from iteration to infinity is not defined by words. The distribution of response numbers seems to indicate that there is an underlying *feeling*, or *sensing* that enables, and accompanies, the understanding of a meaning.

**Keywords:** sensing and feeling, ensuing conceptualizations, the meaning of words

## **1. Introduction**

During a playful reading experiment, five different groups of readers (students) were presented with an excerpt from Saint-Exupéry's *Le Petit Prince* (in five different languages, on different occasions). I introduced the reading event as a playful game and a pastime, and discovered only later that the responses occurred in regular highs and lows.

I asked the students to jot down what came to mind, and I allowed 10 minutes for the task. Never did their responses match with the words written by their fellow students, nor with the drawings and sketches either. However, the response *numbers* matched. The numbers give evidence of perceiving conceptual entities by their distinctively different distribution. The numbers show alignments with different conceptual entities, that is, with different semantic constellations, reflecting, for example, lasting events and states, bounded and unbounded events, speech and thought introducers, also expressions signifying negation, completion of an action, evaluations, and other statements of the forms described in grammars. The grammars of all languages include such concepts and their respective meanings, even though in different formations, in different distributions, and to different degrees.

In the text, that was in focus, there were altogether 44 segments, each signaling one of these core conceptual features. Up to now, I have looked at the types of highs and lows of response numbers highs and lows of response numbers at segments that signal bounded versus unbounded events, and positive versus negative evaluations. As for the present project, I want to find out more about the nature of the *concept of iteration*.

In sum, the above-mentioned five different groups of readers—when reading the text in five different languages, at different times and places—produced *high* response numbers at a textual segment with an *iterative (unbounded) activity*. An example is attached below. The response numbers signal the perception of an iteration without the readers being aware of producing such *numbers*. The task, after handing over the sheets with their responses, was of course the topic of the ensuing conversation. The readers enjoyed telling each other about the kind of 'funny' responses they had given (as sketches or in writing), they also kept wondering about the intentions, the 'wider' meaning of the task (I had promised to tell them 'later'). In the following, it is the segment 34 (of 44) which is in focus.

### **1.1 Segment 34, iteration:** *shimmer* **in the** *trembling* **water—not known when ending**


Sensing that my 'mind' is directed to a something, does not produce awareness of my consciousness, but rather of the specific something, here signaling an iteration (*shimmering*, and *trembling*). The question is: What is it that we call a 'mind', and how would a 'mind' conceive what we call 'concepts'? My own immediate problem was and still is: How can the regular up and down of response numbers at segments with particular 'grammatical' concepts be explained? Or to rephrase the question with regard to the present example: What is it that evokes the high response numbers at segment 34—in all five languages!?

The usual assumption is that our concepts come about by an underlying consciousness that responds, through our ability to think, to our experience of the world. In everyday life, we even assume that concepts are given that we use for sorting out things that are relevant to us. But what do we know about this underlying consciousness that 'presents' us with the concepts which we use? How does *it* work? I take it that the response numbers in the above example are, or could be, part of an answer. In other words, if the phenomenon of *iteration* is perceived as a relevant example, would it be possible to find out more about being conscious of the phenomenon of iteration which could help to explain the numbers? So what is a concept?

Dictionary meanings focus on the ability to think in relation to one's experiences, summarized as the faculty of consciousness and thought. When applied to the present problem, the 'feel' of iteration seems to shine through the high numbers—as an expressive means that reflects a sensing accompanied by an intensity that is *not* 'felt' at the preceding and the following segments.

*Configuring a Concept - On Iteration and Infinity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100453*

In everyday life, one would probably refer to the effect of happy endings as a good example of elements that excite an emotional effect when reading a story until the end. But that would still not explain the regular numbers of the reader responses at places like, for example, negation (zero to few responses'), iterations, completion of an action, positive evaluations (high response numbers, as aforesaid see [1, 2]). The regular ups and downs of the response numbers tell us that there is *something* to the notion of consciousness, but it is not clear what this *something* really is.

Before I move on to address the latter question, I present statements from grammars of the five languages within which the text of *Le Petit Prince* was read by five different groups of readers. The five languages use different word formations for expressing the phenomenon of iteration. Their grammars show the different grammatical means that are used for making manifest the phenomenon of iteration.


#### **1.2 Iteration: unbounded processes**

In spite of the diversity of the language typologies, the notion of ongoing processes is a semantic key notion shared by all, albeit in different output formats and clusters of aspect formation. All languages describe 'infinity vs. finiteness' as variations of iteration. Iteration may be unending (progressive, habitual), interrupted, completely stopped, or negated as happening at all. The first question related to this phenomenon is: Why do the languages of our world share the grammatical concept of iteration? [3–7].

Up to now, I tried to figure out the possible reasons for the regularities of the ups-and-downs of the numbers in relation to the story structure [1, 2], also as visible from the types of pictorial responses that express/show affective reactions (see [8], on iconic diagrammatic effects). What is of particular interest in this context is the fact that iteration and the hierarchies of iteration are the very fabric of the processual texture of cellular entities. As such, human minds work obviously as offshoots of this texture, that is, as an extension of this procedural type of mirroring life processes, by mirroring them, even though confined to the perspectives of the human species. Below, I present my main questions again:

Sensing that my 'mind' is directed to something, does not produce awareness of my consciousness, but rather of the specific something, here signaling an iteration (*shimmering*, and *trembling*). The question is: What is it that we call a 'mind', and how would such a 'mind' conceive what we call 'concepts'? When trying to find an answer, my immediate problem was and still is: How can the regular up and down of response numbers at segments with particular 'grammatical' concepts be explained? Or to rephrase the question with regard to the present example: What is it that evokes the high response numbers at segment 34—in all five languages!? Below I summarize the main points of my project:

The present paper is my first try at a focus on a 'substance' that underlies the conceptual organization of the world's languages, specifically, the concept of iteration. What gives me a hint is the *non-conscious* responding of the five groups of students who read an excerpt from Saint-Exupérys *Le Petit Prince* (in five different languages). The five different groups were asked to jot down 'what came to mind' when reading this excerpt in their own (different) languages. Their jottings then revealed highs and lows of response numbers at the same conceptual figurations, thus correlating with the semantics of the grammar that underlies the narrative told by the text.
