Sensation, percept, and concept vs. śabda, artha, jñāna

Consider an object, e.g., a coconut tree. Sunlight falling on it gets reflected, and on reaching our eyes, cause "sensations". These sensations are converted or encoded into electromagnetic and/or chemical signals and sent through the optic nerves to the brain's visual centres. Call these signals "percepts". Once at the brain centres, further processing or encoding takes place, creating "concepts".

For the coconut tree example, then, the sequence of signals or information is "coconut tree sensation", "coconut tree percept", and "coconut tree concept".

Sensations and percepts are immediate and directly related to the object. Concepts may be direct or indirect, of many layers. The first concept, or the first layer of concept(s), is immediate and direct. As analysis, remembering, comparison, classification, etc. are done by the brain, more concepts and layers of concepts may be generated.

In the example, "tree", "coconut tree", "green", "brown", etc. are direct concepts, closest to the actual sensation of the coconut tree object. "Tall", "short", "old", "young", etc. are indirect or derived concepts. "Dancing", "swaying", "elegant", "healthy", "diseased", etc. are even more indirect.

There are three well-known terms in traditional Indian psychology/philosophy - śabda, artha, and jñāna. Each has multiple meanings. But, in the context of the sensing-perceiving-conceptualising framework, śabda may be equated to sensation, artha to percept, and jñāna to concept.

 

As a more direct example, consider someone saying your name. The sound waves coming to your ears is śabda, the signals from the ears to the brain centres is artha, and the signals in the brain processing the artha are jñāna. Like concepts, jñāna could have many levels.