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Concept

January 13, 2023

For other uses, see Concept (disambiguation).

Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs.[1] They play an important role in all aspects of cognition.[2][3] As such, concepts are studied by several disciplines, such as linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and these disciplines are interested in the logical and psychological structure of concepts, and how they are put together to form thoughts and sentences. The study of concepts has served as an important flagship of an emerging interdisciplinary approach called cognitive science.[4]

In contemporary philosophy, there are at least three prevailing ways to understand what a concept is:[5]

  • Concepts as mental representations, where concepts are entities that exist in the mind (mental objects)
  • Concepts as abilities, where concepts are abilities peculiar to cognitive agents (mental states)
  • Concepts as Fregean senses, where concepts are abstract objects, as opposed to mental objects and mental states

Concepts can be organized into a hierarchy, higher levels of which are termed "superordinate" and lower levels termed "subordinate". Additionally, there is the "basic" or "middle" level at which people will most readily categorize a concept.[6] For example, a basic-level concept would be "chair", with its superordinate, "furniture", and its subordinate, "easy chair".

A representation of the concept of a tree. The four upper images of trees can be roughly quantified into an overall generalization of the idea of a tree, pictured in the lower image.

Concepts may be exact, or inexact.[7] When the mind makes a generalization such as the concept of tree, it extracts similarities from numerous examples; the simplification enables higher-level thinking. A concept is instantiated (reified) by all of its actual or potential instances, whether these are things in the real world or other ideas.

Concepts are studied as components of human cognition in the cognitive science disciplines of linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, where an ongoing debate asks whether all cognition must occur through concepts. Concepts are regularly formalized in mathematics, computer science, databases and artificial intelligence. Examples of specific high-level conceptual classes in these fields include classes, schema or categories. In informal use the word concept often just means any idea.

Ontology of concepts

A central question in the study of concepts is the question of what they are. Philosophers construe this question as one about the ontology of concepts—what kind of things they are. The ontology of concepts determines the answer to other questions, such as how to integrate concepts into a wider theory of the mind, what functions are allowed or disallowed by a concept's ontology, etc. There are two main views of the ontology of concepts: (1) Concepts are abstract objects, and (2) concepts are mental representations.[8]

Concepts as mental representations

See also: Direct and indirect realism

The psychological view of concepts

Main article: Mental representation

Within the framework of the representational theory of mind, the structural position of concepts can be understood as follows: Concepts serve as the building blocks of what are called mental representations (colloquially understood as ideas in the mind). Mental representations, in turn, are the building blocks of what are called propositional attitudes (colloquially understood as the stances or perspectives we take towards ideas, be it "believing", "doubting", "wondering", "accepting", etc.). And these propositional attitudes, in turn, are the building blocks of our understanding of thoughts that populate everyday life, as well as folk psychology. In this way, we have an analysis that ties our common everyday understanding of thoughts down to the scientific and philosophical understanding of concepts.[9]

The physicalist view of concepts

See also: Physicalism

In a physicalist theory of mind, a concept is a mental representation, which the brain uses to denote a class of things in the world. This is to say that it is literally, a symbol or group of symbols together made from the physical material of the brain.[10][11] Concepts are mental representations that allow us to draw appropriate inferences about the type of entities we encounter in our everyday lives.[11] Concepts do not encompass all mental representations, but are merely a subset of them.[10] The use of concepts is necessary to cognitive processes such as categorization, memory, decision making, learning, and inference.[12]

Concepts are thought to be stored in long term cortical memory,[13] in contrast to episodic memory of the particular objects and events which they abstract, which are stored in hippocampus. Evidence for this separation comes from hippocampal damaged patients such as patient HM. The abstraction from the day's hippocampal events and objects into cortical concepts is often considered to be the computation underlying (some stages of) sleep and dreaming. Many people (beginning with Aristotle) report memories of dreams which appear to mix the day's events with analogous or related historical concepts and memories, and suggest that they were being sorted or organized into more abstract concepts. ("Sort" is itself another word for concept, and "sorting" thus means to organize into concepts.)

Concepts as abstract objects

See also: Abstract and concrete and Abstract object theory

The semantic view of concepts suggests that concepts are abstract objects. In this view, concepts are abstract objects of a category out of a human's mind rather than some mental representations.[8]

There is debate as to the relationship between concepts and natural language.[5] However, it is necessary at least to begin by understanding that the concept "dog" is philosophically distinct from the things in the world grouped by this concept—or the reference class or extension.[10] Concepts that can be equated to a single word are called "lexical concepts".[5]

The study of concepts and conceptual structure falls into the disciplines of linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science.[11]

In the simplest terms, a concept is a name or label that regards or treats an abstraction as if it had concrete or material existence, such as a person, a place, or a thing. It may represent a natural object that exists in the real world like a tree, an animal, a stone, etc. It may also name an artificial (man-made) object like a chair, computer, house, etc. Abstract ideas and knowledge domains such as freedom, equality, science, happiness, etc., are also symbolized by concepts. It is important to realize that a concept is merely a symbol, a representation of the abstraction. The word is not to be mistaken for the thing. For example, the word "moon" (a concept) is not the large, bright, shape-changing object up in the sky, but only represents that celestial object. Concepts are created (named) to describe, explain and capture reality as it is known and understood.

A priori concepts

Main articles: A priori and a posteriori and Category (Kant)

Kant maintained the view that human minds possess pure or a priori concepts. Instead of being abstracted from individual perceptions, like empirical concepts, they originate in the mind itself. He called these concepts categories, in the sense of the word that means predicate, attribute, characteristic, or quality. But these pure categories are predicates of things in general, not of a particular thing. According to Kant, there are twelve categories that constitute the understanding of phenomenal objects. Each category is that one predicate which is common to multiple empirical concepts. In order to explain how an a priori concept can relate to individual phenomena, in a manner analogous to an a posteriori concept, Kant employed the technical concept of the schema. He held that the account of the concept as an abstraction of experience is only partly correct. He called those concepts that result from abstraction "a posteriori concepts" (meaning concepts that arise out of experience). An empirical or an a posteriori concept is a general representation (Vorstellung) or non-specific thought of that which is common to several specific perceived objects (Logic, I, 1., §1, Note 1)

A concept is a common feature or characteristic. Kant investigated the way that empirical a posteriori concepts are created.

The logical acts of the understanding by which concepts are generated as to their form are:

  1. comparison, i.e., the likening of mental images to one another in relation to the unity of consciousness;
  2. reflection, i.e., the going back over different mental images, how they can be comprehended in one consciousness; and finally
  3. abstraction or the segregation of everything else by which the mental images differ ...

In order to make our mental images into concepts, one must thus be able to compare, reflect, and abstract, for these three logical operations of the understanding are essential and general conditions of generating any concept whatever. For example, I see a fir, a willow, and a linden. In firstly comparing these objects, I notice that they are different from one another in respect of trunk, branches, leaves, and the like; further, however, I reflect only on what they have in common, the trunk, the branches, the leaves themselves, and abstract from their size, shape, and so forth; thus I gain a concept of a tree.

— Logic, §6

Embodied content

Main article: Embodied cognition

In cognitive linguistics, abstract concepts are transformations of concrete concepts derived from embodied experience. The mechanism of transformation is structural mapping, in which properties of two or more source domains are selectively mapped onto a blended space (Fauconnier & Turner, 1995; see conceptual blending). A common class of blends are metaphors. This theory contrasts with the rationalist view that concepts are perceptions (or recollections, in Plato's term) of an independently existing world of ideas, in that it denies the existence of any such realm. It also contrasts with the empiricist view that concepts are abstract generalizations of individual experiences, because the contingent and bodily experience is preserved in a concept, and not abstracted away. While the perspective is compatible with Jamesian pragmatism, the notion of the transformation of embodied concepts through structural mapping makes a distinct contribution to the problem of concept formation.[citation needed]

Realist universal concepts

Main article: Platonic realism

Platonist views of the mind construe concepts as abstract objects.[14] Plato was the starkest proponent of the realist thesis of universal concepts. By his view, concepts (and ideas in general) are innate ideas that were instantiations of a transcendental world of pure forms that lay behind the veil of the physical world. In this way, universals were explained as transcendent objects. Needless to say, this form of realism was tied deeply with Plato's ontological projects. This remark on Plato is not of merely historical interest. For example, the view that numbers are Platonic objects was revived by Kurt Gödel as a result of certain puzzles that he took to arise from the phenomenological accounts.[15]

Sense and reference

Main article: Sense and reference

Gottlob Frege, founder of the analytic tradition in philosophy, famously argued for the analysis of language in terms of sense and reference. For him, the sense of an expression in language describes a certain state of affairs in the world, namely, the way that some object is presented. Since many commentators view the notion of sense as identical to the notion of concept, and Frege regards senses as the linguistic representations of states of affairs in the world, it seems to follow that we may understand concepts as the manner in which we grasp the world. Accordingly, concepts (as senses) have an ontological status.[8]

Concepts in calculus

According to Carl Benjamin Boyer, in the introduction to his The History of the Calculus and its Conceptual Development, concepts in calculus do not refer to perceptions. As long as the concepts are useful and mutually compatible, they are accepted on their own. For example, the concepts of the derivative and the integral are not considered to refer to spatial or temporal perceptions of the external world of experience. Neither are they related in any way to mysterious limits in which quantities are on the verge of nascence or evanescence, that is, coming into or going out of existence. The abstract concepts are now considered to be totally autonomous, even though they originated from the process of abstracting or taking away qualities from perceptions until only the common, essential attributes remained.

Notable theories on the structure of concepts

Classical theory

Main article: Definitionism

The classical theory of concepts, also referred to as the empiricist theory of concepts,[10] is the oldest theory about the structure of concepts (it can be traced back to Aristotle[11]), and was prominently held until the 1970s.[11] The classical theory of concepts says that concepts have a definitional structure.[5] Adequate definitions of the kind required by this theory usually take the form of a list of features. These features must have two important qualities to provide a comprehensive definition.[11] Features entailed by the definition of a concept must be both necessary and sufficient for membership in the class of things covered by a particular concept.[11] A feature is considered necessary if every member of the denoted class has that feature. A feature is considered sufficient if something has all the parts required by the definition.[11] For example, the classic example bachelor is said to be defined by unmarried and man.[5] An entity is a bachelor (by this definition) if and only if it is both unmarried and a man. To check whether something is a member of the class, you compare its qualities to the features in the definition.[10] Another key part of this theory is that it obeys the law of the excluded middle, which means that there are no partial members of a class, you are either in or out.[11]

The classical theory persisted for so long unquestioned because it seemed intuitively correct and has great explanatory power. It can explain how concepts would be acquired, how we use them to categorize and how we use the structure of a concept to determine its referent class.[5] In fact, for many years it was one of the major activities in philosophy—concept analysis.[5] Concept analysis is the act of trying to articulate the necessary and sufficient conditions for the membership in the referent class of a concept.[citation needed] For example, Shoemaker's classic "Time Without Change" explored whether the concept of the flow of time can include flows where no changes take place, though change is usually taken as a definition of time.[citation needed]

Arguments against the classical theory

Given that most later theories of concepts were born out of the rejection of some or all of the classical theory,[14] it seems appropriate to give an account of what might be wrong with this theory. In the 20th century, philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Rosch argued against the classical theory. There are six primary arguments[14] summarized as follows:

  • It seems that there simply are no definitions—especially those based in sensory primitive concepts.[14]
  • It seems as though there can be cases where our ignorance or error about a class means that we either don't know the definition of a concept, or have incorrect notions about what a definition of a particular concept might entail.[14]
  • Quine's argument against analyticity in Two Dogmas of Empiricism also holds as an argument against definitions.[14]
  • Some concepts have fuzzy membership. There are items for which it is vague whether or not they fall into (or out of) a particular referent class. This is not possible in the classical theory as everything has equal and full membership.[14]
  • Rosch found typicality effects which cannot be explained by the classical theory of concepts, these sparked the prototype theory.[14] See below.
  • Psychological experiments show no evidence for our using concepts as strict definitions.[14]

Prototype theory

Main article: Prototype theory

Prototype theory came out of problems with the classical view of conceptual structure.[5] Prototype theory says that concepts specify properties that members of a class tend to possess, rather than must possess.[14] Wittgenstein, Rosch, Mervis, Berlin, Anglin, and Posner are a few of the key proponents and creators of this theory.[14][16] Wittgenstein describes the relationship between members of a class as family resemblances. There are not necessarily any necessary conditions for membership; a dog can still be a dog with only three legs.[11] This view is particularly supported by psychological experimental evidence for prototypicality effects.[11] Participants willingly and consistently rate objects in categories like 'vegetable' or 'furniture' as more or less typical of that class.[11][16] It seems that our categories are fuzzy psychologically, and so this structure has explanatory power.[11] We can judge an item's membership of the referent class of a concept by comparing it to the typical member—the most central member of the concept. If it is similar enough in the relevant ways, it will be cognitively admitted as a member of the relevant class of entities.[11] Rosch suggests that every category is represented by a central exemplar which embodies all or the maximum possible number of features of a given category.[11] Lech, Gunturkun, and Suchan explain that categorization involves many areas of the brain. Some of these are: visual association areas, prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, and temporal lobe.

The Prototype perspective is proposed as an alternative view to the Classical approach. While the Classical theory requires an all-or-nothing membership in a group, prototypes allow for more fuzzy boundaries and are characterized by attributes.[17] Lakoff stresses that experience and cognition are critical to the function of language, and Labov's experiment found that the function that an artifact contributed to what people categorized it as.[17] For example, a container holding mashed potatoes versus tea swayed people toward classifying them as a bowl and a cup, respectively. This experiment also illuminated the optimal dimensions of what the prototype for "cup" is.[17]

Prototypes also deal with the essence of things and to what extent they belong to a category. There have been a number of experiments dealing with questionnaires asking participants to rate something according to the extent to which it belongs to a category.[17] This question is contradictory to the Classical Theory because something is either a member of a category or is not.[17] This type of problem is paralleled in other areas of linguistics such as phonology, with an illogical question such as "is /i/ or /o/ a better vowel?" The Classical approach and Aristotelian categories may be a better descriptor in some cases.[17]

Theory-theory

Main article: Theory-theory

Theory-theory is a reaction to the previous two theories and develops them further.[11] This theory postulates that categorization by concepts is something like scientific theorizing.[5] Concepts are not learned in isolation, but rather are learned as a part of our experiences with the world around us.[11] In this sense, concepts' structure relies on their relationships to other concepts as mandated by a particular mental theory about the state of the world.[14] How this is supposed to work is a little less clear than in the previous two theories, but is still a prominent and notable theory.[14] This is supposed to explain some of the issues of ignorance and error that come up in prototype and classical theories as concepts that are structured around each other seem to account for errors such as whale as a fish (this misconception came from an incorrect theory about what a whale is like, combining with our theory of what a fish is).[14] When we learn that a whale is not a fish, we are recognizing that whales don't in fact fit the theory we had about what makes something a fish. Theory-theory also postulates that people's theories about the world are what inform their conceptual knowledge of the world. Therefore, analysing people's theories can offer insights into their concepts. In this sense, "theory" means an individual's mental explanation rather than scientific fact. This theory criticizes classical and prototype theory as relying too much on similarities and using them as a sufficient constraint. It suggests that theories or mental understandings contribute more to what has membership to a group rather than weighted similarities, and a cohesive category is formed more by what makes sense to the perceiver. Weights assigned to features have shown to fluctuate and vary depending on context and experimental task demonstrated by Tversky. For this reason, similarities between members may be collateral rather than causal.[18]

Ideasthesia

Main article: Ideasthesia

According to the theory of ideasthesia (or "sensing concepts"), activation of a concept may be the main mechanism responsible for the creation of phenomenal experiences. Therefore, understanding how the brain processes concepts may be central to solving the mystery of how conscious experiences (or qualia) emerge within a physical system e.g., the sourness of the sour taste of lemon.[19] This question is also known as the hard problem of consciousness.[20][21] Research on ideasthesia emerged from research on synesthesia where it was noted that a synesthetic experience requires first an activation of a concept of the inducer.[22] Later research expanded these results into everyday perception.[23]

There is a lot of discussion on the most effective theory in concepts. Another theory is semantic pointers, which use perceptual and motor representations and these representations are like symbols.[24]

Etymology

The term "concept" is traced back to 1554–60 (Latin conceptum – "something conceived").[25]

See also

References

  1. ^ Goguen, Joseph (2005). "What is a Concept?". Conceptual Structures: Common Semantics for Sharing Knowledge. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 3596. pp. 52–77. doi:10.1007/11524564_4. ISBN 978-3-540-27783-5.
  2. ^ Chapter 1 of Laurence and Margolis' book called Concepts: Core Readings. ISBN 9780262631938
  3. ^ Carey, S. (1991). Knowledge Acquisition: Enrichment or Conceptual Change? In S. Carey and R. Gelman (Eds.), The Epigenesis of Mind: Essays on Biology and Cognition (pp. 257-291). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  4. ^ "Cognitive Science | Brain and Cognitive Sciences".
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Eric Margolis; Stephen Lawrence. "Concepts". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab at Stanford University. Retrieved 6 November 2012.
  6. ^ Eysenck. M. W., (2012) Fundamentals of Cognition (2nd) Psychology Taylor & Francis.
  7. ^ Joseph Goguen ""The logic of inexact concepts", Synthese 19 (3/4): 325–373 (1969).
  8. ^ a b c Margolis, Eric; Laurence, Stephen (2007). "The Ontology of Concepts—Abstract Objects or Mental Representations?". Noûs. 41 (4): 561–593. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.188.9995. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0068.2007.00663.x.
  9. ^ Jerry Fodor, Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong
  10. ^ a b c d e Carey, Susan (2009). The Origin of Concepts. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-536763-8.
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Murphy, Gregory (2002). The Big Book of Concepts. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ISBN 978-0-262-13409-5.
  12. ^ McCarthy, Gabby (2018) "Introduction to Metaphysics". pg. 35
  13. ^ Eysenck. M. W., (2012) Fundamentals of Cognition (2nd) Psychology Taylor & Francis
  14. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Stephen Lawrence; Eric Margolis (1999). Concepts and Cognitive Science. in Concepts: Core Readings: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. pp. 3–83. ISBN 978-0-262-13353-1.
  15. ^ 'Godel's Rationalism', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  16. ^ a b Brown, Roger (1978). A New Paradigm of Reference. Academic Press Inc. pp. 159–166. ISBN 978-0-12-497750-1.
  17. ^ a b c d e f TAYLOR, John R. (1989). Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes In Linguistic Theory.
  18. ^ Murphy, Gregory L.; Medin, Douglas L. (1985). "The role of theories in conceptual coherence". Psychological Review. 92 (3): 289–316. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.92.3.289. ISSN 0033-295X. PMID 4023146.
  19. ^ Mroczko-Wä…Sowicz, Aleksandra; Nikoliä‡, Danko (2014). "Semantic mechanisms may be responsible for developing synesthesia". Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 8: 509. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2014.00509. PMC 4137691. PMID 25191239.
  20. ^ Stevan Harnad (1995). Why and How We Are Not Zombies. Journal of Consciousness Studies 1: 164–167.
  21. ^ David Chalmers (1995). Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 (3): 200–219.
  22. ^ Nikolić, D. (2009) Is synaesthesia actually ideaesthesia? An inquiry into the nature of the phenomenon. Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Synaesthesia, Science & Art, Granada, Spain, April 26–29, 2009.
  23. ^ Gómez Milán, E., Iborra, O., de Córdoba, M.J., Juárez-Ramos V., Rodríguez Artacho, M.A., Rubio, J.L. (2013) The Kiki-Bouba effect: A case of personification and ideaesthesia. The Journal of Consciousness Studies. 20(1–2): pp. 84–102.
  24. ^ Blouw, Peter; Solodkin, Eugene; Thagard, Paul; Eliasmith, Chris (2016). "Concepts as Semantic Pointers: A Framework and Computational Model". Cognitive Science. 40 (5): 1128–1162. doi:10.1111/cogs.12265. PMID 26235459.
  25. ^ . Archived from the original on 2008-07-06. Retrieved 2011-11-25.The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition.

Further reading

  • Armstrong, S. L., Gleitman, L. R., & Gleitman, H. (1999). what some concepts might not be. In E. Margolis, & S. Lawrence, Concepts (pp. 225–261). Massachusetts: MIT press.
  • Carey, S. (1999). knowledge acquisition: enrichment or conceptual change? In E. Margolis, & S. Lawrence, concepts: core readings (pp. 459–489). Massachusetts: MIT press.
  • Fodor, J. A., Garrett, M. F., Walker, E. C., & Parkes, C. H. (1999). against definitions. In E. Margolis, & S. Lawrence, concepts: core readings (pp. 491–513). Massachusetts: MIT press.
  • Fodor, Jerry; Lepore, Ernest (1996). "The red herring and the pet fish: Why concepts still can't be prototypes". Cognition. 58 (2): 253–270. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(95)00694-X. PMID 8820389. S2CID 15356470.
  • Hume, D. (1739). book one part one: of the understanding of ideas, their origin, composition, connexion, abstraction etc. In D. Hume, a treatise of human nature. England.
  • Murphy, G. (2004). Chapter 2. In G. Murphy, a big book of concepts (pp. 11 – 41). Massachusetts: MIT press.
  • Murphy, G., & Medin, D. (1999). the role of theories in conceptual coherence. In E. Margolis, & S. Lawrence, concepts: core readings (pp. 425–459). Massachusetts: MIT press.
  • Prinz, Jesse J. (2002). Furnishing the Mind. doi:10.7551/mitpress/3169.001.0001. ISBN 9780262281935.
  • Putnam, H. (1999). is semantics possible? In E. Margolis, & S. Lawrence, concepts: core readings (pp. 177–189). Massachusetts: MIT press.
  • Quine, W. (1999). two dogmas of empiricism. In E. Margolis, & S. Lawrence, concepts: core readings (pp. 153–171). Massachusetts: MIT press.
  • Rey, G. (1999). Concepts and Stereotypes. In E. Margolis, & S. Laurence (Eds.), Concepts: Core Readings (pp. 279–301). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
  • Rosch, E. (1977). Classification of real-world objects: Origins and representations in cognition. In P. Johnson-Laird, & P. Wason, Thinking: Readings in Cognitive Science (pp. 212–223). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Rosch, E. (1999). Principles of Categorization. In E. Margolis, & S. Laurence (Eds.), Concepts: Core Readings (pp. 189–206). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
  • Schneider, Susan (2011). "Concepts: A Pragmatist Theory". The Language of Thought. pp. 159–182. doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262015578.003.0071. ISBN 9780262015578.
  • Wittgenstein, L. (1999). philosophical investigations: sections 65–78. In E. Margolis, & S. Lawrence, concepts: core readings (pp. 171–175). Massachusetts: MIT press.
  • The History of Calculus and its Conceptual Development, Carl Benjamin Boyer, Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-60509-4
  • The Writings of William James, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-39188-4
  • Logic, Immanuel Kant, Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-25650-2
  • A System of Logic, John Stuart Mill, University Press of the Pacific, ISBN 1-4102-0252-6
  • Parerga and Paralipomena, Arthur Schopenhauer, Volume I, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-824508-4
  • Kant's Metaphysic of Experience, H. J. Paton, London: Allen & Unwin, 1936
  • Conceptual Integration Networks. Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, 1998. Cognitive Science. Volume 22, number 2 (April–June 1998), pp. 133–187.
  • The Portable Nietzsche, Penguin Books, 1982, ISBN 0-14-015062-5
  • Stephen Laurence and Eric Margolis "Concepts and Cognitive Science". In Concepts: Core Readings, MIT Press pp. 3–81, 1999.
  • Hjørland, Birger (2009). "Concept theory". Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 60 (8): 1519–1536. doi:10.1002/asi.21082.
  • Georgij Yu. Somov (2010). Concepts and Senses in Visual Art: Through the example of analysis of some works by Bruegel the Elder. Semiotica 182 (1/4), 475–506.
  • Daltrozzo J, Vion-Dury J, Schön D. (2010). . Horizons in Neuroscience Research 4: 157–167.

External links

 
Look up concept in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
 
Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Concept".

January 13, 2023
concept, other, uses, disambiguation, defined, abstract, ideas, they, understood, fundamental, building, blocks, concept, behind, principles, thoughts, beliefs, they, play, important, role, aspects, cognition, such, concepts, studied, several, disciplines, suc. For other uses see Concept disambiguation Concepts are defined as abstract ideas They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles thoughts and beliefs 1 They play an important role in all aspects of cognition 2 3 As such concepts are studied by several disciplines such as linguistics psychology and philosophy and these disciplines are interested in the logical and psychological structure of concepts and how they are put together to form thoughts and sentences The study of concepts has served as an important flagship of an emerging interdisciplinary approach called cognitive science 4 In contemporary philosophy there are at least three prevailing ways to understand what a concept is 5 Concepts as mental representations where concepts are entities that exist in the mind mental objects Concepts as abilities where concepts are abilities peculiar to cognitive agents mental states Concepts as Fregean senses where concepts are abstract objects as opposed to mental objects and mental statesConcepts can be organized into a hierarchy higher levels of which are termed superordinate and lower levels termed subordinate Additionally there is the basic or middle level at which people will most readily categorize a concept 6 For example a basic level concept would be chair with its superordinate furniture and its subordinate easy chair A representation of the concept of a tree The four upper images of trees can be roughly quantified into an overall generalization of the idea of a tree pictured in the lower image Concepts may be exact or inexact 7 When the mind makes a generalization such as the concept of tree it extracts similarities from numerous examples the simplification enables higher level thinking A concept is instantiated reified by all of its actual or potential instances whether these are things in the real world or other ideas Concepts are studied as components of human cognition in the cognitive science disciplines of linguistics psychology and philosophy where an ongoing debate asks whether all cognition must occur through concepts Concepts are regularly formalized in mathematics computer science databases and artificial intelligence Examples of specific high level conceptual classes in these fields include classes schema or categories In informal use the word concept often just means any idea Contents 1 Ontology of concepts 1 1 Concepts as mental representations 1 1 1 The psychological view of concepts 1 1 2 The physicalist view of concepts 1 2 Concepts as abstract objects 1 2 1 A priori concepts 1 2 2 Embodied content 1 2 3 Realist universal concepts 1 2 4 Sense and reference 1 2 5 Concepts in calculus 2 Notable theories on the structure of concepts 2 1 Classical theory 2 1 1 Arguments against the classical theory 2 2 Prototype theory 2 3 Theory theory 3 Ideasthesia 4 Etymology 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External linksOntology of concepts EditA central question in the study of concepts is the question of what they are Philosophers construe this question as one about the ontology of concepts what kind of things they are The ontology of concepts determines the answer to other questions such as how to integrate concepts into a wider theory of the mind what functions are allowed or disallowed by a concept s ontology etc There are two main views of the ontology of concepts 1 Concepts are abstract objects and 2 concepts are mental representations 8 Concepts as mental representations Edit See also Direct and indirect realism The psychological view of concepts Edit Main article Mental representation Within the framework of the representational theory of mind the structural position of concepts can be understood as follows Concepts serve as the building blocks of what are called mental representations colloquially understood as ideas in the mind Mental representations in turn are the building blocks of what are called propositional attitudes colloquially understood as the stances or perspectives we take towards ideas be it believing doubting wondering accepting etc And these propositional attitudes in turn are the building blocks of our understanding of thoughts that populate everyday life as well as folk psychology In this way we have an analysis that ties our common everyday understanding of thoughts down to the scientific and philosophical understanding of concepts 9 The physicalist view of concepts Edit See also PhysicalismIn a physicalist theory of mind a concept is a mental representation which the brain uses to denote a class of things in the world This is to say that it is literally a symbol or group of symbols together made from the physical material of the brain 10 11 Concepts are mental representations that allow us to draw appropriate inferences about the type of entities we encounter in our everyday lives 11 Concepts do not encompass all mental representations but are merely a subset of them 10 The use of concepts is necessary to cognitive processes such as categorization memory decision making learning and inference 12 Concepts are thought to be stored in long term cortical memory 13 in contrast to episodic memory of the particular objects and events which they abstract which are stored in hippocampus Evidence for this separation comes from hippocampal damaged patients such as patient HM The abstraction from the day s hippocampal events and objects into cortical concepts is often considered to be the computation underlying some stages of sleep and dreaming Many people beginning with Aristotle report memories of dreams which appear to mix the day s events with analogous or related historical concepts and memories and suggest that they were being sorted or organized into more abstract concepts Sort is itself another word for concept and sorting thus means to organize into concepts Concepts as abstract objects Edit See also Abstract and concrete and Abstract object theory The semantic view of concepts suggests that concepts are abstract objects In this view concepts are abstract objects of a category out of a human s mind rather than some mental representations 8 There is debate as to the relationship between concepts and natural language 5 However it is necessary at least to begin by understanding that the concept dog is philosophically distinct from the things in the world grouped by this concept or the reference class or extension 10 Concepts that can be equated to a single word are called lexical concepts 5 The study of concepts and conceptual structure falls into the disciplines of linguistics philosophy psychology and cognitive science 11 In the simplest terms a concept is a name or label that regards or treats an abstraction as if it had concrete or material existence such as a person a place or a thing It may represent a natural object that exists in the real world like a tree an animal a stone etc It may also name an artificial man made object like a chair computer house etc Abstract ideas and knowledge domains such as freedom equality science happiness etc are also symbolized by concepts It is important to realize that a concept is merely a symbol a representation of the abstraction The word is not to be mistaken for the thing For example the word moon a concept is not the large bright shape changing object up in the sky but only represents that celestial object Concepts are created named to describe explain and capture reality as it is known and understood A priori concepts Edit Main articles A priori and a posteriori and Category Kant Kant maintained the view that human minds possess pure or a priori concepts Instead of being abstracted from individual perceptions like empirical concepts they originate in the mind itself He called these concepts categories in the sense of the word that means predicate attribute characteristic or quality But these pure categories are predicates of things in general not of a particular thing According to Kant there are twelve categories that constitute the understanding of phenomenal objects Each category is that one predicate which is common to multiple empirical concepts In order to explain how an a priori concept can relate to individual phenomena in a manner analogous to an a posteriori concept Kant employed the technical concept of the schema He held that the account of the concept as an abstraction of experience is only partly correct He called those concepts that result from abstraction a posteriori concepts meaning concepts that arise out of experience An empirical or an a posteriori concept is a general representation Vorstellung or non specific thought of that which is common to several specific perceived objects Logic I 1 1 Note 1 A concept is a common feature or characteristic Kant investigated the way that empirical a posteriori concepts are created The logical acts of the understanding by which concepts are generated as to their form are comparison i e the likening of mental images to one another in relation to the unity of consciousness reflection i e the going back over different mental images how they can be comprehended in one consciousness and finally abstraction or the segregation of everything else by which the mental images differ In order to make our mental images into concepts one must thus be able to compare reflect and abstract for these three logical operations of the understanding are essential and general conditions of generating any concept whatever For example I see a fir a willow and a linden In firstly comparing these objects I notice that they are different from one another in respect of trunk branches leaves and the like further however I reflect only on what they have in common the trunk the branches the leaves themselves and abstract from their size shape and so forth thus I gain a concept of a tree Logic 6 Embodied content Edit Main article Embodied cognition In cognitive linguistics abstract concepts are transformations of concrete concepts derived from embodied experience The mechanism of transformation is structural mapping in which properties of two or more source domains are selectively mapped onto a blended space Fauconnier amp Turner 1995 see conceptual blending A common class of blends are metaphors This theory contrasts with the rationalist view that concepts are perceptions or recollections in Plato s term of an independently existing world of ideas in that it denies the existence of any such realm It also contrasts with the empiricist view that concepts are abstract generalizations of individual experiences because the contingent and bodily experience is preserved in a concept and not abstracted away While the perspective is compatible with Jamesian pragmatism the notion of the transformation of embodied concepts through structural mapping makes a distinct contribution to the problem of concept formation citation needed Realist universal concepts Edit Main article Platonic realism Platonist views of the mind construe concepts as abstract objects 14 Plato was the starkest proponent of the realist thesis of universal concepts By his view concepts and ideas in general are innate ideas that were instantiations of a transcendental world of pure forms that lay behind the veil of the physical world In this way universals were explained as transcendent objects Needless to say this form of realism was tied deeply with Plato s ontological projects This remark on Plato is not of merely historical interest For example the view that numbers are Platonic objects was revived by Kurt Godel as a result of certain puzzles that he took to arise from the phenomenological accounts 15 Sense and reference Edit Main article Sense and reference Gottlob Frege founder of the analytic tradition in philosophy famously argued for the analysis of language in terms of sense and reference For him the sense of an expression in language describes a certain state of affairs in the world namely the way that some object is presented Since many commentators view the notion of sense as identical to the notion of concept and Frege regards senses as the linguistic representations of states of affairs in the world it seems to follow that we may understand concepts as the manner in which we grasp the world Accordingly concepts as senses have an ontological status 8 Concepts in calculus Edit According to Carl Benjamin Boyer in the introduction to his The History of the Calculus and its Conceptual Development concepts in calculus do not refer to perceptions As long as the concepts are useful and mutually compatible they are accepted on their own For example the concepts of the derivative and the integral are not considered to refer to spatial or temporal perceptions of the external world of experience Neither are they related in any way to mysterious limits in which quantities are on the verge of nascence or evanescence that is coming into or going out of existence The abstract concepts are now considered to be totally autonomous even though they originated from the process of abstracting or taking away qualities from perceptions until only the common essential attributes remained Notable theories on the structure of concepts EditClassical theory Edit Main article Definitionism The classical theory of concepts also referred to as the empiricist theory of concepts 10 is the oldest theory about the structure of concepts it can be traced back to Aristotle 11 and was prominently held until the 1970s 11 The classical theory of concepts says that concepts have a definitional structure 5 Adequate definitions of the kind required by this theory usually take the form of a list of features These features must have two important qualities to provide a comprehensive definition 11 Features entailed by the definition of a concept must be both necessary and sufficient for membership in the class of things covered by a particular concept 11 A feature is considered necessary if every member of the denoted class has that feature A feature is considered sufficient if something has all the parts required by the definition 11 For example the classic example bachelor is said to be defined by unmarried and man 5 An entity is a bachelor by this definition if and only if it is both unmarried and a man To check whether something is a member of the class you compare its qualities to the features in the definition 10 Another key part of this theory is that it obeys the law of the excluded middle which means that there are no partial members of a class you are either in or out 11 The classical theory persisted for so long unquestioned because it seemed intuitively correct and has great explanatory power It can explain how concepts would be acquired how we use them to categorize and how we use the structure of a concept to determine its referent class 5 In fact for many years it was one of the major activities in philosophy concept analysis 5 Concept analysis is the act of trying to articulate the necessary and sufficient conditions for the membership in the referent class of a concept citation needed For example Shoemaker s classic Time Without Change explored whether the concept of the flow of time can include flows where no changes take place though change is usually taken as a definition of time citation needed Arguments against the classical theory Edit Given that most later theories of concepts were born out of the rejection of some or all of the classical theory 14 it seems appropriate to give an account of what might be wrong with this theory In the 20th century philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Rosch argued against the classical theory There are six primary arguments 14 summarized as follows It seems that there simply are no definitions especially those based in sensory primitive concepts 14 It seems as though there can be cases where our ignorance or error about a class means that we either don t know the definition of a concept or have incorrect notions about what a definition of a particular concept might entail 14 Quine s argument against analyticity in Two Dogmas of Empiricism also holds as an argument against definitions 14 Some concepts have fuzzy membership There are items for which it is vague whether or not they fall into or out of a particular referent class This is not possible in the classical theory as everything has equal and full membership 14 Rosch found typicality effects which cannot be explained by the classical theory of concepts these sparked the prototype theory 14 See below Psychological experiments show no evidence for our using concepts as strict definitions 14 Prototype theory Edit Main article Prototype theory Prototype theory came out of problems with the classical view of conceptual structure 5 Prototype theory says that concepts specify properties that members of a class tend to possess rather than must possess 14 Wittgenstein Rosch Mervis Berlin Anglin and Posner are a few of the key proponents and creators of this theory 14 16 Wittgenstein describes the relationship between members of a class as family resemblances There are not necessarily any necessary conditions for membership a dog can still be a dog with only three legs 11 This view is particularly supported by psychological experimental evidence for prototypicality effects 11 Participants willingly and consistently rate objects in categories like vegetable or furniture as more or less typical of that class 11 16 It seems that our categories are fuzzy psychologically and so this structure has explanatory power 11 We can judge an item s membership of the referent class of a concept by comparing it to the typical member the most central member of the concept If it is similar enough in the relevant ways it will be cognitively admitted as a member of the relevant class of entities 11 Rosch suggests that every category is represented by a central exemplar which embodies all or the maximum possible number of features of a given category 11 Lech Gunturkun and Suchan explain that categorization involves many areas of the brain Some of these are visual association areas prefrontal cortex basal ganglia and temporal lobe The Prototype perspective is proposed as an alternative view to the Classical approach While the Classical theory requires an all or nothing membership in a group prototypes allow for more fuzzy boundaries and are characterized by attributes 17 Lakoff stresses that experience and cognition are critical to the function of language and Labov s experiment found that the function that an artifact contributed to what people categorized it as 17 For example a container holding mashed potatoes versus tea swayed people toward classifying them as a bowl and a cup respectively This experiment also illuminated the optimal dimensions of what the prototype for cup is 17 Prototypes also deal with the essence of things and to what extent they belong to a category There have been a number of experiments dealing with questionnaires asking participants to rate something according to the extent to which it belongs to a category 17 This question is contradictory to the Classical Theory because something is either a member of a category or is not 17 This type of problem is paralleled in other areas of linguistics such as phonology with an illogical question such as is i or o a better vowel The Classical approach and Aristotelian categories may be a better descriptor in some cases 17 Theory theory Edit Main article Theory theory Theory theory is a reaction to the previous two theories and develops them further 11 This theory postulates that categorization by concepts is something like scientific theorizing 5 Concepts are not learned in isolation but rather are learned as a part of our experiences with the world around us 11 In this sense concepts structure relies on their relationships to other concepts as mandated by a particular mental theory about the state of the world 14 How this is supposed to work is a little less clear than in the previous two theories but is still a prominent and notable theory 14 This is supposed to explain some of the issues of ignorance and error that come up in prototype and classical theories as concepts that are structured around each other seem to account for errors such as whale as a fish this misconception came from an incorrect theory about what a whale is like combining with our theory of what a fish is 14 When we learn that a whale is not a fish we are recognizing that whales don t in fact fit the theory we had about what makes something a fish Theory theory also postulates that people s theories about the world are what inform their conceptual knowledge of the world Therefore analysing people s theories can offer insights into their concepts In this sense theory means an individual s mental explanation rather than scientific fact This theory criticizes classical and prototype theory as relying too much on similarities and using them as a sufficient constraint It suggests that theories or mental understandings contribute more to what has membership to a group rather than weighted similarities and a cohesive category is formed more by what makes sense to the perceiver Weights assigned to features have shown to fluctuate and vary depending on context and experimental task demonstrated by Tversky For this reason similarities between members may be collateral rather than causal 18 Ideasthesia EditMain article Ideasthesia According to the theory of ideasthesia or sensing concepts activation of a concept may be the main mechanism responsible for the creation of phenomenal experiences Therefore understanding how the brain processes concepts may be central to solving the mystery of how conscious experiences or qualia emerge within a physical system e g the sourness of the sour taste of lemon 19 This question is also known as the hard problem of consciousness 20 21 Research on ideasthesia emerged from research on synesthesia where it was noted that a synesthetic experience requires first an activation of a concept of the inducer 22 Later research expanded these results into everyday perception 23 There is a lot of discussion on the most effective theory in concepts Another theory is semantic pointers which use perceptual and motor representations and these representations are like symbols 24 Etymology EditThe term concept is traced back to 1554 60 Latin conceptum something conceived 25 See also EditAbstraction Categorization Class philosophy Conceptualism Concept and object Concept map Conceptual blending Conceptual framework Conceptual history Conceptual model Conversation theory Definitionism Formal concept analysis Fuzzy concept Hypostatic abstraction Idea Ideasthesia Noesis Notion philosophy Object philosophy Process of concept formation Schema Kant Intuitive statisticsReferences Edit Goguen Joseph 2005 What is a Concept Conceptual Structures Common Semantics for Sharing Knowledge Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol 3596 pp 52 77 doi 10 1007 11524564 4 ISBN 978 3 540 27783 5 Chapter 1 of Laurence and Margolis book called Concepts Core Readings ISBN 9780262631938 Carey S 1991 Knowledge Acquisition Enrichment or Conceptual Change In S Carey and R Gelman Eds The Epigenesis of Mind Essays on Biology and Cognition pp 257 291 Hillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Cognitive Science Brain and Cognitive Sciences a b c d e f g h i Eric Margolis Stephen Lawrence Concepts Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Metaphysics Research Lab at Stanford University Retrieved 6 November 2012 Eysenck M W 2012 Fundamentals of Cognition 2nd Psychology Taylor amp Francis Joseph Goguen The logic of inexact concepts Synthese 19 3 4 325 373 1969 a b c Margolis Eric Laurence Stephen 2007 The Ontology of Concepts Abstract Objects or Mental Representations Nous 41 4 561 593 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 188 9995 doi 10 1111 j 1468 0068 2007 00663 x Jerry Fodor Concepts Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong a b c d e Carey Susan 2009 The Origin of Concepts Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 536763 8 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Murphy Gregory 2002 The Big Book of Concepts Massachusetts Institute of Technology ISBN 978 0 262 13409 5 McCarthy Gabby 2018 Introduction to Metaphysics pg 35 Eysenck M W 2012 Fundamentals of Cognition 2nd Psychology Taylor amp Francis a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Stephen Lawrence Eric Margolis 1999 Concepts and Cognitive Science in Concepts Core Readings Massachusetts Institute of Technology pp 3 83 ISBN 978 0 262 13353 1 Godel s Rationalism Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy a b Brown Roger 1978 A New Paradigm of Reference Academic Press Inc pp 159 166 ISBN 978 0 12 497750 1 a b c d e f TAYLOR John R 1989 Linguistic Categorization Prototypes In Linguistic Theory Murphy Gregory L Medin Douglas L 1985 The role of theories in conceptual coherence Psychological Review 92 3 289 316 doi 10 1037 0033 295x 92 3 289 ISSN 0033 295X PMID 4023146 Mroczko Wa Sowicz Aleksandra Nikolia Danko 2014 Semantic mechanisms may be responsible for developing synesthesia Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8 509 doi 10 3389 fnhum 2014 00509 PMC 4137691 PMID 25191239 Stevan Harnad 1995 Why and How We Are Not Zombies Journal of Consciousness Studies 1 164 167 David Chalmers 1995 Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 3 200 219 Nikolic D 2009 Is synaesthesia actually ideaesthesia An inquiry into the nature of the phenomenon Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Synaesthesia Science amp Art Granada Spain April 26 29 2009 Gomez Milan E Iborra O de Cordoba M J Juarez Ramos V Rodriguez Artacho M A Rubio J L 2013 The Kiki Bouba effect A case of personification and ideaesthesia The Journal of Consciousness Studies 20 1 2 pp 84 102 Blouw Peter Solodkin Eugene Thagard Paul Eliasmith Chris 2016 Concepts as Semantic Pointers A Framework and Computational Model Cognitive Science 40 5 1128 1162 doi 10 1111 cogs 12265 PMID 26235459 Homework Help and Textbook Solutions bartleby Archived from the original on 2008 07 06 Retrieved 2011 11 25 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language Fourth Edition Further reading EditArmstrong S L Gleitman L R amp Gleitman H 1999 what some concepts might not be In E Margolis amp S Lawrence Concepts pp 225 261 Massachusetts MIT press Carey S 1999 knowledge acquisition enrichment or conceptual change In E Margolis amp S Lawrence concepts core readings pp 459 489 Massachusetts MIT press Fodor J A Garrett M F Walker E C amp Parkes C H 1999 against definitions In E Margolis amp S Lawrence concepts core readings pp 491 513 Massachusetts MIT press Fodor Jerry Lepore Ernest 1996 The red herring and the pet fish Why concepts still can t be prototypes Cognition 58 2 253 270 doi 10 1016 0010 0277 95 00694 X PMID 8820389 S2CID 15356470 Hume D 1739 book one part one of the understanding of ideas their origin composition connexion abstraction etc In D Hume a treatise of human nature England Murphy G 2004 Chapter 2 In G Murphy a big book of concepts pp 11 41 Massachusetts MIT press Murphy G amp Medin D 1999 the role of theories in conceptual coherence In E Margolis amp S Lawrence concepts core readings pp 425 459 Massachusetts MIT press Prinz Jesse J 2002 Furnishing the Mind doi 10 7551 mitpress 3169 001 0001 ISBN 9780262281935 Putnam H 1999 is semantics possible In E Margolis amp S Lawrence concepts core readings pp 177 189 Massachusetts MIT press Quine W 1999 two dogmas of empiricism In E Margolis amp S Lawrence concepts core readings pp 153 171 Massachusetts MIT press Rey G 1999 Concepts and Stereotypes In E Margolis amp S Laurence Eds Concepts Core Readings pp 279 301 Cambridge Massachusetts MIT Press Rosch E 1977 Classification of real world objects Origins and representations in cognition In P Johnson Laird amp P Wason Thinking Readings in Cognitive Science pp 212 223 Cambridge Cambridge University Press Rosch E 1999 Principles of Categorization In E Margolis amp S Laurence Eds Concepts Core Readings pp 189 206 Cambridge Massachusetts MIT Press Schneider Susan 2011 Concepts A Pragmatist Theory The Language of Thought pp 159 182 doi 10 7551 mitpress 9780262015578 003 0071 ISBN 9780262015578 Wittgenstein L 1999 philosophical investigations sections 65 78 In E Margolis amp S Lawrence concepts core readings pp 171 175 Massachusetts MIT press The History of Calculus and its Conceptual Development Carl Benjamin Boyer Dover Publications ISBN 0 486 60509 4 The Writings of William James University of Chicago Press ISBN 0 226 39188 4 Logic Immanuel Kant Dover Publications ISBN 0 486 25650 2 A System of Logic John Stuart Mill University Press of the Pacific ISBN 1 4102 0252 6 Parerga and Paralipomena Arthur Schopenhauer Volume I Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 824508 4 Kant s Metaphysic of Experience H J Paton London Allen amp Unwin 1936 Conceptual Integration Networks Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner 1998 Cognitive Science Volume 22 number 2 April June 1998 pp 133 187 The Portable Nietzsche Penguin Books 1982 ISBN 0 14 015062 5 Stephen Laurence and Eric Margolis Concepts and Cognitive Science In Concepts Core Readings MIT Press pp 3 81 1999 Hjorland Birger 2009 Concept theory Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 60 8 1519 1536 doi 10 1002 asi 21082 Georgij Yu Somov 2010 Concepts and Senses in Visual Art Through the example of analysis of some works by Bruegel the Elder Semiotica 182 1 4 475 506 Daltrozzo J Vion Dury J Schon D 2010 Music and Concepts Horizons in Neuroscience Research 4 157 167 External links Edit Look up concept in Wiktionary the free dictionary Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica article Concept Concept at PhilPapers Zalta Edward N ed Concepts Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Concept at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project Concept Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Theory Theory of Concepts Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Classical Theory of Concepts Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Blending and Conceptual Integration Concepts A Critical Approach by Andy Blunden Conceptual Science and Mathematical Permutations Concept Mobiles Latest concepts v Conceptualize A Wikiversity Learning Project Concept simultaneously translated in several languages and meanings TED Ed Lesson on ideasthesia sensing concepts Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Concept amp oldid 1127782711, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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