43 - Concept is “a generalization of a set of objects/nouns. It overlaps with idea, entity, notion, group, etc.” (Wozniak 2020). Concepts allow you to work with new but familiar objects because you can match them to the “prototypical example” and immediately gain information about them.
If all you’ve used in your life are kitchen table and rocking chairs, then you don’t suddenly become unable to sit when presented with a computer chair. You are able to successfully adapt to the new chair because you have the concept of a chair to work with.
APA Definition
1. an idea that represents a class of objects or events or their properties, such as cats , walking , honesty , blue , or fast . See conceptualization; conjunctive concept; disjunctive concept. See also abstract idea.
2. in conditioning, a class of stimuli to which an organism responds in a similar or identical manner (see stimulus generalization) and that the organism discriminates from other classes. —conceptual adj.
Wikipedia Definition
Concepts are defined as abstract ideas or general notions that occur in the mind, in speech, or in thought. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of thoughts and beliefs. They play an important role in all aspects of cognition.
In contemporary philosophy, there are at least three prevailing ways to understand what a concept is:[4]
- 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 (see sense and reference), 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.[5] For example, a basic-level concept would be “chair”, with its superordinate, “furniture”, and its subordinate, “easy chair”.
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.
When the mind makes a generalization such as the concept of tree, it extracts similarities from numerous examples; the simplification enables higher-level thinking.
Lexico Definition
An abstract idea.
Philosophy An idea or mental image which corresponds to some distinct entity or class of entities, or to its essential features, or determines the application of a term (especially a predicate), and thus plays a part in the use of reason or language.
Further Reading
- Create Sub Note on “Conceptualization”
- Knowledge, Concepts and Categories by Koen Lamberts - is there a better book on this topic?
- The Big Book of Concepts by Gregory Murphy
- The Origin of Concepts
- On Concepts, Modules, and Language: Cognitive Science at Its Core by Roberto G. de Almeida