Concept
Encyclopedia
The word concept is used in ordinary language as well as in almost all academic discipline
s. Particularly in philosophy
, psychology
and cognitive sciences the term is much used and much discussed. WordNet defines concept: "conception, construct (an abstract
or general idea
inferred or derived from specific instances)". However, the meaning of the term concept is much disputed. Philosopher Edouard Machery (2011), for example, argues that theories of concepts in philosophy and in psychology have distinct goals and therefore do not share the same understanding of the term concept. He writes (p. 247):
A concept is typically associated with a corresponding representation in a language
or symbology
; however, some concepts do not have a linguistic representation, which can make them more difficult to understand depending on a person's native language, such as a single meaning of a term
.
There are prevailing theories
in contemporary philosophy
which attempt to explain the nature of concepts. The representational theory of mind proposes that concepts are mental representation
s, while the semantic theory of concepts (originating with Frege
's distinction between concept and object
) holds that they are abstract objects. Idea
s are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear to the mind as images, while some ideas appear to. Many philosophers consider concepts to be a fundamental ontological category of being
.
The term "concept" is traced back to 1554–60 (Latin conceptum - "something conceived"), but what is today termed "the classical theory of concepts" is the theory of Aristotle
on the definition of terms. The meaning of "concept" is explored in mainstream information science
, cognitive science
, metaphysics
, and philosophy of mind
. In computer and information science contexts, especially, the term 'concept' is often used in unclear or inconsistent ways.
's description of a general idea corresponds to a description of a concept. According to Locke, a general idea is created by abstracting, drawing away, or removing the uncommon characteristic or characteristics from several particular ideas. The remaining common characteristic is that which is similar to all of the different individuals. For example, the abstract general idea or concept that is designated by the word "red
" is that characteristic which is common to apples, cherries, and blood. The abstract general idea or concept that is signified by the word "dog
" is the collection of those characteristics which are common to Airedales, Collies, and Chihuahuas.
In the same tradition as Locke, John Stuart Mill
stated that general conceptions are formed through abstraction. A general conception is the common element among the many images of members of a class. "...[W]hen we form a set of phenomena into a class, that is, when we compare them with one another to ascertain in what they agree, some general conception is implied in this mental operation" (A System of Logic
, Book IV, Ch. II). Mill did not believe that concepts exist in the mind before the act of abstraction. "It is not a law of our intellect, that, in comparing things with each other and taking note of their agreement, we merely recognize as realized in the outward world something that we already had in our minds. The conception originally found its way to us as the result of such a comparison. It was obtained (in metaphysical phrase) by abstraction from individual things" (Ibid.).
For Schopenhauer, empirical concepts "...are mere abstractions from what is known through intuitive perception
, and they have arisen from our arbitrarily thinking away or dropping of some qualities and our retention of others." (Parerga and Paralipomena
, Vol. I, "Sketch of a History of the Ideal and the Real"). In his On the Will in Nature, "Physiology and Pathology," Schopenhauer said that a concept is "drawn off from previous images ... by putting off their differences. This concept is then no longer intuitively perceptible, but is denoted and fixed merely by words." Nietzsche, who was heavily influenced by Schopenhauer, wrote: "Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal. No leaf ever wholly equals another, and the concept 'leaf' is formed through an arbitrary abstraction from these individual differences, through forgetting the distinctions..."
By contrast to the above philosophers, Immanuel Kant
held that the account of the concept as an abstraction of experience is only partly correct. He called those concepts that result of 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.
Kant's description of the making of a concept has been paraphrased as "...to conceive is essentially to think in abstraction what is common to a plurality of possible instances..." (H.J. Paton, Kant's Metaphysics of Experience, I, 250). In his discussion of Kant, Christopher Janaway wrote: "...generic concepts are formed by abstraction from more than one species."
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 12 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
.
However, some theorists claim that primitive concepts lack any structure at all. For instance, Jerry Fodor
presents his Asymmetric Dependence Theory as a way of showing how a primitive concept's content is determined by a reliable relationship between the information in mental contents and the world. These sorts of claims are referred to as "atomistic", because the primitive concept is treated as if it were a genuine atom.
, who holds that concepts may be attributed to space other than within the inside boundaries of any body or mass or material formation of living creatures. In fact some people even assume that inanimate object also have such property as "a concept" within their own solid structure.
). Do not forget that as we speak of existence as inseparable from space and time, such a relationship is established in time, meaning that whoever has a concept of whatever object with whichever name will have the three inputs synchronized. And should he be not alone at that location, he/she etc. will also check that what/whom he sees as existing is real, "objective", and not "subjective" (prone to various errors) through a dialog with the members of his/her race or community.
, 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 (above), the notion of the transformation of embodied concepts through structural mapping makes a distinct contribution to the problem of concept formation.
or contemplation
of universals
. Concepts are specific to philosophy: science creates "functions
", and art "sensations". A concept is always signed: thus, Descartes' Cogito
or Kant
's "transcendental". It is a singularity
, not universal, and connects itself with others concepts, on a "plane of immanence
" traced by a particular philosophy. Concepts can jump from one plane of immanence to another, combining with other concepts and therefore engaging in a "becoming-Other
."
, force
, or acceleration
. Concepts help to integrate apparently unrelated observations and phenomena into viable hypotheses and theories, the basic ingredients of science. The concept map
is a tool that is used to help researchers visualize the inter-relationships between various concepts.
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.
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 (Morgolis:7).
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 appearance or 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.
can be viewed as either a conceptual hypothesis (where the abstract concepts form the meaning) or an operationalized hypothesis, which is situated in the real world by rules of interpretation. For example, take the simple hypothesis Education increases Income. The abstract notion of education and income (concepts) could have many meanings.
A conceptual hypothesis
cannot be tested. They need to be converted into operational hypothesis or the abstract meaning of education must be derived or operationalized to something in the real world that can be measured. Education could be measured by “years of school completed” or “highest degree completed” etc. Income could be measured by “hourly rate of pay” or “yearly salary”, etc. The system of concepts or conceptual framework
can take on many levels of complexity. When the conceptual framework
is very complex and incorporates causality or explanation they are generally referred to as a theory.
The noted philosopher of science Carl Gustav Hempel
says this more eloquently: “An adequate empirical interpretation turns a theoretical system into a testable theory: The hypothesis whose constituent terms have been interpreted become capable of test by reference to observable phenomena. Frequently the interpreted hypothesis will be derivative hypotheses of the theory; but their confirmation or disconfirmation by empirical data will then immediately strengthen or weaken also the primitive hypotheses from which they were derived.”
Hempel provides a useful metaphor that describes the relationship between the conceptual framework
and the framework as it is observed and perhaps tested (interpreted framework): “The whole system floats, as it were, above the plane of observation and is anchored to it by rules of interpretation. These might be viewed as strings which are not part of the network but link certain points of the latter with specific places in the plane of observation. By virtue of those interpretative connections, the network can function as a scientific theory”.
Academic discipline
An academic discipline, or field of study, is a branch of knowledge that is taught and researched at the college or university level. Disciplines are defined , and recognized by the academic journals in which research is published, and the learned societies and academic departments or faculties to...
s. Particularly in philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and cognitive sciences the term is much used and much discussed. WordNet defines concept: "conception, construct (an abstract
Abstraction
Abstraction is a process by which higher concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal concepts, first principles, or other methods....
or general idea
Idea
In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...
inferred or derived from specific instances)". However, the meaning of the term concept is much disputed. Philosopher Edouard Machery (2011), for example, argues that theories of concepts in philosophy and in psychology have distinct goals and therefore do not share the same understanding of the term concept. He writes (p. 247):
- "The research on concepts in psychology and neuropsychology has reached a point where drastic conceptual changes are required. The theoretical term "concept" should be eliminated from the vocabulary of contemporary psychology and should be replaced with terms that are more apropriate from fulfilling psychologists' goals, such as "prototype," "exemplar" and "theory.""
A concept is typically associated with a corresponding representation in a language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
or symbology
Symbology
Symbology concerns the study of symbols.Symbology may also refer to:-Academics:* Semiotics, study of signs and symbols* Iconography, branch of art history which studies images...
; however, some concepts do not have a linguistic representation, which can make them more difficult to understand depending on a person's native language, such as a single meaning of a term
Terminology
Terminology is the study of terms and their use. Terms are words and compound words that in specific contexts are given specific meanings, meanings that may deviate from the meaning the same words have in other contexts and in everyday language. The discipline Terminology studies among other...
.
There are prevailing theories
Philosophical theory
In the general sense, a philosophical theory is a theory that explains or accounts for a general philosophy or specific branch of philosophy. While any sort of thesis or opinion may be termed a theory, in analytic philosophy it is thought best to reserve the word "theory" for systematic,...
in contemporary philosophy
Contemporary philosophy
Contemporary philosophy is the present period in the history of Western philosophy beginning at the end of the 19th century with the professionalization of the discipline and the rise of analytic and continental philosophy....
which attempt to explain the nature of concepts. The representational theory of mind proposes that concepts are mental representation
Mental representation
A representation, in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, is a hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality, or else a mental process that makes use of such a symbol; "a formal system for making explicit certain entities or types...
s, while the semantic theory of concepts (originating with Frege
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on...
's distinction between concept and object
Concept and object
In the philosophy of language, the distinction between concept and object is attributable to the German philosopher Gottlob Frege.According to Frege, any sentence that expresses a singular thought consists of an expression that signifies an Object together with a predicate In the philosophy of...
) holds that they are abstract objects. Idea
Idea
In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...
s are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear to the mind as images, while some ideas appear to. Many philosophers consider concepts to be a fundamental ontological category of being
Being
Being , is an English word used for conceptualizing subjective and objective aspects of reality, including those fundamental to the self —related to and somewhat interchangeable with terms like "existence" and "living".In its objective usage —as in "a being," or "[a] human being" —it...
.
The term "concept" is traced back to 1554–60 (Latin conceptum - "something conceived"), but what is today termed "the classical theory of concepts" is the theory of Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
on the definition of terms. The meaning of "concept" is explored in mainstream information science
Information science
-Introduction:Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information...
, cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
, metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
, and philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
. In computer and information science contexts, especially, the term 'concept' is often used in unclear or inconsistent ways.
A posteriori abstractions
John LockeJohn Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
's description of a general idea corresponds to a description of a concept. According to Locke, a general idea is created by abstracting, drawing away, or removing the uncommon characteristic or characteristics from several particular ideas. The remaining common characteristic is that which is similar to all of the different individuals. For example, the abstract general idea or concept that is designated by the word "red
Red
Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 630–740 nm. Longer wavelengths than this are called infrared , and cannot be seen by the naked eye...
" is that characteristic which is common to apples, cherries, and blood. The abstract general idea or concept that is signified by the word "dog
Dog
The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...
" is the collection of those characteristics which are common to Airedales, Collies, and Chihuahuas.
In the same tradition as Locke, John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
stated that general conceptions are formed through abstraction. A general conception is the common element among the many images of members of a class. "...[W]hen we form a set of phenomena into a class, that is, when we compare them with one another to ascertain in what they agree, some general conception is implied in this mental operation" (A System of Logic
A System of Logic
A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive is an 1843 book by English philosopher John Stuart Mill. In this work, he formulated the five principles of inductive reasoning that are known as Mill's methods.-References:...
, Book IV, Ch. II). Mill did not believe that concepts exist in the mind before the act of abstraction. "It is not a law of our intellect, that, in comparing things with each other and taking note of their agreement, we merely recognize as realized in the outward world something that we already had in our minds. The conception originally found its way to us as the result of such a comparison. It was obtained (in metaphysical phrase) by abstraction from individual things" (Ibid.).
For Schopenhauer, empirical concepts "...are mere abstractions from what is known through intuitive perception
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
, and they have arisen from our arbitrarily thinking away or dropping of some qualities and our retention of others." (Parerga and Paralipomena
Parerga and Paralipomena
Parerga and Paralipomena is a collection of philosophical reflections by Arthur Schopenhauer published in 1851...
, Vol. I, "Sketch of a History of the Ideal and the Real"). In his On the Will in Nature, "Physiology and Pathology," Schopenhauer said that a concept is "drawn off from previous images ... by putting off their differences. This concept is then no longer intuitively perceptible, but is denoted and fixed merely by words." Nietzsche, who was heavily influenced by Schopenhauer, wrote: "Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal. No leaf ever wholly equals another, and the concept 'leaf' is formed through an arbitrary abstraction from these individual differences, through forgetting the distinctions..."
By contrast to the above philosophers, Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
held that the account of the concept as an abstraction of experience is only partly correct. He called those concepts that result of abstraction "a posteriori concepts" (meaning concepts that arise out of experience). An empirical or an a posteriori
A Posteriori
Apart from the album, some additional remixes were released exclusively through the iTunes Store. They are:*"Eppur si muove" – 6:39*"Dreaming of Andromeda" Apart from the album, some additional remixes were released exclusively through the iTunes Store. They are:*"Eppur si muove" (Tocadisco...
concept is a general representation (Vorstellung) or non-specific thought of that which is common to several specific perceived objects (Logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
, I, 1., §1, Note 1).
A concept is a common feature or characteristic. Kant investigated the way that empirical a posteriori concepts are created.
Kant's description of the making of a concept has been paraphrased as "...to conceive is essentially to think in abstraction what is common to a plurality of possible instances..." (H.J. Paton, Kant's Metaphysics of Experience, I, 250). In his discussion of Kant, Christopher Janaway wrote: "...generic concepts are formed by abstraction from more than one species."
A priori concepts
Kant declared that human minds possess pure or a prioriA priori and a posteriori (philosophy)
The terms a priori and a posteriori are used in philosophy to distinguish two types of knowledge, justifications or arguments...
concepts. Instead of being abstracted from individual perceptions, like empirical concepts, they originate in the mind itself. He called these concepts categories
Category (Kant)
In Kant's philosophy, a category is a pure concept of the understanding. A Kantian category is a characteristic of the appearance of any object in general, before it has been experienced...
, in the sense of the word that means predicate
Predicate (grammar)
There are two competing notions of the predicate in theories of grammar. Traditional grammar tends to view a predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies. The other understanding of predicates is inspired from work in predicate calculus...
, attribute, characteristic, or quality
Quality (philosophy)
A quality is an attribute or a property. Attributes are ascribable, by a subject, whereas properties are possessible. In contemporary philosophy, the idea of qualities and especially how to distinguish certain kinds of qualities from one another remains controversial.-Background:Aristotle analyzed...
. But these pure categories are predicates of things in general, not of a particular thing. According to Kant, there are 12 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
Schema (Kant)
In Kantian philosophy, a schema is the procedural rule by which a category or pure, non-empirical concept is associated with a mental image of an object...
.
Conceptual structure
It seems intuitively obvious that concepts must have some kind of structure. Up until recently, the dominant view of conceptual structure was a containment model, associated with the classical view of concepts. According to this model, a concept is endowed with certain necessary and sufficient conditions in their description which unequivocally determine an extension. The containment model allows for no degrees; a thing is either in, or out, of the concept's extension. By contrast, the inferential model understands conceptual structure to be determined in a graded manner, according to the tendency of the concept to be used in certain kinds of inferences. As a result, concepts do not have a kind of structure that is in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions; all conditions are contingent (Margolis:5).However, some theorists claim that primitive concepts lack any structure at all. For instance, Jerry Fodor
Jerry Fodor
Jerry Alan Fodor is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist. He holds the position of State of New Jersey Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and is the author of many works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, in which he has laid the groundwork for the...
presents his Asymmetric Dependence Theory as a way of showing how a primitive concept's content is determined by a reliable relationship between the information in mental contents and the world. These sorts of claims are referred to as "atomistic", because the primitive concept is treated as if it were a genuine atom.
One possible and likely structure
Concepts are formed by people's (or other) minds while reflecting upon their environment, subject to their sensory organs/sensors and the way such minds are in contact with their immediate and distant environment. The location of concepts is therefore assumed to be within the mind of such an organism/mechanism, more specifically in their head or equivalent place deemed to be the organ used for thinking (system of nerves or equivalent). However Concepts can be expressed in language and externalised by writing or other means such as Wikipedia. Others hold different views, such as Carl JungCarl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
, who holds that concepts may be attributed to space other than within the inside boundaries of any body or mass or material formation of living creatures. In fact some people even assume that inanimate object also have such property as "a concept" within their own solid structure.
The dual nature of concepts
Clearly, the location of concepts is not decided for good yet, but it looks certain that they are related to the external world or the environment, of which of course such a living and "thinking" creature is a part of. Thus a concept is started from outside, in the relation of conception, hence the subject is subjected to an object and has a concept of that object in a black box usually referred to as the mind. Such a content of the mind is then related to the original object that is reflected in and by the mind (for short) and it is also given another form to enable the creature to communicate about his/her/its experience of that object. In case of humans, it is usually a symbol or sign, maybe that of a language which is then also related to the external object and the internal concept in the triangle of meaning (which is the same as the triangle of referenceTriangle of reference
The triangle of reference is a model of how linguistic symbols are related to the objects they represent. The triangle was published in The Meaning of Meaning by Ogden and Richards...
). Do not forget that as we speak of existence as inseparable from space and time, such a relationship is established in time, meaning that whoever has a concept of whatever object with whichever name will have the three inputs synchronized. And should he be not alone at that location, he/she etc. will also check that what/whom he sees as existing is real, "objective", and not "subjective" (prone to various errors) through a dialog with the members of his/her race or community.
Embodied content
In cognitive linguisticsCognitive linguistics
In linguistics, cognitive linguistics refers to the branch of linguistics that interprets language in terms of the concepts, sometimes universal, sometimes specific to a particular tongue, which underlie its forms...
, 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
Conceptual blending
Conceptual Blending is a general theory of cognition. According to this theory, elements and vital relations from diverse scenarios are "blended" in a subconscious process known as Conceptual Blending, which is assumed to be ubiquitous to everyday thought and language...
). A common class of blends are metaphors. This theory contrasts with the rationalist view that concepts are perceptions (or recollections, in Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
'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 (above), the notion of the transformation of embodied concepts through structural mapping makes a distinct contribution to the problem of concept formation.
Concepts and metaphilosophy
A long and well-established tradition philosophy posits that philosophy itself is nothing more than conceptual analysis. This view has its proponents in contemporary literature as well as historical. According to Deleuze and Guattari's What Is Philosophy? (1991), philosophy is the activity of creating concepts. This creative activity differs from previous definitions of philosophy as simple reasoning, communicationCommunication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
or contemplation
Contemplation
The word contemplation comes from the Latin word contemplatio. Its root is also that of the Latin word templum, a piece of ground consecrated for the taking of auspices, or a building for worship, derived either from Proto-Indo-European base *tem- "to cut", and so a "place reserved or cut out" or...
of universals
Universal (metaphysics)
In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. For example, suppose there are two chairs in a room, each of...
. Concepts are specific to philosophy: science creates "functions
Function (biology)
A function is part of an answer to a question about why some object or process occurred in a system that evolved through a process of selection. Thus, function refers forward from the object or process, along some chain of causation, to the goal or success...
", and art "sensations". A concept is always signed: thus, Descartes' Cogito
Cogito ergo sum
is a philosophical Latin statement proposed by . The simple meaning of the phrase is that someone wondering whether or not they exist is, in and of itself, proof that something, an "I", exists to do the thinking — However this "I" is not the more or less permanent person we call "I"...
or Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
's "transcendental". It is a singularity
Mathematical singularity
In mathematics, a singularity is in general a point at which a given mathematical object is not defined, or a point of an exceptional set where it fails to be well-behaved in some particular way, such as differentiability...
, not universal, and connects itself with others concepts, on a "plane of immanence
Plane of immanence
Plane of immanence is a founding concept in the metaphysics or ontology of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Immanence, meaning "existing or remaining within" generally offers a relative opposition to transcendence, a divine or metaphysical beyond or outside...
" traced by a particular philosophy. Concepts can jump from one plane of immanence to another, combining with other concepts and therefore engaging in a "becoming-Other
Other
The Other or Constitutive Other is a key concept in continental philosophy; it opposes the Same. The Other refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is Other than the initial concept being considered...
."
Concepts in epistemology
Concepts are vital to the development of scientific knowledge. For example, it would be difficult to imagine physics without concepts like: energyEnergy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
, force
Force
In physics, a force is any influence that causes an object to undergo a change in speed, a change in direction, or a change in shape. In other words, a force is that which can cause an object with mass to change its velocity , i.e., to accelerate, or which can cause a flexible object to deform...
, or acceleration
Acceleration
In physics, acceleration is the rate of change of velocity with time. In one dimension, acceleration is the rate at which something speeds up or slows down. However, since velocity is a vector, acceleration describes the rate of change of both the magnitude and the direction of velocity. ...
. Concepts help to integrate apparently unrelated observations and phenomena into viable hypotheses and theories, the basic ingredients of science. The concept map
Concept map
For concept maps in generic programming, see Concept .A concept map is a diagram showing the relationships among concepts. It is a graphical tool for organizing and representing knowledge....
is a tool that is used to help researchers visualize the inter-relationships between various concepts.
Ontology of concepts
Although the mainstream literature in cognitive science regards the concept as a kind of mental particular, it has been suggested by some theorists that concepts are real things (Margolis:8). In most radical form, the realist about concepts attempts to show that the supposedly mental processes are not mental at all; rather, they are abstract entities, which are just as real as any mundane object.Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
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
Kurt Gödel
Kurt Friedrich Gödel was an Austrian logician, mathematician and philosopher. Later in his life he emigrated to the United States to escape the effects of World War II. One of the most significant logicians of all time, Gödel made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the...
as a result of certain puzzles that he took to arise from the phenomenological accounts.
Gottlob Frege
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on...
, 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 (Morgolis:7).
According to Carl Benjamin Boyer
Carl Benjamin Boyer
Carl Benjamin Boyer was a historian of sciences, and especially mathematics. David Foster Wallace called him the "Gibbon of math history"....
, 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
Derivative
In calculus, a branch of mathematics, the derivative is a measure of how a function changes as its input changes. Loosely speaking, a derivative can be thought of as how much one quantity is changing in response to changes in some other quantity; for example, the derivative of the position of a...
and the integral
Integral
Integration is an important concept in mathematics and, together with its inverse, differentiation, is one of the two main operations in calculus...
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
Limit (mathematics)
In mathematics, the concept of a "limit" is used to describe the value that a function or sequence "approaches" as the input or index approaches some value. The concept of limit allows mathematicians to define a new point from a Cauchy sequence of previously defined points within a complete metric...
in which quantities are on the verge of nascence or evanescence, that is, coming into or going out of appearance or 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.
Concepts in empirical investigations
Concepts, as abstract units of meaning, play a key role in the development and testing of theories. For example, a simple relational hypothesisHypothesis
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...
can be viewed as either a conceptual hypothesis (where the abstract concepts form the meaning) or an operationalized hypothesis, which is situated in the real world by rules of interpretation. For example, take the simple hypothesis Education increases Income. The abstract notion of education and income (concepts) could have many meanings.
A conceptual hypothesis
Hypothesis
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...
cannot be tested. They need to be converted into operational hypothesis or the abstract meaning of education must be derived or operationalized to something in the real world that can be measured. Education could be measured by “years of school completed” or “highest degree completed” etc. Income could be measured by “hourly rate of pay” or “yearly salary”, etc. The system of concepts or conceptual framework
Conceptual framework
A conceptual framework is used in research to outline possible courses of action or to present a preferred approach to an idea or thought. For example, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin used the "hedgehogs" versus "foxes" approach; a "hedgehog" might approach the world in terms of a single organizing...
can take on many levels of complexity. When the conceptual framework
Conceptual framework
A conceptual framework is used in research to outline possible courses of action or to present a preferred approach to an idea or thought. For example, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin used the "hedgehogs" versus "foxes" approach; a "hedgehog" might approach the world in terms of a single organizing...
is very complex and incorporates causality or explanation they are generally referred to as a theory.
The noted philosopher of science Carl Gustav Hempel
Carl Gustav Hempel
Carl Gustav "Peter" Hempel was a philosopher of science and a major figure in 20th-century logical empiricism...
says this more eloquently: “An adequate empirical interpretation turns a theoretical system into a testable theory: The hypothesis whose constituent terms have been interpreted become capable of test by reference to observable phenomena. Frequently the interpreted hypothesis will be derivative hypotheses of the theory; but their confirmation or disconfirmation by empirical data will then immediately strengthen or weaken also the primitive hypotheses from which they were derived.”
Hempel provides a useful metaphor that describes the relationship between the conceptual framework
Conceptual framework
A conceptual framework is used in research to outline possible courses of action or to present a preferred approach to an idea or thought. For example, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin used the "hedgehogs" versus "foxes" approach; a "hedgehog" might approach the world in terms of a single organizing...
and the framework as it is observed and perhaps tested (interpreted framework): “The whole system floats, as it were, above the plane of observation and is anchored to it by rules of interpretation. These might be viewed as strings which are not part of the network but link certain points of the latter with specific places in the plane of observation. By virtue of those interpretative connections, the network can function as a scientific theory”.
Publications
- The History of Calculus and its Conceptual Development, Carl Benjamin BoyerCarl Benjamin BoyerCarl Benjamin Boyer was a historian of sciences, and especially mathematics. David Foster Wallace called him the "Gibbon of math history"....
, Dover PublicationsDover PublicationsDover Publications is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward Cirker and his wife, Blanche. It publishes primarily reissues, books no longer published by their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books in the public domain. The original published editions may be...
, ISBN 0-486-60509-4 - The Writings of William James, University of Chicago PressUniversity of Chicago PressThe University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including Critical Inquiry, and a wide array of...
, ISBN 0-226-39188-4 - LogicLogicIn philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
, Immanuel KantKANTKANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
, Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-25650-2 - A System of LogicA System of LogicA System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive is an 1843 book by English philosopher John Stuart Mill. In this work, he formulated the five principles of inductive reasoning that are known as Mill's methods.-References:...
, John Stuart Mill, University Press of the Pacific, ISBN 1-4102-0252-6 - Parerga and Paralipomena, Arthur Schopenhauer, Volume I, Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
, ISBN 0-19-824508-4 - What is Philosophy?, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
- 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), pages 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 PressMIT PressThe MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts .-History:...
pp. 3–81, 1999. - Birger Hjørland. (2009). Concept Theory. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(8), 1519–1536
- Georgij Yu. Somov (2010). Concepts and Senses in Visual Art: Through the example of analysis of some works by Bruegel the Elder. SemioticaSemioticaSemiotica is an academic journal covering semiotics. It is the official journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies.-Publication:Since 2000, the journal publishes five issues per year. It is published in English and French....
182 (1/4), 475–506. - Daltrozzo J, Vion-Dury J, Schön D. (2010). Music and Concepts. Horizons in Neuroscience Research 4: 157-167. http://daltrozzo.net78.net/papers/Daltrozzo_et_al_2011.pdf
External links
- E. Margolis and S. Lawrence (2006),
- Blending and Conceptual Integration
- Conceptual Science and Mathematical Permutations
- Concept Mobiles Latest concepts
- v:Conceptualize: A Wikiversity Learning Project
- Concept simultaneously translated in several languages and meanings
- Product Research and Conceptualization