Concept: passages from the original texts

Concept

Overview

A concept is a fundamental unit of cognition that classifies entities and encodes shared features. Concepts make it possible to form and combine ideas, draw inferences, and refer to external objects. They act as the meanings of words and play a central role in many cognitive processes, including perception, memory, and reasoning. Researchers distinguish different types of concepts based on their internal structure, mode of acquisition, and domain. These include simple and complex concepts, learned and innate concepts, concrete and abstract concepts, and natural and logical concepts.

The classical theory holds that concepts are essentially definitions, each characterized by fixed rules determining to which entities the concept applies. Prototype theory rejects this outlook, arguing that concept membership depends on similarity to a prototype—a cluster of features typically associated with the category. According to exemplar theory, similarity derives from individual memories of concrete instances rather than a single prototypical summary representation. Theory theory maintains that concepts are embedded in domain-specific theories, while conceptual atomism argues that lexical concepts are separate units without internal structure. Philosophers debate whether concepts are mental representations or abstract objects that exist independently of individual minds.

Concept learning is the process of acquiring a new concept, which is required before an individual can use it. Suggested learning mechanisms include associative learning, in which similarities are gradually noticed as learners encounter instances, and hypothesis testing, which involves formulating testable rules. Nativism and empiricism are competing theories about whether there are inborn concepts not learned from experience. Researchers also examine how concept learning develops from childhood to adulthood, how nonhuman animals form concepts, and how computers can model and acquire concepts.

Concepts are relevant to many fields, including psychology, philosophy, and linguistics. Inquiry into their nature originated in antiquity and became a central topic in the 20th century as researchers discussed various theories of concepts and the cognitive mechanisms underlying them.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Concept is discussed.

The concept of twelve is by no means thought by merely thinking of the combination of seven and five; and analyse this possible sum as we may, we shall not discover twelve in the concept. We must go beyond these concepts, by calling to our aid some concrete image (Anschauung), i.e., either our five fingers, or five points (as Segner has it in his Arithmetic), and we must add successively the units of the five, given…
Immanuel Kant, Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
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The will, regarded as the faculty of desire, is (in this view) one of the many natural causes in the world, viz. that cause which acts in accordance with concepts. All that is represented as possible (or necessary) by means of a will is called practically possible (or necessary); as distinguished from the physical possibility or necessity of an effect, whose cause is not determined to causality by concepts (but in…
Immanuel Kant, Kant's Critique of Judgement
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This is merely a derived and secondary characteristic, and, as a matter of fact, does not always exist, though it must always exist potentially. This characteristic arises from the fact that a concept is an idea of an idea, _i.e._, its whole nature consists in its relation to another idea; but as it is not this idea itself, which is generally an idea of perception and therefore belongs to quite a different class…
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
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This is only another form of the old ideological, _a priori_ method so called, which learned the properties of an object not from the object itself but derived them by proof from the concept of the object. First you derive a concept of the object from the actual object, then you turn the spit and measure the object in terms of its derivative the concept. The concept is not shaped after the pattern of the object but…
Friedrich Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism
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Primarily, it is directed at the formation and use of concepts, and the concept is only a symbol that can be substituted for experiences. A well-built concept is a part of a system of concepts where relations have taken the place of real connections in such a fashion that, forgetting the actuality, it is possible to present situations that have never occurred or at least are not immediately given at the time and…
John Dewey, Creative Intelligence
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Concept

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Concept

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