Editing Concept (section)

== 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.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last1=Margolis|first1=Eric|last2=Laurence|first2=Stephen|year=2007|title=The Ontology of Concepts—Abstract Objects or Mental Representations?|journal=Noûs|volume=41|issue=4|pages=561–593|citeseerx=10.1.1.188.9995|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0068.2007.00663.x}}</ref>

=== 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 attitude]]s'' (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.<ref>[[Jerry Fodor]], ''Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong''</ref>

==== The physicalist view of concepts ====
{{See also|Physicalism}}In a [[physicalism|physicalist]] [[philosophy of mind|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.<ref name="Origin of Concepts">{{cite book|title=The Origin of Concepts|last=Carey|first=Susan|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2009|isbn=978-0-19-536763-8}}</ref><ref name="Big Book">{{cite book|title=The Big Book of Concepts|last=Murphy|first=Gregory|publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology|year=2002|isbn=978-0-262-13409-5}}</ref> Concepts are mental representations that allow us to draw appropriate inferences about the type of entities we encounter in our everyday lives.<ref name="Big Book"/> Concepts do not encompass all mental representations, but are merely a subset of them.<ref name="Origin of Concepts"/> The use of concepts is necessary to cognitive processes such as [[categorization]], [[memory]], [[decision making]], [[learning]], and [[inference]].<ref>McCarthy, Gabby (2018) "Introduction to Metaphysics". pg. 35</ref>

Concepts are thought to be stored in long term [[Cerebral cortex|cortical]] memory,<ref>Eysenck. M. W., (2012) Fundamentals of Cognition (2nd) Psychology Taylor & Francis</ref> 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 principle (law)|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|Abstract object theory}}

The semantic view of concepts suggests that concepts are [[Abstract and concrete|abstract]] objects. In this view, concepts are abstract objects of a category out of a human's mind rather than some mental representations.<ref name=":1"/>

There is debate as to the relationship between concepts and [[natural language]].<ref name="Stanford Encycl"/> 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 (semantics)|extension]].<ref name="Origin of Concepts"/> Concepts that can be equated to a single word are called "lexical concepts".<ref name="Stanford Encycl"/>

The study of concepts and conceptual structure falls into the disciplines of [[linguistics]], [[philosophy]], [[psychology]], and [[cognitive science]].<ref name="Big Book"/>

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. 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.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

==== ''A priori'' concepts and ''a posteriori'' concepts ====
{{Main article|A priori and a posteriori|Category (Kant)}}

[[Immanuel Kant|Kant]] maintained the view that human minds possess not only empirical or ''a posteriori'' concepts, but also pure or ''[[a priori and a posteriori|a priori]]'' concepts. Instead of being abstracted from individual perceptions, like empirical concepts, they originate in the mind itself. He called these concepts [[category (Kant)|categories]], in the sense of the word that means [[predicate (grammar)|predicate]], attribute, characteristic, or [[quality (philosophy)|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 ''[[Empirical evidence|a posteriori]]'' concept, Kant employed the technical concept of the [[schema (Kant)|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 §1, Note 1)

A concept is a common feature or characteristic. Kant investigated the way that empirical ''a posteriori'' concepts are created.
{{Blockquote|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====
{{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|date=December 2011}}

==== Realist universal concepts ====
{{Main|Platonic realism}}
[[Platonism|Platonist]] views of the mind construe concepts as abstract objects.<ref name="concepts core readings">{{cite book|title=Concepts and Cognitive Science|author=Stephen Lawrence|author2=Eric Margolis|publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology|year=1999|isbn=978-0-262-13353-1|location=in Concepts: Core Readings|pages=3–83}}</ref> [[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.<ref>'Godel's Rationalism', [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel/#GodRat Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]</ref>

==== Sense and reference ====
{{Main|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.<ref name=":1"/>

==== 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 [[limit (mathematics)|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.