Editing Concept (section)

=== 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.)