What is Concept: Definition and 1000 Discussions

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. As such, concepts are studied by several disciplines, such as linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and these disciplines are interested in the logical and psychological structure of concepts, and how they are put together to form thoughts and sentences. The study of concepts has served as an important flagship of an emerging interdisciplinary approach called cognitive science.In contemporary philosophy, there are at least three prevailing ways to understand what a concept is:
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 statesConcepts 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. For example, a basic-level concept would be "chair", with its superordinate, "furniture", and its subordinate, "easy chair".

Concepts may be exact, or inexact.
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.
Concepts are studied as components of human cognition in the cognitive science disciplines of linguistics, psychology and, philosophy, where an ongoing debate asks whether all cognition must occur through concepts. Concepts are used as formal tools or models in mathematics, computer science, databases and artificial intelligence where they are sometimes called classes, schema or categories. In informal use the word concept often just means any idea.

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  1. person_random_normal

    I Visualizing the Fourier transform using the center of mass concept

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  2. kahakura

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  3. G

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  4. R

    I Parallel Transport & Geodesics: Explained

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  5. Achintya

    Trouble with the concept of tension....

    ...
  6. S

    Understanding a Concept: Seeking Deeper Answers

    I have been trying to understand it but I couldn't can anyone illustrate with deeper answer?
  7. S

    I Bondi ##k##-factor concept from first principles

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  8. jisbon

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  9. L

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  10. Buzz Bloom

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  11. T

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  12. T

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  13. T

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  14. S

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  15. B

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  16. S

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  17. T

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  18. B

    Newton's Second Law for Translation and Rotation

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  19. hagopbul

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  20. A. Neumaier

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  21. Sophrosyne

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  22. Guidestone

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  23. archaic

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  24. B

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  25. B

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  26. Skyland

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  27. B

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  28. S

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  29. N

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  30. Y

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  31. jdou86

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  32. N

    I Measuring Star Radii with General Relativity

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  33. F

    I Infinity: The Limit Concept and Cantor Transfinites

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  34. YoungPhysicist

    B What exactly is this concept called? -- Finding "?" in x^2+16x+? to get (x+8)^2

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  35. C

    The concept of a force lifting a weight and the work done

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  36. S

    Understanding Force Components in a Hanging Box System

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  37. G

    Understanding an Elementary Torque Concept

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  38. I

    B Can I use three equations for the same concept?

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  39. R

    I Understanding the concept of infinity

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  40. Suyash Singh

    Chemistry Calculating Final Composition of Compounds in Haber's Process with 50% Yield

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  41. donaldparida

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  42. marosa4

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  43. Suyash Singh

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  44. pokemon123

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  45. zonde

    I Do these Bell inequalities rely on probability concept?

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  46. R

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  47. Aleoa

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  48. J

    B Why Does Vqp Need to be Tangential to Vq in Order for Q to Get Closest to P?

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  49. Robert Shaw

    I Does the concept of an "object" belong in Quantum Mechanics?

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  50. M

    Most effective method to self-learn a new mathematical topic and or concept?

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