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. B

    Piston-Cylinder Concept Help

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  2. Abdul Wali

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  3. S

    How Does Newton's Third Law Apply When a Truck Pulls a Car?

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  4. A

    I Conceptual Question: Vector-Matrix Differential Equation

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  5. T

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  7. Mr Davis 97

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  9. R

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  10. C

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  11. D

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  12. **Mariam**

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  13. E

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  14. E

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  15. R

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  16. Phillane

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  17. Antonius

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  18. H

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  19. micromass

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  20. Z

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  21. Robin04

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  22. D

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  23. N

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  24. J

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  25. T

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  26. V

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  27. M

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  28. T

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  29. R

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  30. S

    What is the significance of thermal resistance in heat transfer?

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  31. M

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  32. A

    Spiral time concept - are there any credible......

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  33. B

    Mole concept Molar mass and mass no

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  34. kostoglotov

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  35. P

    Concept: Question on formation of parallel capacitors

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  36. A

    Photon as a Mathematical Concept in Theoretical Physics

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  37. A

    Photoelectric Effect (Concept)

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  38. U

    Understanding Force: Defining F=ma and Other Equations

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  39. Abhilash Goyal

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  40. W

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  41. Yam

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  42. P

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  43. S

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  44. Rodrigo Cesar

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  45. vktsn0303

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  46. Satvik Pandey

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  47. Enrico Fermi

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  48. AdityaDev

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  49. Shinwasha

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  50. G

    Can a Gaussian Surface Confirm Zero Electric Field Between Two Charges?

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