We explain what a concept is, how it is formed and various examples. Also, the origin of the term and differences with a definition.
What is a concept?
A concept is a basic mental construction of the reasoning human, that is, a mental projection that allows us to understand, classify and communicate our experiences. From the perspective of many disciplines, it should be understood as the minimum logical unit of the knowledge.
The basic concepts, in fact, are the first thing that is acquired when starting a study, since they operate as a support for the more complex knowledge to come. If we want to learn from chemistry, we must start with the fundamental chemical concepts, if we want to know about literature, the same.
The word concept comes from Latin conceptum, derived from the verb concipere ("Contain" or "conceive"). Originally, this verb was used for what was contained within something, as the mother contains the fetus (in fact, in this case it is spoken of the conception), and with this sense it went on to designate the mental processes: a conceptum It is something that we have conceived in our mind, that is, something that has been formed within it.
In principle, the concepts arise in the development of the human mind as a tool to allow generalization, that is, they allow to handle categories of things and not have to refer to each one individually, also establishing a certain link with the language, or what is the same, a common language, especially in the case of academic disciplines.
However, the relationship between concepts and words is always problematic and diffuse, especially when subjectivities are taken into account, since the association between a word and a concept is not universal.
Concept and definition
Although they can be used synonymously in colloquial language, it is not advisable to confuse what a concept is (a mental image of a reality) with a definition: the description of the meanings or meanings of a given term, that is, of a lexical unit. While concepts are abstract cognitive units, definitions instead exist within the realm of language and a specific language.
Thus, for example, dictionaries contain definitions: uses of words, which can be expanded over time, vary in different senses or in different geographies, and which always refer to the word as a starting point.
Instead, concepts are generalizations that exist independently of the word used to describe them: a chemical reaction is a concept that corresponds to some words, but which may also be called a “chemical process”, varying its lexical unit without altering its abstract sense.
Concept formation
The formation of concepts in the human mind is the subject of specialized debate and discussion among scholars and connoisseurs. However, in very general terms it is assumed that the process occurs as follows:
- A concrete reality is perceived through the senses.
- An abstraction of what is perceived is made and its basic qualities are obtained.
- The perceived is associated with other pre-existing concepts to determine its category.
- The new concept is incorporated into knowledge through generalization.
Thus, for example, if we see a stone fall, we can abstract from the experience the concept of "falling", by associating it with the experience of other objects that we have seen do the same, and with other types of perceived movements.
Examples of concepts
From the point of view of logic, the concepts do not express any type of predicate, beyond their characteristics or their essence, that is, they do not affirm anything about whether they are true or false, since they do not have a predicate. Therefore, they correspond to the minimum parts of an idea (or a proposition), such as:
- Afraid
- Dog
- Fall
- Human
- Moral
- Sensible
- Good
- Evil
- Fly
- Planet