Concept
Categories: Epistemology | Philosophical terminology | Abstraction | Thought
A concept is an abstract, universal idea, notion, or entity that serves to designate a category or class of entities, events, or relations. Concepts are abstract in that they omit the differences of the things in their extension, treating them as if they were identical. They are universal in that they apply equally to every thing in their extension. Concepts are also the basic elements of propositions, much the same way a word is the basic semantic element of a sentence.
Concepts are bearers of meaning, as opposed to agents of meaning. A single concept can be expressed by any number of languages. The concept of dog can be expressed as Hund in German, as chien in French, and perro in Spanish. The fact that concepts are in some sense independent of language makes translation possible - words in various languages have identical meaning, because they express one and the same concept.
See also
- Abstraction
- Categorization
- Class (philosophy)
- Concept and object
- Conceptual art
- Conceptual framework
- Formal concept analysis
- Idea
- Memecs:Pojem
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