Personal thoughts about learning, community and social affordances for knowledge creation

September 24, 2005

On the concept of a concept

What is a concept?

An abstraction?, cognitive building block, a container for idea(s)?, a
symbol & representation?, a tool for indexing, learning, memory and
navigation?, a fundamental language construct?, a reified cognitive artifact?,
a category? Concepts can be any unit of thought or a mental image formed
by generalization.

Any concept is more than its name, the links to related concepts define its
meaning, every concept has a life-cycle. A
concept is an abstract, universal psychical entity that serves to designate a
category or class of entities, events or relations. WikiPedia

So what does a concept look like?

Fuzzy or crisp boundaries with gradational or binary membership?, does the
essential meaning morph with community membership? is there a universal
classification of concept types?, is a concept both a personal or group
possession?

Our beliefs, world views, creativity and communication ability, depend on
the concepts we hold, how strongly we hold them and ways we can change them.
Concepts are the building blocks for analytical and mental models. Making
concepts explicit and visual helps promote learning, knowledge construction and
assists with memory retention.

We now have the means to access and navigate texts at the level of the contained
concepts. This has important implications for personal learning, JIT
knowledge provision, spawns new revenue models and helps with profile
building. Tagging gives concept level ways to classify and
retrieve works.

How are new concepts acquired?

Mostly from instances through; abstraction of invariant features, hypothesis
testing, selection of prototypes. Acquisition may be through language using
definitions, synonyms, analogy, and metaphor. A fundamental difference in
conceptual approach is found between 'lumpers & splitters'

Concept mapping

This article by Joe Novak
explores the theory, provides practical tools and tips for mapping concepts

Related questions

How are concepts related to
categories and classification?,

What are the 'hidden
politics' in concept formation and agreement,

How do concepts relate to
knowledge construction and 'bringing forth our worlds'?

Comments

Vacuity can be related to concepts in that concepts can be seen as representing the result of a mental form; of reaching into the unknown; of seeing something where previously nothing new was seen; of crossing a gap or closing a loop around some things that were not joined; or conversely of dividing some things that were unified.

Hi Denham. My take is a few years old and could be updated, but essentially it distinguishes between a percept as what you perceive, and a concept as what you conceptualize independent of sensory corroboration. A concept is like a blueprint without a building, in that regard. The term gets a lot of abuse. Was the idea of making the Sears tower like a few cigarette cylindars pushed up at different lengths in fact a concept? Or was it just a notion until enough engineering expertise could be brought to bear to make it viable?

From an ontological standpoint, you could say there is a continuum from inkling --> notion --> idea --> concept --> plan --> project --> finished work.