What is a concept? A concept is an abstract idea.

We use concepts at university and

in our everyday lives, to make sense of ourselves, others, and the world around us.
Everyday examples of concepts: The concept ‘belonging’ is likely to be familiar to all
of us. It is an abstract idea we use to explain our own and others’ feelings, behaviour,
practices, values and identities. It is common for us to make sense of our own
experiences in terms of feeling a sense of belonging, or a lack of belonging, for
example. Another concept familiar to all of us is love. We use this abstract idea to
describe, understand, and evaluate our relationships with others, and with
ourselves.

A concept is an idea that is applied to all objects in a group. It is the way people see
and understand something. The name used to identify a concept (the concept's label)
is a "term". For example, the word "Dog" is the term to identify the concept of what
a dog is. Everything that a person knows about a dog is the concept of the term dog.
Different terms can be used to identify the same concept. Car and Automobile
are synonyms for the same concept. Different languages have different terms for the
same concept. This is what makes translation possible. The terms may be different in
each language, but the concept is the same. The concept of jumping is the same to a
person from Englandand a person from Italy, but one person uses the term "Jump"
to mean the concept and the other person uses "Salto".

Concept
Imagine that you're walking down the street. You're heading towards your home and
eating a piece of fruit. As you walk, a dog comes trotting up to you.
When I said words like 'street,' 'home,' 'fruit,' and 'dog,' what did you imagine? Did
you picture a quiet, suburban street with neatly manicured lawns or a busy city
street packed with tourists? Were you eating an apple or an olive? Did you picture
your home as a mansion, an apartment, a boat? What kind of dog came up to you?
A concept is a way to classify the world in your mind. Terms like 'dog,' 'home,' or
'fruit' can mean many things. But classifying them allows us to save space in our
memory and to quickly make assumptions, predictions, and generalizations about
the world around us.
Take the word 'dog,' for example. Instead of telling you to imagine a dog coming up
to you, I could have said, 'There's a 4-legged thing with a wagging tail and fur that
comes up and barks at you.' But that's a lot of words. It's much simpler to fall back
on the concept of dog, knowing that when I say 'dog,' you'll imagine all of those
things: four legs, a tail, fur, and barking. This is because all of those characteristics
are associated with the concept of dog.
Every concept is part of a hierarchical model of concept classification, which basically
just means that there are more and less specific ways of classifying things. Let's look
at the different levels of classification that are common in a hierarchical model of
concepts.

A concept is an abstract idea representing the fundamental characteristics of what it

represents. Concepts arise as abstractions or generalisations from experience or the
result of a transformation of existing ideas. The 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 treated in many if not most disciplines both explicitly, such
as in linguistics, psychology, philosophy, etc., and implicitly, such as in mathematics,
physics, etc. In informal use the word concept often just means any idea, but
formally it involves the abstraction component. These concepts are then stored in
long term memory

In metaphysics, and especially ontology, a concept is a fundamental category of

existence. In contemporary philosophy, there are at least three prevailing ways to
understand what a concept is:

There are hierarchical organizations of concepts and they are at the top,
superordinate, the middle basic level categories, and at the bottom, subordinate
categories Eysenck. M. W., (2012) Fundamentals of Cognition (2nd) Psychology
Taylor & Francis. It would go furniture, chair, and easy chair.

1. Concepts as mental representations, where concepts are entities that exist in the
brain (mental objects);
2. Concepts as abilities, where concepts are abilities peculiar to cognitive agents
(mental states);

Concepts as Fregean senses, where concepts are abstract objects, as opposed to

mental objects and mental states.

The term "concept" is traced back to 1554–60 (Latin conceptum – "something

conceived"), but what is today termed "the classical theory of concepts" is the
theory of Aristotle on the definition of terms. The meaning of "concept" is explored
in mainstream information science, cognitive science, metaphysics, and philosophy
of mind. In computer and information science contexts, especially, the term
'concept' is often used in unclear or inconsistent ways.

In a platonist theory of mind, concepts are construed as abstract objects. This debate
concerns the ontological status of concepts – what they are really like.
There is debate as to the relationship between concepts and natural language.
However, it is necessary at least to begin by understanding that the concept "dog" is
philosophically distinct from the things in the world grouped by this concept – or the
reference class or extension. Concepts that can be equated to a single word are
called "lexical concepts".

Study of concepts and conceptual structure falls into the disciplines of linguistics,
philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science.

In the simplest terms, a concept is a name or label that regards or treats an

abstraction as if it had concrete or material existence, such as a person, a place, or a
thing. It may represent a natural object that exists in the real world like a tree, an
animal, a stone, etc. It may also name an artificial (man-made) object like a chair,
computer, house, etc. Abstract ideas and knowledge domains such as freedom,
equality, science, happiness, etc., are also symbolized by concepts. It is important to
realize that a concept is merely a symbol, a representation of the abstraction. The
word is not to be mistaken for the thing. For example, the word "moon" (a concept)
is not the large, bright, shape-changing object up in the sky, but only represents that
celestial object. Concepts are created (named) to describe, explain and capture
reality as it is known and understood.