Talk:Concept

I'm thinking about implementing changes to this article with the hope of moving it in the direction of GA status. In its current form, the article has several unreferenced paragraphs and three "citation needed" tags. Its organization is rather confused: most of the subsubsections of the subsection "Concepts as abstract objects" are not examples of this ontological view and do not belong there. The article has a problem with promotional or editorializing language ("flagship", "Needless to say", "Popular demand (life) waits not for academia’s final say", "However popular or not, art actively imposes definiteness") and has some rather questionable claims ("Sort is itself another word for concept" and the claim that ideasthesia is somehow central to solving the hard problem of consciousness).

The article focuses almost exclusively on two topics: theories of ontology and theories of structure. As a result, it discusses various central topics only in passing or not at all. One is the different types of concepts, e.g. everyday vs scientific, innate vs learned, basic vs complex, and fuzzy vs precise. Another topic concerns the various roles of concepts, such as categorization, inference, explanation, learning, communication, planning, and decision-making. The relevance of concepts to fields such as psychology, linguistics, and philosophy, should be explored in more detail. Regarding philosophy, for example, conceptual analysis and conceptual engineering should be discussed. The topic of concept formation and concept learning should also get more attention. There are a few theories that are missing, like atomism vs holism, internalism vs externalism, nativism, exemplar theory, and hybrid views.

It might be good to have a separate definition section so that the lead can summarize the article rather than present information not found in the body. Ideasthesia and etymology currently have separate main sections, but they are not important enough for that. Their topics could be discussed in other sections instead, e.g. ideasthesia in the context of psychology and etymology in the definition section.

There are more issues to consider, but they can be addressed later since the points mentioned so far will already involve a lot of work to implement. I was hoping to get some feedback on these ideas and possibly other suggestions. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:00, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi, just a quick comment without having read the whole article thoroughly. To add to your points about the organization and the 'lead' section: currently, the article assumes a very academic/philosophical perspective from the first sentence. However, in common usage (and fields like marketing, communication, and design), a 'concept' is often understood as a practical framework or a creative idea. I now only see a section 'concept' on the Marketing page and a redirect from marketing concept. To improve the structure and clarity for a general audience, would it be an idea to clarify the scope in the lead? So explicitly state that this article focuses on the ontological and cognitive aspects, while perhaps adding a 'hatnote' or a brief section pointing to 'Applied Concepts' (like marketing or product development)? Maybe add a 'Practical Applications' or 'Usage in other fields' section? This could bridge the gap between 'concepts as mental representations' and how they are used to build brands, communication strategies, or business models. This might help prevent the 'confused organization' you mentioned by clearly separating the theoretical core from its practical use in other industries.

Coldbolt (talk) 20:24, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi Coldbolt and thanks for the input. I think it's a good idea to cover the meaning of concept in fields like marketing, communication, and design. I'm planning to have a section on field-specific understandings of concepts, so this topic would fit there. The lead section is usually the last part of the article I focus on. I'll see how this can be integrated into the lead when I get there. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:47, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi Phlsph7, glad to see this article getting some attention. One suggestion you didn't mention might be relations between concepts. I've heard something similar this saying a few times: "The thought space may not have a metric (distance) but it certainly has a topology (closeness)" For example, a the concept of a green apple is certainly closer to a red apple than a banana, and all of those are certainly closer to each other than to a microwave. I don't have a high-quality source for this off-hand but I'm sure I could find one if needed. Similarly, it could be worth mentioning the Universal approximation theorem for how computers like ChatGPT can seem to "understand" very abstract concepts by their vector database well-approximating the "concept space". – Farkle Griffen (talk) 21:08, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi Farkle Griffen, that's an interesting point. In semantics, there is the idea of semantic similarity, which seems to be closely related. There also appear to be sources on conceptual distance, such as . I'll look more into, maybe the topic could be mentioned in the context of linguistics or psychology. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:33, 16 March 2026 (UTC)