Major Role Of Concepts As A Guiding Light For Human Beings

As human beings, we all want to make sense of the world, whether it be ideas about ourselves and others, objects, and our surroundings. One of the major ways our cognition allows us to do that is by forming concepts. According to Kunda (1999), a concept is “a mental representation of a category, class or group of objects, people, events, etc.” For example, we know what a chair looks like when we see one, regardless of the different types, designs and brands of chairs.

That is because we have a concept of what a chair is and looks like. Our brain uses concepts to designate a class to things in the world. Concepts allow us to draw suitable inferences about the type of objects and experiences we come across in our daily lives. Concepts are essential to cognitive processes such as categorization, decision making and inference. We form concepts so automatically that we don’t normally recognize ourselves carrying out these processes.

There are different theoretical frameworks that describe how concepts are formed. Some thinkers believe that we form these mental representations through social learning and adaptation of cultural values and norms. According to Lakoff (1987), An excellent way of understanding the mental world of an individual, group, scientific community, or culture is to find out how they organize their world into concepts. Through research, some theorists, such as Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky find that children form their own concepts through experiences, assimilating prevailing concepts such as cultural values, norms and belief from adults, which aid them in formulating their own concepts as they develop toward adulthood.

For example, this is saying that we form a concept of a cat because we were taught from a young age and learned what a cat looks like. We see thing and develop ideas about things based on our cultural norms and ideas. For example, in China the practice of foot binding where young girl feet were tight bound to modify the shape and size of their feet. This practice was encouraged for centuries and continues because of the cultural belief that bounded, small feet are beautiful and a sign of daintiness. However, in Western culture bounded feet are viewed as ugly and barbaric and even seen has a serious medical problem. This goes to show that concepts such as beauty differs between cultures.

Concepts serve us in many ways and help us carry out many tasks in our daily lives. Essentially, we use concepts as filters. They help us to classify and organize thinking. This simple means that by forming these mental representations we are about to group objects and people together to easier understand a situation. This help us to think and carry out mental tasks more efficiently. For example, the way we group individuals in the lunch cafeteria at school. Instead of learning everyone’s name and how they are as a person, we instead group the individuals who sit and hang with each other and classify them as a group such as “the mean girls” or “the nerds”. Also, when we see a yellow fruit with black stripes, we conceptualize this as a banana. Concepts also help us to infer additional attributes.

According to Bruner (1957), once we have classified an occurrence as fitting to a concept, we are able to go beyond the information given about that instance or occasion with the use of this concept. Therefore, if we classify an animal as a dog, we can deduce that it also barks, and bites and it may also be dangerous, so we stay far from it to avoid danger. With the concept of a lawyer we can infer that this person is highly educated since they had to go through many stages of schooling and pass the BAR examinations to become one and we also infer that the person can argue well. With this function of concepts individuals are able to expound on current thoughts and ideas in order to deduce further information about the world we live in and the things we encounter.

Concepts also help us in guiding attention and interpretations. This means that they provide a framework for making sense of incoming information (Kunda,1999). This function comes in handy when we are exposed to other culture and have no clue what is going on. We heavily rely on concepts to make sense of our experiences. For example, if someone from Jamaica was supposed to travel to china and attend a funeral, they would be confused but eventually conclude that they were at a funeral. This is because the mourning color in china is white which differs from the western mourning color which is black. However, they would eventually come to the realization that they were at a funeral because of the presence of a body in a coffin and crying people. Concepts help us to colour our reality. We can step into a building with crucifixes, a man preaching, and a congregation of people singing and know that we are in a church because of our interpretation of these concepts.

The interpretive function of concepts comes in when we observe our social world. Instead of just seeing an objective reality reveal before our eyes we take part in determining our own reality. Concepts also help in communication where the speaker can leave out many details because of the assumption that the listener already knows them. For example, if someone ask me “why are you running?” and I respond, “I saw a lion”, the answer seems quite appropriate. Because of your conceptual knowledge permits you to infer why I was running. Communication between people is immensely facilitated by a set of shared concepts. Markman and Makin (1998) have claimed that a key role in the shaping of concepts is the need to competently communicate. They state that an individual’s concepts become more systematic over time in order to clearly establish reference for another person that they may communicate and interact with. Concepts help us in other cognitive processes such categorization.

Concepts and categories are often confused as being the same thing, however they differ. A category is defined as a grouping of similar objects, events or people based on the features that define the similarity among those things. For example, if you go to a juice bar and look at the menu and see headings such as Sodas or Natural Juices, these are categories. Moskowitzs (2005), states that cognitive psychologists refer to a category as the set of examples picked out by the concept. Therefore, an example of a category would be a chair and your internal representation of this category in memory is a concept. A concept refers to a mentally possessed idea, whereas a category refers to a set of things that are grouped together. The concept dog is whatever psychological state signifies thoughts of dogs. The category dog consists of all the entities in the real world that are appropriately categorized as dogs.

There are different models used to explain concept formation. The Classical view basically states that concepts have a definitional structure. The classical view can be traced back the time of Socrates, in the Euthyphro, for instance, Socrates seeks to know what is piety, however what he seeks is not given in terms of, for example, a list of pious people or actions, nor is piety to be identified with what the gods love. Instead, Socrates seeks an account of piety in terms of some specification of what is shared by all things pious, that is, he seeks a specification of the essence of piety itself. According to Margolis (2012), satisfactory definitions essential to this theory generally take the form of a list of features. Features involved in the definition of a concept must be both required and acceptable for membership. Basically, categories membership is determined by matching a definition and a set of necessary and sufficient characteristics.

The classical view is also referred to as “the definitional view of concepts,” or “definitionism,” where a concept is defined by necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. For example, the concept of a triangle is defined as a closed figure with three sides. If the shape does not meet the criteria, then it cannot be considered a triangle. The classical view is very useful in the critical evaluation of arguments. For example, one argument in the abortion debate concerns whether fetuses have the status of moral persons or not. If they do, then since moral persons have the right not to be killed, therefore it would seem to follow that abortion is immoral. The classical view however does have its downfalls. It is very rigid and for most concepts it is hard to stipulate a complete set of essential and sufficient features. For example, is an ostrich is still a bird even though it does not meet the criteria of being able to fly.

The Probabilistic view states that a concept can be described by a list of features that are representative of it, however it is not defined by it. It goes against the classical view in that it describes the notion that concepts are systematized around family resemblances as opposed to features that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for categorization. For example, the ability to fly may be a feature of the concept bird, however not all birds fly. Some features may be necessary and measured heavily, but probabilistic features also influence categorization. This view was developed as a reaction against what was the overly analytic, rule-based classical view. Within the Probabilistic view there are two ways of conceptualizing categories which are the Prototype view and the Exemplar view.

The prototype view assumes that we form summary representations of categories which is referred to as a prototype. The prototype for a category consists of the most common attributes related with the members of the category. Once prototypes for a set of concepts have been determined, categorizations can be determined by how similar an object is to each of the prototypes. According to Rosch (1975), The likelihood of placing an object into a category increases as it becomes more similar to the category's prototype and less similar to other category prototypes. This prototype model can deal with problems faced by the classical view. There is no problem if defining rules for a category are hard or impossible to formulate. If concepts are organized around prototypes, then only characteristic features are expected and there is no need for necessary or sufficient features. For example, if an individual was in the the jungle and saw an animal on four legs, which whisker, ears and a tail that looked feline, one might conceptualize this animal as a type of cat. The prototype view however can lead to stereotyping and discrimination. For example, the prototype that many people have for a terrorist in their minds is most likely someone who is Middle eastern who practices Islam. This is wrong because not everyone who is middle eastern, and Muslim is a terrorist.

The exemplar view is different from the prototype view in that the categories are represented as a set of exemplars. A conceptual representation consists only of the cases that one has observed. The prototype representation for the category bird consists of the most typical bird, while an exemplar model represents the category bird by representing all the instances (exemplars) that belong to this category. So, we match it against other members that we would have encountered. So instead of thinking of an abstracted summary representation, we instead focus on specific instances. For example, if someone should ask you ‘Who is the best reggae artist?” you might say Bob Marley because he is your example of what a good reggae artist is based on your experience with his music.

Another model we use to explain concept formation is the Theory based view, where the relationship between an example a category is like that between theory and data. With this view classification is not based on matching attributes but is based on the right explanatory relationship of the theory shaping the event. This view states that people’s classifications depend on the theories they have about the world. Theories involve organized systems of knowledge. To support the use of theories in categorization, Murphy and Medin (1985), provide the example of a man jumping into a swimming pool fully clothed.

This man may be categorized as drunk because we have a theory of behavior and inebriation that explains the man’s action. They state that the labeling of the man’s behavior does not depend on corresponding features to the category of drunk. It not likely that a criterion of drunkenness would be “jumps into pools fully clothed.” Therefore, is not the similarity between the example and the category that determines the classification; it is theory that explains the behavior.

In conclusion we can gather that we conceptualize objects, people and experiences everyday without knowing and that concepts are essential to proper cognitive functioning. There are different ideas to how we form our concepts, but we can see that each model can be useful in some way our lives. Each model has it shortcomings such as the classical view being too rigid in its definitions and the prototype view leading to biases an stereotypes, however we still have use for them in our daily lives.