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Philosophy Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [concept]

90 questions
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Is there a parallel between Hegelian "essence" and Kantian "concept"?

I think I've found a paralelism between these two notions, at least to some extent. For Kant defines (in Logic, I, I, §1, also translated) concept as "an universal representation" Every knowledge, i.e. every representation referred with…
henrique
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What is the difference between an 'idea' and a 'concept'?

What is the difference between an 'idea' and a 'concept'? Has a distinction between the two terms been settled and accepted by most modern philosophers?
Hal
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What is meant by abstract concepts and concrete concepts? Aren't the former tautologous and latter contradictory?

There are two phrases that I had often seen in books but now after giving a deeper thought, I'm unable to wrap my head around them. These phrases are 'abstract concept' and 'concrete concept'. The word 'abstract' is an adjective that in itself means…
Harshit Rajput
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How does Kant derive the categories of the understanding from the logical forms of judgment in the Critique of Pure Reason?

I didn't arrive at any cogent and clear conception of the exact relation between Kant's logical forms of judgment and his categories, and most importantly, how he derives the latter from the former. "The same understanding - and through the same…
Ouazzani
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Essentialism and concepts

I've been reading an old logic text (Deductive Logic. George Stock. 1888) and he describes something very like Aristotle's notion of a definition, but in his description, it is clearly a matter of intensions, of concepts alone. His notion of a…
David Gudeman
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What does Nietzsche refer to with the "backworldsmen"?

I'm a rookie to philosophical thinking but trying my best to understand the concepts. I'd be appreciated if you could enlighten me about this: In Chapter 3 of Thus Spake Zarathustra, he is addressing to people who I understand from the "backworld".…
goodyonsen
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How could mathematics and logic exist without us, if they are concepts created by us independent of reality?

Would maths and logic exist if we didn't exist despite we created them, and do not have correspondence with reality?
user180164
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Did Wittgenstein consider the possibility of a private language with public content?

Wittgenstein criticized the idea that there could be a meaningful language that was only known in principle by one person. His insights have often been used to disregard the idea of private mental states (concepts, ideas, etc) to which our words…
Mos
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Do distinctions and concepts exist?

Before answering the question, keep in mind that I am a second-year Biology student, with a lack of formal study in Philosophy. Original post: I believe, all definitions, words, and concepts (abstract ideas) are arbitrary (here I define arbitrary…
Simon
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Is a paradox a concept?

Obviously 'paradox' is a concept, we name certain things to be so. We share the knowledge of those things through the use of language. But those things, "in themselves", those particular "instances of paradox", are they concepts? They seem neither…
christo183
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Is topology of cultural ideas and concepts studied in modern philosophy?

I am going to mumble about couple of things I really don't know and I am going to ask for guidance and further reading material. There is a field of mathematics called topology which studies continuous deformations of objects into each other and…
meguli
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What does Kierkegaard mean by recollection, repetition and remembrance?

I'm reading Either/Or and I'm progressing quite well with the book. I'm supplementing it with some external resources where needed, but for the most part I'm doing well without those, by the way, I'm reading Hong's translation, that not only is…
Ezequiel Barbosa
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Name of the theory where abstract concepts are considered only to exist within our mind

I'm be no means an expert in philosophical terms, but I want to learn more. My question is about whether there is a name for the idea that abstract concepts (e.g. Goodness, baddness, value, etc...) exist only within our mind. I don't mean that to…
Morella Almånd
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In which text/paper was the concept of dialetheism first introduced as a serious position?

More or less the question title. My final-year logic course a few years back covered a number of non-classical logics (deontic, Kleene/Lukasiewicz multi-valued, etc.), however dialetheism was left as little more than a footnote in spite of a…
DTR
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Can concrete objects have multiple occurrences?

I was reading SEP article on types and tokens, and got interested in the concept of 'occurrence'. We would describe the fact that the number '2' appears multiple times in an expression as an example of 'occurrences' of a number, so a concept can be…
Confused
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