Concepties

Concepties are a proposed class of mental representations that function as the fundamental building blocks of thought in certain models of cognition. In these models, a concept is made up of one or more concepties, which encode features, relations, and constraints that give rise to recognizable ideas when combined. Concepties can be atomic, encoding a minimal set of properties, or composite, combining multiple feature bundles into higher-level ideas.

Origin and usage: The term is a neologism used mainly in speculative or theoretical discussions rather than established empirical theories. It is employed to discuss how concepts might be structurally organized and manipulated by cognitive processes, without assuming a fixed format across all minds.

Theoretical role: In philosophy of mind and cognitive science, concepties serve as placeholders for the internal representations that support inference, categorization, and linguistic meaning. Some frameworks treat concepties as multidimensional vectors, networks of features, or modal encodings that interact with memory and attention.

Typology and properties: Atomic concepties carry a minimal feature set; complex concepties arise through composition, analogy, and conceptual blending. They may participate in semantic networks, with links representing entailment, similarity, or transformation rules. The granularity of concepties is debated, affecting explanations of generalization and learning.

Criticism and status: Critics argue that the concept of concepties risks reifying mental processes or lacking empirical grounding. As such, concepties are more common in theoretical explorations than in widely adopted models, and many researchers prefer to speak in terms of concepts, representations, or schemas.

See also: concept, mental representation, semantic network, schema, propositional representation.