käSite

Käsite is a Finnish noun meaning a concept or notion. The term derives from the verb käsittää, meaning to grasp or understand, highlighting that a käsite is something grasped in thought or included in understanding.

In philosophy, käsite denotes the general content or mental representation that underlies a class of objects. A central issue is the relationship between a käsite and its extension (the set of things it applies to) and how concepts are formed, stored, and used in reasoning. Finnish philosophical writing often discusses concepts in epistemology, ontology, and semiotics, and the term is used to translate many technical notions such as “concept” or “idea.”

In linguistics and cognitive science, käsite is used to analyze semantic content, categorization, and knowledge representation. The study often concerns how concepts are organized (for example, through prototypes, feature lists, or hierarchical networks) and how they are learned and communicated.

In everyday language, käsite is used to denote any notion or idea. It appears in phrases such as määritellä käsite (to define a concept) or kehitellä uusi käsite (to develop a new concept).

See also: concept, definition, semantics, cognitive science, philosophy.