Abstract

Concepts may be defined as the building blocks of judgments. Concepts are the components of judgments that stand to whole judgments as (open class) words stand to whole sentences. Psychologists and philosophers ask different questions about concepts, but they mostly share this conception of what they are. The traditional conception of concepts is bound up with a conception of linguistic communication according to which the function of language is to express conceptual thoughts. In rejecting all theories of the origin of concepts that treat concepts as having the necessary independence from language and in arguing language rests on imagistic cognition, this book will cast doubt on the very existence of concepts as traditionally conceived. However, it will be proposed that the concept of concepts may be assimilated into the new framework by identifying conceptual thought with thinking in language.