The mental categories used to group together objects, relations, events, abstractions, or qualities that share common properties are referred to as concepts.
Concepts serve as the building blocks of our thoughts and understanding of the world around us. They allow us to classify and organize information in a way that makes it manageable. For instance, the concept of ‘fruit’ encompasses various objects like apples, oranges, and bananas, all of which exhibit common characteristics, such as being edible and containing seeds.
By grouping items into mental categories, we simplify our cognitive processes and enhance our ability to think, communicate, and learn. This categorization is crucial for effective reasoning and problem-solving, as it helps us generalize from past experiences to new situations. Therefore, understanding and utilizing concepts is fundamental to our cognitive functioning.