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For other uses, see Concept (disambiguation).

The term "concept" is traced back to 1550–60 (l. conceptum - something conceived), but what is today termed "the classical theory of concepts" is the theory of Aristotle on the definition of terms. As the term is used in mainstream cognitive science and philosophy of mind, a concept or conception is an abstract idea or a mental symbol, typically associated with a corresponding representation in a language or symbology. Cognitive science may be broadly defined as the multidisciplinary study of mind and behavior Philosophy of mind is the branch of Philosophy that studies the nature of the Mind, Mental events Mental functions mental properties --> Abstraction is the process or result of generalization by reducing the information An idea is a form (such as a Thought) formed by Consciousness (including Mind) through the Process of ideation. The musical instrument is spelled Cymbal. A symbol is something --- such as an object, Picture, written word a sound a piece A language is a dynamic set of visual auditory or tactile Symbols of Communication and the elements used to manipulate them Also known as processual symbolic analysis, symbology was developed by Victor Turner in the mid-1970s to refer to the use of symbols within cultural contexts in Concept has also been defined as a unit of knowledge built from characteristics.

Contents

Introduction

A vast array of accounts attempt to explain the nature of concepts. Nature, in the broadest sense is equivalent to the natural world, physical universe, material world or material universe. According to classical accounts, a concept denotes all of the entities, phenomena, and/or relations in a given category or class by using definitions. A phenomenon (from Greek φαινόμενoν, pl φαινόμενα - phenomena) is any observable occurrence Categories ( Lat Categoriae, Greek Κατηγορίαι Katēgoriai) is a text from Aristotle 's Organon that Philosophers sometimes distinguish classes from types and kinds. A definition is a statement of the meaning of a Word or Phrase. Concepts are abstract in that they omit the differences of the things in their extension, treating the members of the extension as if they were identical. In any of several studies that treat the use of signs for example in Linguistics, Logic, Mathematics, Semantics, and Semiotics, the Classical concepts are universal in that they apply equally to every thing in their extension. Concepts are also the basic elements of propositions, much the same way a word is the basic semantic element of a sentence. In Logic and Philosophy, proposition refers to either (a the content or Meaning of a meaningful Declarative sentence A word is a unit of Language that carries meaning and consists of one or more Morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together and has a Phonetic Semantics is the study of meaning in communication The word derives from Greek σημαντικός ( semantikos) "significant" from In Linguistics, a sentence is a grammatical unit of one or more words bearing minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it often preceded and followed Unlike perceptions, which are particular images of individual objects, concepts cannot be visualized. In Psychology and the Cognitive sciences perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory Information. Because they are not themselves individual perceptions, concepts are discursive and result from reason. Reason involves the ability to think understand and draw Conclusions in an Abstract way as in Human thinking

Concepts are expected to be useful in dealing with reality. Generally speaking, concepts are taken to be (a) acquired dispositions to recognize perceived objects as being of this kind or of that ontological kind, and at the same time (b) to understand what this kind or that kind of object is like, and consequently (c) to perceive a number of perceived particulars as being the same in kind and to discriminate between them and other sensible particulars that are different in kind. In Philosophy, ontology (from the Greek, genitive: of being (part In addition, concepts are acquired dispositions to understand what certain kinds of objects are like both (a) when the objects, though perceptible, are not actually perceived, and (b) also when they are not perceptible at all, as is the case with all the conceptual constructs we employ in physics, mathematics, and metaphysics. The impetus to have a theory of concepts that is ontologically useful has been so strong that it has pushed forward accounts that understand a concept to have a deep connection with reality.

On some accounts, there may be agents (perhaps some animals) which don't think about, but rather use relatively basic concepts (such as demonstrative and perceptual concepts for things in their perceptual field), even though it is generally assumed that they do not think in symbols. Demonstratives are deictic words (they depend on an external frame of reference that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others In Psychology and the Cognitive sciences perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory Information. On other accounts, mastery of symbolic thought (in particular, language) is a prerequisite for conceptual thought. [1]

Concepts are bearers of meaning, as opposed to agents of meaning. This article is about meaning as it is studied in the discipline of linguistics In Linguistics, a grammatical agent is the Participant of a situation that carries out the action in this situation A single concept can be expressed by any number of languages. A language is a dynamic set of visual auditory or tactile Symbols of Communication and the elements used to manipulate them The concept of DOG can be expressed as dog in English, Hund in German, as chien in French, and perro in Spanish. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people The fact that concepts are in some sense independent of language makes translation possible - words in various languages have identical meaning, because they express one and the same concept. Translation is the interpreting of the meaning of a text and the subsequent production of an equivalent text likewise called a " translation

A term labels or designates concepts. Terminology is the study of terms and their use Terms are Words and Compound words that are used in specific contexts Several partly or fully distinct concepts may share the same term. These different concepts are easily confused by mistakenly being used interchangeably, which is a fallacy. A fallacy is a component of an Argument which being demonstrably flawed in its Logic or form renders the argument invalid in whole Also, the concepts of term and concept are often confused, although the two are not the same.

The acquisition of concepts is studied in machine learning as supervised classification and unsupervised classification, and in psychology and cognitive science as concept learning and category formation. Machine learning is a subfield of Artificial intelligence that is concerned with the design and development of Algorithms and techniques that allow computers to "learn" Supervised learning is a Machine learning technique for learning a function from training data In Machine learning, unsupervised learning is a class of problems in which one seeks to determine how the data are organised Concept learning, also known as Category learning and concept attainment is largely based on the works of the cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner. In the philosophy of Kant, any purely empirical theory dealing with the acquisition of concepts is referred to as a noogony. In Philosophy, empiricism is a theory of Knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from Experience. Noogony is a general term for any theory of knowledge that attempts to explain the origin of concepts in the human mind by considering sense or

Origin and acquisition of concepts

A posteriori abstractions

John Locke's description of a general idea corresponds to a description of a concept. John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704 was an English Philosopher. According to Locke, a general idea is created by abstracting, drawing away, or removing the common characteristic or characteristics from several particular ideas. This common characteristic is that which is similar to all of the different individuals. For example, the abstract general idea or concept that is designated by the word "red" is that characteristic which is common to apples, cherries, and blood. The abstract general idea or concept that is signified by the word "dog" is the collection of those characteristics which are common to Airedales, Collies, and Chihuahuas.

In the same tradition as Locke, John Stuart Mill stated that general conceptions are formed through abstraction. John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 &ndash 8 May 1873 British Philosopher, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential A general conception is the common element among the many images of members of a class. ". . . [W]hen we form a set of phenomena into a class, that is, when we compare them with one another to ascertain in what they agree, some general conception is implied in this mental operation" (A System of Logic, Book IV, Ch. A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive is an 1843 book by English Philosopher John Stuart Mill. II). Mill did not believe that concepts exist in the mind before the act of abstraction. "It is not a law of our intellect, that, in comparing things with each other and taking note of their agreement, we merely recognize as realised in the outward world something that we already had in our minds. The conception originally found its way to us as the result of such a comparison. It was obtained (in metaphysical phrase) by abstraction from individual things" (Ibid. ).

For Schopenhauer, empirical concepts ". . . are mere abstractions from what is known through intuitive perception, and they have arisen from our arbitrarily thinking away or dropping of some qualities and our retention of others. In Psychology and the Cognitive sciences perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory Information. In the vernacular quality can mean a high degree of excellence (“a quality product” a degree of excellence or the lack of it (“work of average quality” or a property of " (Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. I, "Sketch of a History of the Ideal and the Real"). iDEAL is an Internet payment method in The Netherlands, based on online banking Reality, in everyday usage means "the state of things as they actually exist" In his On the Will in Nature, "Physiology and Pathology," Schopenhauer said that a concept is "drawn off from previous images . . . by putting off their differences. This concept is then no longer intuitively perceptible, but is denoted and fixed merely by words. " Nietzsche, who was heavily influenced by Schopenhauer, wrote: "Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15 1844 August 25 1900 ( was a nineteenth-century German philosopher and classical philologist No leaf ever wholly equals another, and the concept 'leaf' is formed through an arbitrary abstraction from these individual differences, through forgetting the distinctions… . "[2]

By contrast to the above philosophers, Immanuel Kant held that the account of the concept as an abstraction of experience is only partly correct. Immanuel Kant (ɪmanuəl kant 22 April 1724 12 February 1804 was an 18th-century German Philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg He called those concepts that result of abstraction "a posteriori concepts" (meaning concepts that arise out of experience). An empirical or an a posteriori concept is a general representation (Vorstellung) or non-specific thought of that which is common to several specific perceived objects. "A priori" redirects here For other uses see A priori. (Logic, I, 1. Logic is the study of the principles of valid demonstration and Inference. , §1, Note 1)

A concept is a common feature or characteristic. Kant investigated the way that empirical a posteriori concepts are created.

The logical acts of the understanding by which concepts are generated as to their form are: (1. ) comparison, i. e. , the likening of mental images to one another in relation to the unity of consciousness; (2. ) reflection, i. e. , the going back over different mental images, how they can be comprehended in one consciousness; and finally (3. ) abstraction or the segregation of everything else by which the mental images differ. … In order to make our mental images into concepts, one must thus be able to compare, reflect, and abstract, for these three logical operations of the understanding are essential and general conditions of generating any concept whatever. For example, I see a fir, a willow, and a linden. In firstly comparing these objects, I notice that they are different from one another in respect of trunk, branches, leaves, and the like; further, however, I reflect only on what they have in common, the trunk, the branches, the leaves themselves, and abstract from their size, shape, and so forth; thus I gain a concept of a tree.

– Logic, §6

Kant's description of the making of a concept has been paraphrased as "… to conceive is essentially to think in abstraction what is common to a plurality of possible instances… . " (H. J. Paton, Kant's Metaphysics of Experience, I, 250). In his discussion of Kant, Christopher Janaway wrote: "… generic concepts are formed by abstraction from more than one species. "[3]

A priori concepts

Main article: Category (Kant)

Kant declared that human minds possess pure or a priori concepts. In Kant 's philosophy a category is a pure concept of the understanding "A priori" redirects here For other uses see A priori. Instead of being abstracted from individual perceptions, like empirical concepts, they originate in the mind itself. He called these concepts categories, in the sense of the word that means predicate, attribute, characteristic, or quality. In Kant 's philosophy a category is a pure concept of the understanding In traditional Grammar, a predicate is one of the two main parts of a sentence (the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies In the vernacular quality can mean a high degree of excellence (“a quality product” a degree of excellence or the lack of it (“work of average quality” or a property of But these pure categories are predicates of things in general, not of a particular thing. According to Kant, there are 12 categories that constitute the understanding of phenomenal objects. Each category is that one predicate which is common to multiple empirical concepts. In order to explain how an a priori concept can relate to individual phenomena, in a manner analogous to an a posteriori concept, Kant employed the technical concept of the schema. In Kantian philosophy a schema (plural schemata) is the procedural rule by which a category or pure, non-empirical Concept is associated

Conceptual structure


It seems intuitively obvious that concepts must have some kind of structure. Up until recently, the dominant view of conceptual structure was a containment model, associated with the classical view of concepts. According to this model, a concept is endowed with certain necessary and sufficient conditions in their description which unequivocally determine an extension. The containment model allows for no degrees; a thing is either in, or out, of the concept's extension. By contrast, the inferential model understands conceptual structure to be determined in a graded manner, according to the tendency of the concept to be used in certain kinds of inferences. As a result, concepts do not have a kind of structure that is in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions; all conditions are contingent. (Margolis:5)

However, some theorists claim that primitive concepts lack any structure at all. For instance, Jerry Fodor presents his Asymmetric Dependence Theory as a way of showing how a primitive concept's content is determined by a reliable relationship between the information in mental contents and the world. These sorts of claims are referred to as "atomistic", because the primitive concept is treated as if it were a genuine atom.

Conceptual content

Content as pragmatic role

A concept may be abstracted from several perceptions, but that is only its origin. In regard to its meaning or its truth, William James proposed his Pragmatic Rule. For other people named William James see William James (disambiguation William James (January 11 1842 – August 26 1910 was a pioneering This rule states that the meaning of a concept may always be found in some particular difference in the course of human experience which its being true will make (Some Problems of Philosophy, "Percept and Concept -- The Import of Concepts"). In order to understand the meaning of the concept and to discuss its importance, a concept may be tested by asking, "What sensible difference to anybody will its truth make?" There is only one criterion of a concept's meaning and only one test of its truth. That criterion or test is its consequences for human behavior.

In this way, James bypassed the controversy between rationalists and empiricists regarding the origin of concepts. In Epistemology and in its broadest sense rationalism is "any view appealing to Reason as a source of knowledge or justification" (Lacey 286 In Philosophy, empiricism is a theory of Knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from Experience. Instead of solving their dispute, he ignored it. The rationalists had asserted that concepts are a revelation of Reason. Reason involves the ability to think understand and draw Conclusions in an Abstract way as in Human thinking Concepts are a glimpse of a different world, one which contains timeless truths in areas such as logic, mathematics, ethics, and aesthetics. The meaning of the word truth extends from Honesty, Good faith, and Sincerity in general to agreement with Fact or Reality Logic is the study of the principles of valid demonstration and Inference. Mathematics is the body of Knowledge and Academic discipline that studies such concepts as Quantity, Structure, Space and Ethics is a major branch of Philosophy, encompassing right conduct and good life Aesthetics or esthetics ( also spelled æsthetics) is commonly known as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values sometimes called By pure thought, humans can discover the relations that really exist among the parts of that divine world. On the other hand, the empiricists claimed that concepts were merely a distillation or abstraction from perceptions of the world of experience. Therefore, the significance of concepts depends solely on the perceptions that are its references. James's Pragmatic Rule does not connect the meaning of a concept with its origin. Instead, it relates the meaning to a concept's purpose, that is, its function, use, or result.

Embodied content

In Cognitive linguistics, abstract concepts are transformations of concrete concepts derived from embodied experience. In Linguistics and Cognitive science, cognitive linguistics (CL refers to the school of linguistics that understands language creation learning and usage The mechanism of transformation is structural mapping, in which properties of two or more source domains are selectively mapped onto a blended space (Fauconnier & Turner, 1995; see conceptual blending). Conceptual Blending (aka Conceptual Integration) is a general theory of Cognition. A common class of blends are metaphors. Metaphor (from the Greek: μεταφορά - metaphora, meaning "transfer" is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects This theory contrasts with the rationalist view that concepts are perceptions (or recollections, in Plato's term) of an independently existing world of ideas, in that it denies the existence of any such realm. Biography Early life Birth and family Plato was born in Athens Greece It also contrasts with the empiricist view that concepts are abstract generalizations of individual experiences, because the contingent and bodily experience is preserved in a concept, and not abstracted away. While the perspective is compatible with Jamesian pragmatism (above), the notion of the transformation of embodied concepts through structural mapping makes a distinct contribution to the problem of concept formation. The term "concept" is traced back to 1554–60 ( l conceptum - something conceived but what is today termed "the classical theory of concepts" is the theory of Aristotle

Philosophical implications

Concepts and metaphilosophy

A long and well-established tradition in philosophy posits that philosophy itself is nothing more than conceptual analysis. Metaphilosophy (from Greek Meta + Philosophy) is the study of the subject and matter methods and aims of Philosophy Philosophical analysis is a general term for techniques typically used by philosophers in the analytic tradition that involve "breaking down" (i This view has its proponents in contemporary literature as well as historical. According to Deleuze and Guattari's What Is Philosophy? (1991), philosophy is the activity of creating concepts. Gilles Deleuze ( (January 18 1925 &ndash November 4 1995 was a French philosopher of the late 20th century Pierre-Félix Guattari ( April 30, 1930 – August 29, 1992) was a French Militant, institutional Psychotherapist This creative activity differs from previous definitions of philosophy as simple reasoning, communication or contemplation of Universals. Reasoning is the cognitive process of looking for Reasons for beliefs conclusions actions or feelings Communication is the process of conveying information from a sender to a receiver with the use of a medium in which the communicated information is understood the same way The word Contemplation comes from the Latin root templum (from Greek temnein to cut or divide and means to separate something from its environment and to enclose it in a sector In Metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common namely characteristics or qualities Concepts are specific to philosophy: science has got "percepts", and art "affects". A perception is a philosophical term which roughly means an individual's observation/perception of something external to one's self more specifically the resultant of perceiving " Affect " ( Latin affectus or adfectus) is a Concept used in Philosophy by Spinoza, Deleuze and A concept is always signed: thus, Descartes' Cogito or Kant's "transcendental". " la Cogito ergo sum " (I think therefore I am sometimes misquoted as la Dubito ergo cogito ergo sum (Latin "I doubt therefore I think therefore I am" Immanuel Kant (ɪmanuəl kant 22 April 1724 12 February 1804 was an 18th-century German Philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg In Philosophy, the adjective transcendental and the noun transcendence convey three different but related primary meanings all of them derived from the word's literal It is a singularity, not an universal, and connects itself with others concepts, on a "plane of immanence" traced by a particular philosophy. In Mathematics, a singularity is in general a point at which a given mathematical object is not defined or a point of an exceptional set where it fails to be Plane of immanence is a founding concept in the Metaphysics or Ontology of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Concepts can jump from one plane of immanence to another, combining with other concepts and therefore engaging in a "becoming-Other. The Other or constitutive other (also referred to as othering) is a key concept in Continental philosophy, opposed to the Same "

Concepts in epistemology

For more details on this topic, see List of concepts in science. Epistemology (from Greek επιστήμη - episteme, "knowledge" + λόγος, " Logos " or theory of knowledge This is a list of topics in various Sciences Astronomy List of basic astronomy topics Asteroids * List of constellations

Concepts are vital to the development of scientific knowledge. For example, it would be difficult to imagine physics without concepts like: energy, force, or acceleration. In Physics and other Sciences energy (from the Greek grc ἐνέργεια - Energeia, "activity operation" from grc ἐνεργός In Physics, a force is whatever can cause an object with Mass to Accelerate. Concepts help to integrate apparently unrelated observations and phenomena into viable hypothesis and theories, the basic ingredients of science. Observation is either an activity of a living being (such as a Human) which senses and assimilates the Knowledge of a Phenomenon, or the recording of data A phenomenon (from Greek φαινόμενoν, pl φαινόμενα - phenomena) is any observable occurrence The concept map is a tool that is used to help researchers visualize the inter-relationships between various concepts. For concept maps in Generic programming, see Concept (generic programming.

Ontology of concepts

Although the mainstream literature in cognitive science regards the concept as a kind of mental particular, it has been suggested by some theorists that concepts are real things. (Margolis:8) In most radical form, the realist about concepts attempts to show that the supposedly mental processes are not mental at all; rather, they are abstract entities, which are just as real as any mundane object.

Plato was the starkest proponent of the realist thesis of universal concepts. Biography Early life Birth and family Plato was born in Athens Greece By his view, concepts (and ideas in general) are innate ideas that were instantiations of a transcendental world of pure forms that laid behind the veil of the physical world. In this way, universals were explained as transcendent objects. Needless to say this form of realism was tied deeply with Plato's ontological projects. This remark on Plato is not of merely historical interest. For example, the view that numbers are Platonic objects was revived by Kurt Godel as a result of certain puzzles that he took to arise from the phenomenological accounts. Kurt Gödel (kʊɐ̯t ˈgøːdl̩ (April 28 1906 – January 14 1978 was an Austrian American Logician, Mathematician and Philosopher

Gottlob Frege, founder of the analytic tradition in philosophy, famously argued for the analysis of language in terms of sense and reference. Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege ( 8 November 1848, Wismar, Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin  &ndash 26 July 1925 For him, the sense of an expression in language describes a certain state of affairs in the world, namely, the way that some object is presented. Since many commentators view the notion of sense as identical to the notion of concept, and Frege regards senses as the linguistic representations of states of affairs in the world, it seems to follow that we may understand concepts as the manner in which we grasp the world. Accordingly, concepts (as senses) have an ontological status. (Morgolis:7)

According to Carl Benjamin Boyer, in the introduction to his The History of the Calculus and its Conceptual Development, concepts in calculus do not refer to perceptions. Carl Benjamin Boyer ( November 3, 1906 – April 26, 1976) has been called the " Gibbon of math history"he As long as the concepts are useful and mutually compatible, they are accepted on their own. For example, the concepts of the derivative and the integral are not considered to refer to spatial or temporal perceptions of the external world of experience. In Calculus, a branch of mathematics the derivative is a measurement of how a function changes when the values of its inputs change The European Space Agency 's INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory ( INTEGRAL) is detecting some of the most energetic radiation that comes from space Neither are they related in any way to mysterious limits in which quantities are on the verge of nascence or evanescence, that is, coming into or going out of appearance or existence. In Mathematics, the concept of a " limit " is used to describe the Behavior of a function as its argument either "gets close" The abstract concepts are now considered to be totally autonomous, even though they originated from the process of abstracting or taking away qualities from perceptions until only the common, essential attributes remained.

See also

References

  1. ^ Damasio, Antonio R. --> Abstraction is the process or result of generalization by reducing the information Categorization is the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood. Philosophers sometimes distinguish classes from types and kinds. In the Philosophy of language, the distinction between concept and object is due to the German philosopher Gottlob Frege. Concept learning, also known as Category learning and concept attainment is largely based on the works of the cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner. For concept maps in Generic programming, see Concept (generic programming. Conceptual art is Art in which the Concept (s or Idea (s involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns Conceptual Blending (aka Conceptual Integration) is a general theory of Cognition. Conceptual clustering is a Machine learning paradigm for Unsupervised classification developed mainly during the 1980s A conceptual framework is used in research to outline possible courses of action or to present a preferred approach to an idea or thought Conveyed concept is a Set phrase that denotes a concept as understood or perceived. Formal concept analysis is a principled way of automatically deriving an ontology from a collection of objects and their properties A fuzzy concept is a Concept of which the content value or boundaries of application can vary according to context or conditions instead of being fixed once and for all Hypostatic abstraction, also known as hypostasis or subjectal abstraction, is a formal operation that takes an element of information such as might be expressed An idea is a form (such as a Thought) formed by Consciousness (including Mind) through the Process of ideation. A meme (miːm consists of any idea or behavior that can pass from one person to another by learning or imitation For examples see Common misconceptions. A misconception happens when a person believes in a Concept which is objectively Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced purse) (September 10 1839 &ndash April 19 1914 was an American Logician mathematician, philosopher In Kantian philosophy a schema (plural schemata) is the procedural rule by which a category or pure, non-empirical Concept is associated A social construction or social construct is any phenomenon "invented" or "constructed" by participants in a particular Culture or Society The Symbol Grounding Problem is related to the problem of how Words ( Symbols get their Meanings and hence to the problem of what meaning itself really is "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain," Avon 1994, p. 106 ff.
  2. ^ "On Truth and Lie in an Extra–Moral Sense," The Portable Nietzsche, p. 46
  3. ^ Christopher Janaway, Self and World in Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Ch. 3, p. 112, Oxford, 2003, ISBN 0-19-825003-7

Publications

External links

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP is a freely-accessible Online encyclopedia of Philosophy maintained by Stanford University.

Dictionary

concept

-noun

  1. Something understood, and retained in the mind, from experience, reasoning and/or imagination; a generalization (generic, basic form), or abstraction (mental impression), of a particular set of instances or occurrences (specific, though different, recorded manifestations of the concept).
  2. (programming) In generic programming, a description of supported operations on a type, including their syntax and semantics.
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