Opening Mind: Philosophical Study of Humanistic Concepts

Concepts are fundamental in philosophy, the sciences, and the humanities and in many human and animal activities. What they are and what roles they play have been of perennial concern to the conceptual life. Perhaps philosophers alone employ concepts and proffer theories of them: what they are and what they do. Even though a particular philosopher's range of concepts can be as narrow as he pleases--he may devote his life to an investigation of once concept of entailment--any philosopher theory of concepts, if it is to do justice to the ostensible variety of conceptualization, must accommodate at least the major distinguishable uses of concepts, whether the concepts themselves are ordinary, scientific, or humanistic.