Is Jay Bird a Concept?
On Concepts, Language, & Reality
Dear Thinkers,
It's been a while! I hope you are doing well. I started this year slow, taking a bit of a brain-health break. Sadly, it didn’t pan out the way I hoped it would. Taking a break only gave me more time to catastrophise and get stressed about whatever was stressing me in the first place. So back to work I am!
Phenomenology is where we can all find some respite. Or at the very least, enough complexity to escape into our own thoughts. Although this discourse is going to be heavily epistemological, I can’t help but feel that at the heart of the argument, is a phenomenological basis.
So, the other morning, for no particular reason, I woke up thinking about a Jay bird. Not in any profound, symbolic sense, just … Jay bird. It wasn’t perched outside my window. It wasn’t calling in the distance. It was simply there, in my head for really no apparent reason.
Out of curiosity, I asked an AI to generate an image of a Jay bird using nothing but abstract triangles. The output was impressive. Sharp, geometric fragments arranged in a way that was unmistakably bird-like, yet entirely removed from the organic reality of an actual Jay bird. I set it as my Mac background. But then, as often happens, a simple thought spiraled into something less trivial. What is a Jay bird, anyway?
Not in the ornithological sense, I know what a bird is. But conceptually, what is it? Is a Jay bird simply a bird I can point to in the world? Or is it something constructed in my mind, mediated through language and shared understanding? In other words, is a Jay bird a concept?
So, in order to understand this question, I had to first start with, what is a concept in the first place? Well, turns out, there is really not a single acclaimed philosopher, who doesn’t have their own take on this. Pretty much everyone, from Aristotle to Hobbes to Hegel, have taken their shots at defining what a concept is, each with varying degrees of success (or confusion, depending on how charitable you’re feeling).
So what is this article really about? Don’t worry, I am not going to bore you by describing birds and sell ‘bird watching’ as a hobby. This isn’t just about birds. It’s about language, cognition, and the sort of loose definitions we use to navigate the world. It’s about why Pluto was a planet, until it wasn’t. It’s about why the Sun orbited the Earth, until it didn’t. And yes, it’s about whether the Jay bird sitting outside your window is just a bird or something far more complicated.
Although focussed around a central question (i.e., Is a Jay bird a concept?), I am afraid this article is less about answers as much as it is about the mess of this question itself. Let’s get started.
Concepts and Universals
So let’s start with Plato, a typical philosophical starter. Plato’s theory of Forms posits that everything we encounter in the material world is merely an imperfect reflection of a perfect, immutable idea existing in a non-physical realm.
For Plato, there exists an ideal Form of a bird, i.e., a perfect, abstract birdness that all physical birds participate in, but none can fully embody. So you can think of the Jay bird outside your window as a sort of imperfect instantiation of this ideal Form of birdness. In other words, for Plato, the concept of the Jay bird exists independently of whether or not I, or anyone else, recognises it.
Aristotle, as he often did, took a contrarian position to his mentor. He rejected the idea that Forms exist in some separate, metaphysical realm. Instead, he argued that universals, i.e., the shared properties or qualities that define categories, exist within the objects themselves. For Aristotle, the universal of birdness is embedded in the feathers, beaks, and wings of every individual bird you encounter.
There is more than what meets the eye in this disagreement. This is basically a fundamental difference in how we think about concepts. While Aristotle’s theory of universals helps explain how we categorise objects based on shared properties, it doesn’t fully account for the role of language and social agreement in shaping our understanding of concepts. Universals is just a fancy term used for describing the commonalities between things, it doesn't address how we name, define, and negotiate these categories within human communities.
The Jay bird outside your window possesses certain universal traits that make it a bird, and more specifically, a Jay. But the fact that we call it a Jay bird, that we distinguish it from other birds with a specific name, is not just about recognising its properties. Something else is going on here. We are essentially participating in a shared linguistic and cultural framework. This is where the notion of concepts as linguistic constructs begins to emerge.
Concepts as Social Linguistic Contracts
So this is where I would like to introduce Thomas Hobbes, the medieval English philosopher, into the discourse. Hobbes is famous for his work on social contract theories, which he introduced in his magnum opus, the Leviathan. For Hobbes, concepts are not embedded in the world but constructed through language. In his view, a concept is essentially a linguistic entity, i.e., a product of words and definitions that allow us to categorise and make sense of the world. Without language, according to Hobbes, there would be no concepts, only raw sensory experiences. This felt very much in line with my own understanding on the matter, my obvious bias for the philosophy of language aside.
So let’s apply this to our friend, the Jay bird. The bird perched outside your window exists independently of your thoughts or language. It flies, it feeds, it continues its avian life regardless of whether you recognise it or not. But the concept of a Jay bird? That only comes into being when you apply a name, a label, to what you see. You call it a Jay bird because that’s the term agreed upon within the linguistic community you belong to. Your parents called it a Jay bird, your teachers reinforced it, and now you continue to perpetuate that definition.
Now, with this in mind, the Jay bird is not just an animal, it is a concept precisely because it has been named and categorised within a shared linguistic system.
Hobbes’ perspective pushes the idea that concepts are fundamentally tied to social contracts. A concept isn’t just a private mental representation, it’s something that gains meaning through collective agreement. That is to say that, if, tomorrow, everyone suddenly decided that the bird we’ve been calling a Jay was misclassified, and ornithologists announced that it belonged to an entirely different genus, the concept of the Jay bird would shift accordingly. The bird itself wouldn’t change, but our conceptual framework for understanding it definitively would.
One thing to keep in mind before we move forward, is that Hobbes’ insistence on the linguistic nature of concepts emphasises a crucial point, i.e., concepts are NOT static or immutable. They are fluid, evolving as language and collective understanding evolve. What we call a Jay bird today could be something entirely different tomorrow if the linguistic and scientific communities decide so. This is going to be an important point to keep in mind for the following sections.
Is Conceptualisation the Same as Recognition?
If we accept Hobbes’ assertion that concepts are fundamentally linguistic, constructed through definitions and social agreement, then it would seem that animals, lacking complex language, don’t possess concepts in any meaningful sense. This notion seems to make many philosophers and scientists uncomfortable, especially when we consider the sophisticated ways animals interact with their environments. I believe this is a result of misunderstanding recognition for conceptualisation.
Take monkeys, for instance. Vervet monkeys are known to produce distinct alarm calls for different predators, one for snakes, another for leopards, and a third for eagles. These calls correspond to specific threats and elicit distinct reactions from other monkeys in the group. When a vervet hears the snake alarm, it looks down and steps carefully. When it hears the eagle call, it looks up and seeks cover. So clearly there is a categorisation happening here. The monkeys differentiate between types of threats and respond accordingly.
But does this differentiation constitute a concept in the Hobbesian sense? No, it doesn't. While the monkeys clearly recognise different predators and adjust their behavior, there’s no evidence to suggest they engage in the kind of abstract, linguistic processing that Hobbes ties to conceptual thought. The symbols, the alarm calls, are consistent and unchanging over generations. A snake has always been a snake, a leopard a leopard. There’s no room for redefinition, no renegotiation of meaning within the monkey community. Their responses are functional, tied to survival, but they lack the fluidity and mutability that characterise human concepts.
Dogs form strong emotional bonds with their owners. They recognise faces, respond to names, and exhibit behaviors that suggest attachment, grief, even what we might interpret as love. When a dog’s owner dies, the dog may refuse to eat, search the house for them, or display signs of distress. One might look at this behaviour and argue that this goes beyond simple recognition as it suggests a deeper, more complex mental representation of the individual.
But does that mean dogs have concepts? Dogs don’t have the linguistic tools to define or negotiate the nature of their relationships. Their recognition is based on sensory cues, i.e., scent, voice, routine, not abstract categorisation. The dog knows who you are, but it doesn’t have a concept of you in the linguistic, negotiable sense. It can’t redefine its understanding of you based on new information, nor can it communicate that understanding to others in a way that allows for collective agreement or disagreement.
This distinction becomes clearer when we consider how human concepts evolve over time. The Jay bird is a concept that exists within a linguistic and cultural framework that’s subject to change. If scientists were to discover that what we’ve been calling a Jay bird is genetically distinct enough to warrant a new classification, we’d adapt our language and understanding accordingly.
Animals, on the other hand, don’t engage in this kind of conceptual renegotiation. Their recognition of objects, individuals, and threats is stable, tied to immediate functional needs rather than abstract, linguistic frameworks. Monkeys will continue to recognise snakes as threats, but they won’t reconsider whether this particular snake might be an exception. Dogs will recognise their owners based on sensory familiarity, but they won’t redefine their understanding of owners based on new social norms or philosophical insights.
So, recognition is about identifying patterns and responding to stimuli, while conceptualisation, at least in the human sense, is about creating, negotiating, and redefining categories through language. Recognition is stable, reactive, and functional. Concepts are fluid, abstract, and inherently social.
Some scientists and philosophers float the idea of animals possessing proto-conceptual abilities, i.e., rudimentary forms of categorisation and emotional attachment. I am afraid I have to disagree with such a form of cognitive ability as well. Because, again, if this were to be true, animals would portray a more fluid and abstract form of interaction with the environment. That does not seem to be the case. So far, outside of humans, every species on the planet exhibits a stable, reactive and functional form of interaction.
The Role of Concepts in Understanding Observer Independent Dialectic
So this is a good point to bring Hegel into the conversation. For Hegel, concepts or Begriffe as he referred to them, are dynamic, evolving processes. A concept is a living, developing structure that unfolds through history, culture, and consciousness.
Let’s start with the basics. Hegel’s dialectic operates on the principle of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. You begin with an initial idea or state of being, i.e., the thesis. That thesis encounters its opposite or contradiction, i.e., the antithesis. The tension between the two is resolved in a higher-order understanding, i.e., the synthesis, which doesn’t just settle the conflict but transcends it, integrating elements of both the thesis and antithesis into something new. And this process does NOT stop but instead remains in a constant state of flux. Each synthesis becomes a new thesis, leading to further contradictions and resolutions. In Hegel’s view, this dialectical movement is not just how thought progresses, it’s how reality itself unfolds.
So, where does the Jay bird fit into all of this? Well, the Jay bird isn’t just a bird we recognise and name. It’s a concept that exists within this broader dialectical process. Initially, we might think of the Jay bird as simply a biological category, i.e., a species defined by certain traits, i.e., thesis. But then, new information emerges, perhaps genetic research reveals that what we’ve been calling Jay birds are actually multiple distinct species, or cultural shifts lead to new symbolic meanings attached to the bird, i.e., antithesis. This tension forces a reevaluation, leading to a new, more complex understanding of what the Jay bird is, i.e., synthesis.
Hegel doesn’t stop here. He pushes this idea further by integrating it into higher order metaphysics. He posits that concepts are real in the sense that they’re embedded in the unfolding of Geist, or Spirit. Geist is Hegel’s term for the collective, self-developing consciousness of humanity. As we engage with the world, we observe as well as participate in its development. Our concepts evolve because reality itself is evolving, and our understanding of it is part of that evolution.
Consider the example of ex-planet Pluto again. Under Hegel’s framework, Pluto’s reclassification from planet to dwarf planet isn’t just a linguistic shift but a part of the dialectical unfolding of human understanding. The concept of a planet wasn’t fixed. It evolved as our astronomical knowledge deepened. Our thesis on what a planet is, led to its antithesis, which led to the synthesis that our current understanding of planetary classification isn’t final. It’s just the latest stage in an ongoing dialectical process.
Now let’s roundabout back to the Jay bird. Our understanding of the bird isn’t static. It changes as we learn more about its behavior, genetics, and ecological role. But it also changes culturally. The Jay bird might be a simple bird in one context, a symbol of mischief or intelligence in another, or even a marker of environmental health in yet another. These shifts, though seemingly random, are, in Hegel’s understanding, a part of the dialectical process by which human consciousness and reality itself evolves.
So why did I add the Hegelian dimension to this article? Because it's crucial to know that, for Hegel, concepts are about the movement of reality towards greater complexity and self-awareness. Concepts become over time, shaped by the tensions and contradictions they encounter. I have written quite a few articles on the concepts of being, becoming, and happening over the years. There is also a really interesting article that I had written on why I hate tomatoes. May sound like a random mention but it actually illustrates ‘what is a concept’ super elaborately.
Is Dialectic Purely a Linguistic Process?
By now, we’ve established that concepts, in the Hobbesian sense, are deeply tied to language, i.e., they exist because we name, define, and agree upon them. Hegel presents concepts as dynamic, living processes, embedded in the unfolding of reality itself. So both these rivers of thought are essentially flowing in the same direction, but do they merge?
Is the dialectic itself dependent on language? Or, to put it another way, can concepts evolve without the linguistic tools we use to articulate them? As someone deeply invested in the study of language, I feel compelled to consider this.
So, clearly, language plays a central role in the dialectic. After all, how do we engage in thesis, antithesis, and synthesis without the ability to frame these stages in words? Language allows us to externalise our thoughts, share them with others, and collectively refine our understanding. Without language, how could we negotiate the meaning of something like a Jay bird, or reclassify Pluto from planet to dwarf planet?
But concepts evolve not just because we talk about them, but because reality itself is in a constant state of becoming. Language doesn’t create this process. It reflects and mediates it.
Long before there were humans, the world was already engaged in a kind of dialectical movement. Species evolved through a process of constant adaptation, contradiction, and synthesis. Environmental pressures, i.e., thesis challenged the survival of certain traits, i.e., antithesis, leading to the emergence of new, more adaptable forms, i.e., synthesis. This is dialectic, even though it operates without conscious thought or language. The Jay bird, as a species, didn’t emerge because we named it but rather through a dialectical process embedded in the fabric of life itself.
So what does language do? It allows us to become conscious of the dialectical process. It gives us the tools to not only recognise contradictions but to articulate and resolve them in increasingly sophisticated ways. Language integrates us, the human species, with the Geist, in the most intimate manner possible. We not only get to witness, but also actively contribute to the dialectic, using linguistic tools.
So, is the dialectic inherently linguistic? No. Is our awareness of the dialectic possible without language? Maybe. Without language, can we conceptualise, structure and articulate our existence within, and active contribution to the dialectic? Absolutely NOT.
So…What Did We Find?
So, to wrap things up in this discourse, the following are my takeaways from this contemplation.
Concepts are social contracts we form through language. The Jay bird exists as a biological entity, but the concept of the Jay bird exists because we, as a linguistic community, have decided to call it that. Without this shared agreement, there’s no concept, just a creature we haven’t named.
What makes a concept distinct from mere recognition is its permeability to change. The Jay bird is a Jay bird until new information or collective redefinition shifts our understanding of it.
Monkeys can differentiate between snakes and leopards, and dogs can recognise their owners. But this is recognition, not conceptualisation. Animals don’t renegotiate or redefine their categories. A snake has always been a threat, and it always will be. Humans, on the other hand, can reframe a Jay bird as a symbol, a species, or even a misclassification.
Hobbes argued that concepts are linguistic constructs, and he wasn’t wrong. But his view doesn’t account for the fluidity of concepts in the way Hegel’s dialectic does. Concepts are not just defined by language but through the constant tension, contradiction, and synthesis. Language is the tool, but the process is much larger.
The dialectic, as Hegel saw it, is embedded in the structure of reality itself. Species evolve, stars collapse, and ecosystems adapt, all through dialectical movement. But humans, through language, become conscious of this process. Language doesn’t create the dialectic, but it makes us active participants in it.
In the end, the Jay bird is both less and more than we think. It’s less, because outside our linguistic framework, it’s just an organism following its evolutionary path. But it’s also more, because as a concept, it represents the interaction between language, thought, and reality.
A Jay bird will always be whatever it is. But as long as we keep thinking, naming, and redefining, it will also be something more, i.e., a concept in motion, just like us.
And I can comment again! Great :)
Nice one, Mir :-)