Concepts in motion: Toward a relational ontology of meaning, practice, and mind*
Abstract This article advances a relational ontology of concepts (ROC) by synthesizing philosophy of language, cultural-historical psychology, developmental science, linguistics, and conceptual history into a single account of concepts as dynamic, multi-realized coordination patterns that are socially regulated and historically situated. Against views that treat concepts as fixed inner structures or mere labels, I first establish a single, coherent definition: concepts are purpose-oriented, public coordination patterns realized across distributed resources. I then develop a four-layer framework in which conceptual life emerges through coordination among embodied–affordance dynamics, grammatical–discursive scaffolds, social–normative participation, and institutional–historical infrastructures. Stability is explained by interlocking stabilization loops—practice canalization, grammatical regularities, norm enforcement, and codification—while flexibility is explained by recontextualization...
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