  Psychology has had difficulty accounting for the creative, context-sensitive
manner in which concepts are used. We believe this stems from the view of
concepts as identifiers rather than bridges between mind and world that
participate in the generation of meaning. This paper summarizes the history and
current status of concepts research, and provides a non-technical summary of
work toward an ecological approach to concepts. We outline the rationale for
applying generalizations of formalisms originally developed for use in quantum
mechanics to the modeling of concepts, showing how it is because of the role of
context that deep structural similarities exist between the two. A concept is
defined not just in terms of exemplary states and their features or properties,
but also by the relational structures of these properties, and their
susceptibility to change under different contexts. The approach implies a view
of mind in which the union of perception and environment drives
conceptualization, forging a web of conceptual relations or 'ecology of mind'.
