Philosophical Foundations of Formal Concept Analysis

Abstract

Concepts are fundamental to the rational communication through language. In the philosophical process, concepts are used either as instruments or as objects of inquiry, and play a very important role in the expression and organization of knowledge. On the other hand, the notion of concept was formally treated in a mathematical theory called Formal Concept Analysis (FCA), which deals basically with data analysis and knowledge processing. Our research aimed the study of the similarities between the philosophical and the mathematical approaches involved in the notion of concept.