# Being careful with concepts I like to think about how concepts can be [used as goal-directed tools](https://philpapers.org/rec/SMIETS-3). This lens has helped me to appreciate how our uses of concepts are structured by the taken-for-granted associations that get carried-along by concepts over time. I now try to examine different sets of associations for the concepts I find useful. Along the way, I hope to figure out which concepts are the most appropriate tools for the goals I share with others. Recognising the goal-directed uses of concepts can be complicated by our tendency to use the same term to refer to different concepts and different terms to refer to the same concepts. Trying to untangle these differenes helps me to continually question the appropriateness of the concepts I'm using to think and communicate in different contexts. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how the [concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations are used as tools in neuroimaging experiments](https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/items/d918e66b-e2ca-5679-953f-32c381f3a662). More recently, I've been focusing on the ways that we are using concepts as tools to help us collectively organise for better futures. I've yet to pick a concept to focus on, but I've been exploring a collection of concepts that include: [commoning](https://commonslibrary.org/practising-commoning/) and [prefigurative politics](https://commonslibrary.org/prefigurative-politics-in-practice/). > "Thinking-in-common [doesn’t mean] thinking in the same way or about the same things, but thinking through shared experiences and shared questions... [a practice that can help] transcend existing realities of common worlds and thus envisage new possible forms of commoning and the common" [(Stavros Stavrides 2016)](https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/11625623) Building on these earlier explorations, I am currently focusing on collecting resources to help me learn to be more careful about the concept of ['collective governance'](https://hackmd.io/@Teq/SkG18auHF) in the context of the broader set of concepts contributing to movements towards [transformative solidarity economies](https://hackmd.io/OQdegXIuT1K5KfWOgN-xOw). My explorations of concepts often tend to both build on and feed-into one or more of my various resource collections, and I often share in-progress fragments of my thinking about the particular contextualised uses of various contested concepts. --- ###### tags: `concepts` Date created: 2025 Version: 1.1 Created for: personal use Attribution: created by [E. T. Smith](https://hackmd.io/@Teq/Bio) on unceded lands of the [Wurundjeri people](https://www.wurundjeri.com.au/). <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /></a> [CC BY-NC-SA](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) {%hackmd /E20qKLmUSK2xloQxRNbdYw %}