Concepts are mental representations of our knowledge of the world

An effeicient way of representing the knowledge of the world and the objects in it AND also a way of making predictions about the world.

Concepts have a set of defining attributes - an instance of the concept meets with ALL features necessary to be considered a member of a particular category

e.g. bachelor - male, single, adult.

What are the criticisms of Classical view of concepts?

• everything is too clear cut - e.g. an object is required to meet all features of a given category to be a member
• questions of typcality (Rosch) robin typical penguin atypical
• fuzzy or borderline (McCloskey et al 1978) bookends - furniture or another category?
• intransivity (Hampton 1982) Big ben is a clock and clocks are furniture BUT Big Ben is not an item of furniture

Concepts are intrinsically linked with categories which refer to those things in the world that a concept is about, external to the mind.

It's the grouping of objects, events and people around us into classes and to respond to the class rather than the uniqueness.