Concepts are a fundamental aspect of intelligent behavior. Traditionally, a concept has been viewed as a mental representation that picks out a group of equivalent items or a category. For example, every person has a concept of dog and can use that concept to pick out a category of things that one would call dogs. Some of the most fundamental questions about the mind include the following: What do human concepts consist of (i.e, what is their structure)? How are they are acquired? Why do humans have concepts (i.e, What functions do they have)?

What Do Human Concepts Consist Of?

An early, popular view of concepts was the classical view. For a variety of reasons this approach was unsatisfactory and gave way to the probabilistic view. These views are described and compared below.

Classical Versus Probabilistic View

The...