Some Empirical Results about the Nature of Concepts

Abstract

Some Empirical Results About The Nature Of Concepts George Lakofl' University of California at Berkeley It is diflicult to write anything short about concepts once one has written a 600—page book on the subject (Lakoli, 1987). What I will try to do is try to set down as briefly and succinctly as possible some of the basics of what has been learned from empirical studies in the various cog- nitive sciences. But before getting on to a substantive discussion, it should be noted that there are important negative results: —Concepts do not ‘mirror nature’; they are not mere internal representa- tions of external reality. —-Concepts are, for the most part, not defined by necessary and sufficient conditions. — Natural kind concepts constitute an interesting special case: Biological natural kind concepts do not refer to sets of biological entities in the