I actually wnt to believe you because it accords with my own intuition but I don&#x27;t trust my intuition on this!<p>Conceptual categorisation + language + ? is totally how we humans comprehend and analyze the world around us, granted. (The devil is in the details of course.) But I don&#x27;t see how we can go from there to &quot;it relies on a hierarchy of defining attributes&quot;<p>I don&#x27;t buy your example because the concepts in our heads seem to be organised in context-specific word bags, i.e. tags.<p>I think I would believe you if cognitive science discovered that tree-hierarchy navigation relied on built-in neuro-spatial machinery or something like that :)<p>I _want_ to believe you but I also want proper proof! :)<p>edit: thanks for the heads up on prototype theory, can&#x27;t believe I&#x27;d forgotten about this. also, thanks for making me ponder more deeply about stereotypes.