Category vs Concept

Schemata View

Concepts are forms of schemata, organized knowledge frameworks with roles, slots, variables, and relations. A concept isn’t just a list of features or examples; it’s part of a broader structure of related knowledge.

Example

A “car accident” schema includes broken glass, police, injury, traffic, insurance, calling your parents, etc.

  • Strength: captures richer, organized knowledge than similarity-based views
  • Problem: ill-defined, hard to falsify empirically

Paired with the Knowledge-based View as an explanation-based account, in contrast to similarity-based views like Prototype and Exemplar.