ABSTRACT
This is a book about concepts-about their structure and its relationship with the structure of the external world. A central issue is how concepts are represented in the brain of living systems. In order to cope with its environment every living system must categorize “things” or “events” into classes that provoke similar reactions. A simple living system may categorize its environment into things to approach versus things to avoid, or into things to eat and things to mate with. These are concepts. But the word “concept” is not confined to such categories; concepts can be abstract (e.g. justice), mathematical (e.g. a square), linguistic (e.g. a verb), scientific (e.g. a mammal) or even ad hoc (e.g. things to eat on a diet). As this book shows the concept of “concepts” is very broad indeed.
