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't see how we can go from there to "it relies on a hierarchy of defining attributes"

I don't buy your example because the concepts in our heads seem to be organised in context-specific word bags, i.e. tags.

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 :)

I _want_ to believe you but I also want proper proof! :)

edit: thanks for the heads up on prototype theory, can't believe I'd forgotten about this. also, thanks for making me ponder more deeply about stereotypes.

I'm not a developmental psychologist btw, just have an interest in cognitive development. The proof you're looking for would be more the field of cognitive neuroscience.

There definitely are graph-like connections between concepts all over the brain, I didn't mean to suggest that our brains work hierarchical only, to the exclusion of all other relations. As an example: if our brains were strictly hierarchical, we would be unable to see the similarity in colour between a grey table and a grey hare. I just meant to explain my thinking on how abstract thought is tied to a attribute/property hierarchy, not proclaim that I know how the brain works.

(edit: snipped on-topic content, best reserved for a separate post)

File systems are arranged hierarchically. Fluke of development? Library catalogues are organised hierarchically. Lucky coincidence? Books themselves are laid out hierarchically. I see a pattern emerging, but is it a trick of the light?

Seems like we like to chunk and splay amorphous informational units into graph-like rooted structures. Maybe cuz of its flexibility?

For something we use all the time and something we do all the time language-use and conceptualisation are deeply mysterious.

I'd say it's fundamental, not any kind of mystery.

Btw, Frege, following Hume has pointed out that abstraction is an equivalence relation: http://logic.uconn.edu/2015/01/21/reference-and-invariance-i... I wouldn't lump simplification and abstraction together, and characterising them both as associations feels wrong.

What I'm trying to say is that your time would be better spent in not correcting every instance of mild hyperbole on HN :)

And mine too. :)

I think it is fundamental. A hierarchy forms naturally from iterative steps of aggregation and differentiation: first, group all similar objects together; then, for each high-level group, look for differences within each group, and split the groups into smaller subgroups. Rinse and repeat until you've reached an acceptable number of items per group.