To say that classical categories exist external to any beings or any minds is to claim that there is a transcendent logic of the universe, a rationality that transcends any being or any mind. Classical categorization and classical logic are two sides of the same coin. Most of the subject matter of classical logic is categorization.
- Lakoff (1987), a pag.353

The classical theory of categorization is a product of the human mind. [...] Many (though by no means all) cognitive models use classical categories. As such, they are part of our folk models of most domains of our experience. We use folk models to understand what we experience. Thus, classical categories, because of the role they play in the structure of many of our cognitive models, do play a significant role in what we understand.
- Lakoff (1987), a pag.160

The objectivist claim that classical categories exist objectively in the external world is usually taken to be supported by biological evidence. Objectivist philosophers typically point to biological categories like tiger, crow, fish, zebra, etc., which they take as paradigm cases of natural kinds-classical categories that occur in nature and that are defined by essential necessary and sufficient conditions.
- Lakoff (1987), a pag.185

Classical categories and natural kinds are remnants of pre-Darwinian philosophy. They fit the biology of the ancient Greeks very well, and even the biology of local naturalists such as Linnaeus.
- Lakoff (1987), a pag.195

Symbolic theories all take for granted that classical categories are the only kind of objectively existing category. This is based on the assumption that things sharing those properties are also things in the world with which symbols can be associated.
- Lakoff (1987), a pag.253

Classical categories and classical taxonomies are not built into nature or part of some transcendental rationality that goes beyond thinking beings. They are inventions of human mind. Each classical taxonomy is an idealized cognitive model-a hierarchical structure of classical categories. The elements in the ontology of taxonomic model are all categories. Each category is represented structurally by a CONTAINER schema.
- Lakoff (1987), a pag.287

In classical categories, the boundary is sharp and does not have any interior structure.
- Lakoff (1987), a pag.287