In this paper we establish a link between preferential semantics for description logics and self-organising maps, which have been proposed as possible candidates to explain the psychological mechanisms underlying category generalisation. In particular, we show that a concept-wise multipreference semantics, which takes into account preferences with respect to different concepts and has been recently proposed for defeasible description logics, can be used to to provide a logical interpretation of SOMs. We also provide a logical interpretation of SOMs in terms of a fuzzy description logic as well as a probabilistic account.