Abstract
The 15 articles in this special issue on The Representation of Concepts illustrate the rich variety of theoretical positions and supporting research that characterize the area. Although much agreement exists among contributors, much disagreement exists as well, especially about the roles of grounding and abstraction in conceptual processing. I first review theoretical approaches raised in these articles that I believe are Quixotic dead ends, namely, approaches that are principled and inspired but likely to fail. In the process, I review various theories of amodal symbols, their distortions of grounded theories, and fallacies in the evidence used to support them. Incorporating further contributions across articles, I then sketch a theoretical approach that I believe is likely to be successful, which includes grounding, abstraction, flexibility, explaining classic conceptual phenomena, and making contact with real-world situations. This account further proposes that (1) a key element of grounding is neural reuse, (2) abstraction takes the forms of multimodal compression, distilled abstraction, and distributed linguistic representation (but not amodal symbols), and (3) flexible context-dependent representations are a hallmark of conceptual processing.
Highlights
The 15 articles in this special issue on The Representation of Concepts illustrate the rich variety of theoretical positions and supporting research that characterize the area
As we will see, traditional issues in cognitive psychology and cognitive science receive discussion as well and are important to integrate with recent neural issues in future research
I begin with two approaches associated with grounded cognition that are unlikely to succeed as accounts of concepts
Summary
The study of concepts offers a significant set of challenges. First, conceptual processing proceeds largely unconsciously, such that it is difficult to observe concepts and their effects. It is difficult to think of a domain characterized by so many different views and so much disagreement (Barsalou, 2003b, 2012; Margolis & Laurence, 1999; McRae & Jones, 2013; Murphy, 2002). Because of these challenges, there is the potential to head off in the wrong direction. At least many researchers in the area believe this, often accusing each other of being completely misguided in their approach In this spirit, I begin with candidates for what I will refer to as Quixotic dead ends. After presenting my predictions for approaches unlikely to succeed I turn to approaches that I believe are more likely to succeed in the
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
