Moving beyond the distinction between concrete and abstract concepts

Barsalou, L. W. , Dutriaux, L. and Scheepers, C. (2018) Moving beyond the distinction between concrete and abstract concepts. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 373(1752), 20170144. (doi: 10.1098/rstb.2017.0144) (PMID:29915012)

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Abstract

From the perspective of the situated conceptualization framework, the primary purpose of concepts is for categorizing and integrating elements of situations to support goal-directed action (including communication and social interaction). To the extent that important situational elements are categorized and integrated properly, effective goal-directed action follows. Over time, frequent patterns of co-occurring concepts within situations become established in memory as situated conceptualizations, conditioning the conceptual system and producing habitual patterns of conceptual processing. As a consequence, individual concepts are most basically represented within patterns of concepts that become entrained with specific kinds of physical situations. In this framework, the concrete versus abstract distinction between concepts is no longer useful, with two other distinctions becoming important instead: (i) external versus internal situational elements, (ii) situational elements versus situational integrations. Whereas concepts for situational elements originate in distributed neural networks that provide continual feeds about components of situations, concepts for situational integrations originate in association areas that establish temporal co-occurrence relations between situational elements, both external and internal. We propose that studying concepts in the context of situated action is necessary for establishing complete accounts of them, and that continuing to study concepts in isolation is likely to provide relatively incomplete and distorted accounts. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain’.

Item Type:Articles
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Barsalou, Professor Lawrence and Scheepers, Dr Christoph and Dutriaux, Mr Leo
Authors: Barsalou, L. W., Dutriaux, L., and Scheepers, C.
College/School:College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Psychology & Neuroscience
College of Science and Engineering > School of Psychology
Journal Name:Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Publisher:The Royal Society
ISSN:0962-8436
ISSN (Online):1471-2970
Published Online:18 June 2018
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2018 The Authors
First Published:First published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 373(1752): 20170144
Publisher Policy:Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy

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