Borghi Anna M
Sapienza University of Rome, Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, IT.
Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italian National Research Council, IT.
J Cogn. 2020 Oct 23;3(1):42. doi: 10.5334/joc.134.
The paper outlines one of the most important challenges that embodied and grounded theories need to face, i.e., that to explain how abstract concepts (abstractness) are acquired, represented, and used. I illustrate the view according to which abstract concepts are grounded not only in sensorimotor experiences, like concrete concepts, but also and to a greater extent in linguistic, social, and inner experiences. Specifically, I discuss the role played by metacognition, inner speech, social metacognition, and interoception. I also present evidence showing that the weight of linguistic, social, and inner experiences varies depending on the considered sub-kind of abstract concepts (e.g., mental states and spiritual concepts, numbers, emotions, social concepts). I argue that the challenge to explain abstract concepts representation implies the recognition of: a. the role of language, intended as inner and social tool, in shaping our mind; b. the importance of differences across languages; c. the existence of different kinds of abstract concepts; d. the necessity to adopt new paradigms, able to capture the use of abstract concepts in context and interactive situations. This challenge should be addressed with an integrated approach that bridges developmental, anthropological, and neuroscientific studies. This approach extends embodied and grounded views incorporating insights from distributional statistics views of meaning, from pragmatics and semiotics.
本文概述了具身理论和扎根理论需要面对的最重要挑战之一，即解释抽象概念（抽象性）是如何获得、表征和使用的。我阐述了这样一种观点，即抽象概念不仅像具体概念一样扎根于感觉运动经验，而且在更大程度上扎根于语言、社会和内在经验。具体来说，我讨论了元认知、内心言语、社会元认知和内感受所起的作用。我还展示了证据，表明语言、社会和内在经验的权重会因所考虑的抽象概念子类别（如心理状态和精神概念、数字、情感、社会概念）的不同而有所变化。我认为，解释抽象概念表征的挑战意味着要认识到：a. 作为内在和社会工具的语言在塑造我们思维方面的作用；b. 语言之间差异的重要性；c. 不同种类抽象概念的存在；d. 采用能够捕捉抽象概念在情境和互动情况下使用的新范式的必要性。这一挑战应以一种综合方法来应对，该方法将发展心理学、人类学和神经科学研究联系起来。这种方法扩展了具身理论和扎根理论，融入了来自意义分布统计观点、语用学和符号学的见解。
