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Foundational Questions about Concepts: Context‐sensitivity and Embodiment
Author(s) -
BlochMullins Corinne L.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
philosophy compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.973
H-Index - 25
ISSN - 1747-9991
DOI - 10.1111/phc3.12272
Subject(s) - amodal perception , context (archaeology) , cognitive science , epistemology , psychology , cognitive psychology , perception , neuroscience , paleontology , philosophy , biology
This review discusses recent work on foundational questions about concepts. The first of these questions is whether concepts are context‐independent bodies of knowledge, or context‐dependent constructs, created on the fly. The second question is whether concepts are abstract, amodal representations, or whether they are embedded within the sensory‐motor system. I discuss these two questions in light of empirical data from psychology and neuroscience, as well as theoretical considerations, and examine their implications for theories of concepts.