Examining tensions between the past and present uses of scientific concepts can help clarify their contributions as tools in experimental practices. This point can be illustrated by considering the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations: despite debates over their respective referential reliabilities remaining unresolved within their interdependent histories, both are used as independently stable concepts in neuroimaging experiments. Building on an account of how these concepts function as tools structured for pursuit of diverging goals in experiments, this paper explores this (...) tension by re-examining the continued reliance of each concept on inverse characterisations inherited from the nominally-discarded ‘mediator-view’ of sensory-like mental phenomena (SLMP). In doing so, I seek to demonstrate how examining unresolved tensions can help highlight that entrenched associations can remain both integral to, and obscured by, the uses of concepts as goal-directed tools within experimental practices. (shrink)

The debate between the amodal and the grounded views of cognition seems to be stuck. Their only substantial disagreement is about the vehicle or format of concepts. Amodal theorists reject the grounded claim that concepts are couched in the same modality-specific format as representations in sensory systems. The problem is that there is no clear characterization of format or its neural correlate. In order to make the disagreement empirically meaningful and move forward in the discussion we need a neurocognitive criterion (...) for representational format. I argue that efficient coding models in computational neuroscience can be used to characterize modal codes: These are codes which satisfy special informational demands imposed by sensory tasks. Additionally, I examine recent studies on neural coding and argue that although they do not provide conclusive evidence for either the grounded or the amodal views, they can be used to determine what predictions these approaches can make and what experimental and theoretical developments would be required to settle the debate. (shrink)

A great deal of research has focused on the question of whether or not concepts are embodied as a rule. Supporters of embodiment have pointed to studies that implicate affective and sensorimotor systems in cognitive tasks, while critics of embodiment have offered nonembodied explanations of these results and pointed to studies that implicate amodal systems. Abstract concepts have tended to be viewed as an important test case in this polemical debate. This essay argues that we need to move beyond a (...) pretheoretical notion of abstraction. Against the background of current research and theory, abstract concepts do not pose a single, unified problem for embodied cognition but, instead, three distinct problems: the problem of generalization, the problem of flexibility, and the problem of disembodiment. Identifying these problems provides a conceptual framework for critically evaluating, and perhaps improving upon, recent theoretical proposals. (shrink)