A view on abstract concepts from an interaction-based perspective: An attempt at a semiotic analysis

Most of the approaches to concepts, both in cognitive science and in artificial intelligence, are informed by information-processing views. Concepts are mapped to categories, which despite their fuzzy boundaries, graded structure and family resemblance (Rosch, 1973), are still mostly characterized by objective features pertaining to the objects in those categories. This has not changed even in the newest deep learning models, when those features are not translatable to straightforward descriptions but still objectively belong to the classified objects.

Yet in “action-first” or interactive modern paradigms, such as ecological psychology and enactivism, perception and action are inseparable, and the world is perceived in terms of relational features, affordances. This relational view puts center-stage the first-person experience, including experience of one’s own movement and agency (Sheets-Johnston, 2011), often in interaction with others, which makes the theory of concepts deeply embodied, situated, naturally interactive and normative (Rączaszek-Leonardi & Zubek, 2023). Such a view on concepts facilitates explaining their action and goal-relevance and their flexibility, however begs the question about the processes of abstraction from the immediate contact with the world.

In our paper we will attempt to trace how the abstraction processes could look like, and we envision them as particular historical and social paths of agents’ experience with the world. Following William James, we will treat emergent knowledge structures as selection capabilities developed as skills in dealing with and making sense of the world. By attempting a semiotic analysis of this process, we hope to shed light on a variety of possible trajectories of concepts acquisition. We will treat signs as constraints allowing selection between alternative concepts. As we will argue, acquisition of a certain concept can be equated with the ability to interpret a sign leading to the selection of that concept. Apparently the same concept can be elicited by multiple signs, possibly belonging to different classes (iconic, indexical or symbolic). Congruently, individual trajectories of acquiring a concept may vary and involve different semiotic processes. We will analyze the classic distinction between concrete and abstract concepts in the light of Peircean semiotic categories, starting with firstness, secondness and thirdness. The necessity of social interaction in establishing even the most concrete concepts using the most basic signs will be discussed.

References

Rączaszek-Leonardi, J., & Zubek, J. (2023). Is love an abstract concept? A view of concepts from an interaction-based perspective. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 378(1870), 20210356. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0356

Rosch, E. H. (1973). Natural categories. Cognitive Psychology, 4(3), 328–350. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(73)90017-0

Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2011). The primacy of movement (expanded 2nd edn). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company.