摘要：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.
