Issues in Grounded Cognition and how to solve them – The Minimalist Account

The field of grounded cognition is concerned with how concepts gain meaning by being represented in experiences. A large body of empirical work supports this core tenet, but the field is rife with meta-theoretical issues which prevent meaningful development. In this paper we describe these issues and subsequently provide as a solution an overarching theoretical framework. The two most commonly cited grounded cognition theories are perceptual symbol systems and conceptual metaphor theory. Perceptual symbols involves fragments of multi-modal percepts, to be integrated in a simulator. Conceptual metaphor theory states that a limited number of image schemas (primitive structural regularities in the environment) undergo one of a limited number of transformations to become the concept representations. Both theories are replete with issues stemming from premature elaboration. Our minimalist account of grounded cognition takes this field ‘back to basics’ with a common-denominator framework integrated across disciplines. This provides a base for incremental theory developments by relying on established simulation and metaphor mechanisms without making strong assumptions. This approach avoids existing limits of theorizing and encourages a falsificationist research program that allows to integrate grounded cognition further into the cognitive sciences.