to think of them in almost the same way one thinks of something one can touch or taste” (Gardner, 2006, p. 10).
7 “A concept is a mental representation of (…) a class of objects that we believe belong together (…) It embodies our knowledge about the category and its members (…)” (Kunda, 1999, p. 16). “Concepts allow us to perceive individual objects as members of a kind, to attribute properties common to the kind to the specific individual object, to communicate about such objects, and so on. Indeed, concepts are often thought of as the building blocks of cognition” (Spalding, Stedman, Hancock y Gagne, 2014, pp. 245 y 246).
8 Mamífero, carnívoro, cuadrúpedo, domesticado, que se caracteriza por poseer sentidos del olfato y del oído altamente desarrollados.
9 El pensamiento abstracto, y en particular el pensamiento ficticio, constituyen dos expresiones únicas de la naturaleza humana. Esas expresiones cumplen un rol trascendental en el proceso evolutivo. En palabras de Harari: “The ability to create an imagined reality out of words enabled large numbers of strangers to cooperate effectively. But it also did something more. Since large-scale human cooperation is based on myths, the way people cooperate can be altered by changing the myths – by telling different stories. Under the right circumstances myths can change rapidly. In 1789 the French population switched almost overnight from believing in the myth of the divine right of kings to believing in the myth of the sovereignty of the people. Consequently, ever since the Cognitive Revolution Homo Sapiens has been able to revise its behavior rapidly in accordance with changing needs. This opened a fast lane of cultural evolution, bypassing the traffic jams of genetic evolution. Speeding down this fast lane, Homo Sapiens soon far outstripped all other human and animal species in its ability to cooperate” (Harari, 2015, pp. 32 y 33).
10 “Categories and schemas are critical building blocks of the human cognitive process. They allow humans to process or at least cope with the infinite amount of information in their environs. Categories and schemas influence every feature of human cognition, affecting not only what information receives attention, but also how that information is categorized, what inferences are drawn from it, and what is or is not remembered” (Hanson y Chen, 2004, p. 1131).
11 “What is the business of concepts? To pick up relevant and useful properties of the environment. Why should they do that? To identify goal satisfying conditions and guide behavior toward them. And why should concepts identify and guide? Because organisms, whatever their complexity, have basic goals (replicate survive, maintain appropriate energy levels by eating and resting, and so on) which they must satisfy (Bogdan, 1989, p. 17).
12 Si en T+1 B advierte que el administrador del restaurante X no permite que C fume un cigarrillo dentro del local, entonces en T+N B no encenderá un cigarrillo dentro de dicho local.
13 “(…) instead of an infinite set of names for colors to identify the infinite gradations in the spectrum, we rely on a dozen or two categories to gather the variation into meaningful, manageable groupings –red, yellow, Green, tan, purple, kaki, and so on. What we might call Green could include a wide range of colors that in most cases makes no sense to distinguish. Green is close enough.” (Hanson y Chen, 2004, pp. 1145 y 1146).
14 “Although our brains have developed exquisite mechanisms for recording specific experiences, it is not always advantageous for us to take the world too literally. A brain limited to storing an independent record of each experience would require a prodigious amount of storage and burden us with unnecessary details. Instead, we have evolved the ability to detect the commonalities among experiences and store them as abstract concepts, general principles and rules. This is an efficient way to deal with a complex world and allows the navigation of many different situations with a minimal amount of storage. It also allows us to deal with novelty. By extracting the essential elements from our experiences, we can generalize to future situations that share some elements but may, on the surface, appear very different. For example, consider the concept ‘camera’. We do not have to learn anew about every camera that we may encounter. Just knowing that the item is a camera communicates a great deal of knowledge about its parts, functions and operations” (Miller, Freedman y Wallis, 2002, p. 1123).
15 Si B sufre lesiones a causa del ataque del perro X, B no requiere informar al médico acerca de todas las características del perro en cuestión (raza, tamaño, edad, etc.). A fin de obtener el conocimiento requerido para prescribir el tratamiento, el médico solo requiere conocer que las lesiones fueron causadas por un perro y no por otro animal.
16 “Sensing grasps what is immediately present, seizes what is here and now. But what happens when this object is put into words? What is directly sensed is ‘this’ before me. This ‘this’ cannot be doubted, since sensing directly reveals objectivity. But one ‘now’ vanishes into the next; one certainty is replaced by others. Unless sense-certainty can say what it means, the vanishing cannot be stopped. The perplexity arises when this presently sensed item is put into words. What sense certainty upholds cannot be put into words. The particular aspect, whether ‘this’, ‘here’, or ‘now’ cannot be expressed without relating it to others. Sense-certainty meant to signify this present sensation in its singularity and absolute certainty. But language involves connections or mediations; what sense-certainty meant is unique and singular. What it meant cannot be spoken. Naming this present sensation ‘red’ associates it with other red things; naming the preset ‘night’ contrasts it with ‘day’ (…) What exactly is sense-certainty certain about? It is impossible to say (…)” (Shuler, 2014, pp. 357 y 358).
17 “Suppose a woman asks a man to show her ‘respect’. Exactly what respect means is itself not very precise; acts like opening doors for another may seem respectful to one generation but not its successor, whereas using crude terms that once showed a lack of respect may now be taken as honest, lively conversation” (Greenawalt, 2017, p. 51).
18 “William James had addressed this question as early as 1869. Instead of asking whether what we know is real, James had asked, ‘Under which circumstances do we think things are real?’ Building on James, the sociologist Erving Goffman explained: ‘We frame reality in order to negotiate it, managed it, comprehend it, and choose appropriate repertories of cognition and action’. Goffman considered how individuals struggled to make sense of the world around them and their experiences and so needed interpretative schemas or primary frameworks to classify knowledge. When there were a number of possible ways of viewing an issue, framing meant that one particular way appeared to be the most natural. This was achieved by highlighting certain features of a situation, stressing likely causes and possible effects, and suggesting the values and norms in play” (Freedman, 2013, pp. 415 y 416).
19 “Italy and France competed in the 2006 final of the World Cup. The next two sentences both describe the outcome: ‘Italy won’. ‘France lost’. Do these statements have the same meaning? The answer depends entirely on what you mean by meaning. For the purpose of logical reasoning, the two descriptions of the outcome of the match are interchangeable because they designate the same state of the world (…) There is another sense
