Abstract
In ‘Against Stored Abstractions,’ Ambridge uses neural and computational evidence to make his case against abstract representations. He argues that storing only exemplars is more parsimonious – why bother with abstraction when exemplar models with on-the-fly calculation can do everything abstracting models can and more – and implies that his view is well supported by neuroscience and computer science. We argue that there is substantial neural, experimental, and computational evidence to the contrary: while both brains and machines can store exemplars, forming categories and storing abstractions is a fundamental part of what they do.
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