Reification and Cognitive Science

Abstract

This article aims to show how many cognitive constructs within cognitive science are easily subject to a form of “reification,” which is the (often implicit) belief that cognitive functions are “things” and, therefore, unitary, inherently enduring, and isolable both from their environmental conditions and from other cognitive functions. After introducing the notion of reification and its relevance to cognitive science, I will discuss how the reification process leads to cognition being seen as isolated from its environment and internally characterized by hyperspecialization (reification in cognitive science). Second, the article highlights that this phenomenon has a cognitive-linguistic origin and that it strongly depends on the linguistic forms we use to describe cognitive functioning: different verbal labels lead to the belief that different substances exist (reification explained by cognitive science). Last, I will show how some recent theoretical approaches and experimental discoveries suggest instead that the verbal labels we use to describe cognitive functioning (and some resulting dichotomies) in fact conceal processes that are extremely interconnected, interdependent, and integrated. It will also be highlighted that some of these experimental data are considered “discoveries” precisely because the implicit starting points are characterized by overcategorization and decontextualization (or at least interpreted based on these assumptions).

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Ianì, F., (2024). Reification and Cognitive Science. Journal of Theoretical and
Philosophical Psychology. In press. Doi:10.1037/teo0000296
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Reification and Cognitive Science
Francesco Ianìab
aDepartment of Psychology, Università degli studi di Torino
bCenter for Logic, Language, and Cognition, Università degli studi di Torino
Corresponding author:
Francesco Ianì, PhD
Via Verdi 10, Torino, Italy
Tel. +39 011 6703038
Mail: francesco.iani@unito.it
* The ideas appearing in the paper have not been previously shared or presented at conferences, meetings or
on websites

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Abstract
This paper aims to show how many cognitive constructs within cognitive science are easily
subject to a form of “reification”, which is the (often implicit) belief that cognitive functions are
“things” and, therefore, unitary, inherently enduring, and isolable both from their environmental
conditions and from other cognitive functions. After introducing the notion of reification and its
relevance to cognitive science, I will discuss how the reification process leads to cognition being
seen as isolated from its environment and internally characterized by hyper-specialization
(reification in cognitive science). Secondly, the paper highlights that this phenomenon has a
cognitive-linguistic origin and that it strongly depends on the linguistic forms we use to describe
cognitive functioning: different verbal labels lead to the belief that different substances exist
(reification explained by cognitive science). Finally, I will show how some recent theoretical
approaches and experimental discoveries suggest instead that the verbal labels we use to describe
cognitive functioning (and some resulting dichotomies) in fact conceal processes that are extremely
interconnected, interdependent and integrated. It will also be highlighted that some of these
experimental data are considered “discoveries” precisely because the implicit starting points are
characterized by over-categorization and de-contextualization (or at least interpreted based on these
assumptions).
Keywords: reification, cognitive science, embodied cognition.
Public Significance Statement
The knowledge of cognitive science is dominated by a “metaphysical framework of
substance”, according to which cognition can be easily decomposed into single and separate
substances, i.e. into different cognitive functions. In this paper, I show how this is at least partly due
to the phenomenon of reification: the (often implicit) belief that to every noun corresponds a
“thing” and, therefore, a unitary, inherently enduring, and isolable entity. The phenomenon of

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reification is related to some linguistic practices that scientists often use, such as “nominalization”,
i.e. the use of nouns instead of verbs. Since recent theoretical approaches and empirical evidence
seem instead to suggest that the verbal labels we use to describe cognitive functions conceal
processes that are extremely interconnected and integrated, this article discusses the importance for
cognitive scientists to be aware of some linguistic practices that can easily have distorting
consequences.

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Introduction
In the first year of a psychology degree, students in a general psychology course are usually asked
to study manuals that are structured according to a simple categorization: one chapter for each
cognitive function. Thus, there is a chapter for ‘perception’, one for ‘attention’, one for ‘memory’,
another for ‘reasoning’, and so on (e.g., Eysenck & Keane, 2020). The individual chapters are
structured in the same way. The chapter on memory, for example, consists of different sections,
each relating to a specific memory store (see the “multistore” model of memory, Atkinson &
Shiffrin, 1968).
Although the pragmatic value of this categorizing approach is undisputed, and a different
approach would probably not be as effective in introducing students to the general processes that
govern the human mind, I would argue that this practice, more generally, is a good example of what
often happens in cognitive research as well. This paper shows that the use of various categorical
verbal labels to describe cognitive processes hides and causes a form of “reification”, which is the
idea of cognitive functions as independent and isolable “things” (Zahnoun, 2020). This linguistic
contingency leads to the mistaken assumption that many cognitive systems distinguished by
cognitive science correspond to “substance ontologies”: the idea that cognitive functions exist as
independent, isolable, stable, and enduring entities.
It has been emphasized that psychology, more than other disciplines that are “processes-
oriented”, is “stuck in pursuit of stable and universal entities” (Van Geert & De Ruiter, 2022, pp.14-
15). This paper argues that this depends, at least in part, on the linguistic tendency to use categorical
verbal labels to think about, study and communicate the findings of the cognitive literature. If such
a praxis
1
is not object of critical discussion, it can have negative consequences, such as de-
1
The term “praxis” here, as defined by Van Geert and De Ruiter (2022), refers to all the ways that scientists use to
obtain, describe, and communicate their results.

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contextualization, i.e. studying cognitive functions as if they were isolated ontologies, and over-
categorization, i.e. creating arbitrary boundaries, often in the form of dichotomies.
What Is Reification?
In general terms, “reification” can be defined as “the process of regarding or treating an abstraction
or idea as if it had concrete or material existence” (see Gunderson & Gunderson, 2006). Thus, the
term “reification” has been used to describe the act of creating ontologies for abstract entities (the
terms “thingification” or “encapsulation” are also used with a similar meaning, e.g., Dubinsky,
1991). By analyzing the etymology of the word “reification” (the Latin ‘res’ means ‘thing’), it is
possible to describe it as the act of “conceiving of something which is not a thing as a thing”
(Zahnoun, 2020, p.81). In this view, ‘things’ are thought to be characterized by an independent
spatiotemporal existence (i.e. finiteness in space and time), by physical properties (and thus
observable), by classifiability and by causal efficacy. In philosophical terms, they are “substances”,
i.e. things that can exist on their own and are independent from other circumstances and
contingencies (Smith, 1997).
The phenomenon of reification is a prevalent feature of cognition itself that is at play in
different contexts. We tend to interpret non-substance entities such as processes, actions, events,
rules, and norms as if they were “things”. Reification is so pervasive in human cognition that it lies
at the heart of some fundamental philosophical problems (for a discussion of reification in
Heidegger’s philosophy see, De Oliveira, 2012), and it is a crucial construct in political science and
sociology (for a recent discussion see, O’Kane, 2021). For cognitive science, I will argue that a
form of reification underlies the implicit assumption that drives both cognitive research and
interpretation of results: the assumption that different cognitive levels and functions exist as ‘things’
and therefore are a-temporal, isolable and enduring.

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To fully understand what reification is, before discussing reification in the context of
cognitive research, I would like to introduce forms of reification that govern more general
psychological constructs. First, reification processes seem to be linked to the construct of “self”. In
this view, reification led to the implicit belief that what we call “self” is a unitary substance,
inherently enduring and independent of the variables and circumstances surrounding it (Dahl et al.,
2015). What an extensive body of literature seems instead to suggest is that what we call “self” is
rather a process, non-unitary and for some authors even a “metaphysical fiction” (Di Francesco &
Francesco, 2013) or a “myth” (e.g., Metzinger, 2009). According to De Ruiter and colleagues
(2017), the experience of the self is a higher-order process that results from the interaction over
time between self-related experiences such as thinking, feeling and acting. What we call “self” is an
intrinsic dynamic process that depends on other self-related components as well as the context, i.e. a
self-organizing process that emerges from the interactions between multiple components, rather
than an agent or a substance (De Ruiter et al., 2017)
2
.
Recently, other constructs have also been discussed as being dominated by forms of
reification, as the construct of “self-esteem”. Van Geert and de Ruiter argued that in developmental
research, this construct is studied and communicated as if self-esteem were a “thing”, i.e. as a
(measurable) substance rather than a process (2022). The conceptualization of self-esteem as a
universal substance “is most broadly enacted when researchers reify self-esteem, meaning that an
abstract thing is regarded as a concrete thing that exists universally. Self-esteem thus becomes a
kind of ‘thing’, a thing that we all ‘have’” (p. 65). Put in other words, “it is as if the person were the
vessel for a plethora of substances, like vapors or liquids that are concealed inside them” (Schiff,
2017; p.3). In this regard, Pomagalska (2005) has shown how psychologists convey concepts and
insights about self-esteem in a reifying-language that makes it, for example, an agent that causes or
2
Wittgenstein came to a similar conclusion affirming that there is no such thing as a “self that thinks”, and he also
emphasized the linguistic origin of the reification process: “a substantive [a noun] makes us look for a thing that
corresponds to it” (Wittgenstein, 1958/1972; p.1).

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does not cause certain choices and behaviours (as an object that has a ‘life of its own’, see next
section). Further, she has also highlighted the consequences of this reification for readers, namely
that self-esteem is often seen as a tangible entity that characterises and defines every person.
Finally, the same reasoning has also been used to describe the reification underlying the
construct of ‘mental representation’ and the reification underlying clinical categories. For instance,
Di Paolo and colleagues (2017), as well as Zahnoun (2020) argued that internal mental
representations are usually viewed as things that can be owned and produced, exactly as any other
thing. Similarly, Hyman (2010) claimed that modern DSM-V system, “intended to create a shared
language, also creates epistemic blinders that impede progress toward valid diagnoses” (p.155), as it
reifies hypothetical concepts into things that people do or do not possess.
As Levy (2019) pointed out, it is easy to forget that such psychological constructs are “not
some objective thing that an individual actually ‘has’ […]” rather, they are “hypothetical concept[s]
that we have created to help us organize and make sense out of people’s behaviour” (p.325).
Why Reification?
Why does the phenomenon of reification occur? This section highlights how reification depends on
some of the linguistic practices that researchers use to describe and communicate their knowledge.
In general terms, having different words and different labels leads us to believe (implicitly) in
the existence of different categories, ontologically independent and isolable exactly as words and
labels are. In other words, and as cognitive science itself shows, verbal labels and nouns increase
the tendency to categorize stimuli and thus to create ontologies (e.g., Dietze, 1955). As pointed out
by Engel (1995), “we have come to realize that how we talk about a thing – how we describe it –
determines how we come to see it, what we come to believe about it” (p. 42). Similarly, Sapir
(1929) argued that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built on the linguistic habits
used to describe it.

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In this regard, Van Geert and De Ruiter (2022) stated that “The way that we describe these
research settings and outcomes - the language we use - is an integral part of how we come to
understand or explain experiments […] and […] outcomes. The way we talk about research is thus
far from superficial” (p.103). This linguistic-cognitive effect can have detrimental outcomes when
used in relation to hypothetical constructs. For example, the visual-cliff experiment (Gibson &
Walk, 1960) is presented as an instrument for measuring or demonstrating infants’ ability to
perceive depth (depth perception). Scientific explanations interpret infants’ success or failure by
focusing on the presence or absence of a categorical entity, i.e., “depth perception”, rather than
considering that the infants’ actions may have more complex origins than one prior cognitive
function. Van Geert and De Ruiter (2022) conclude that: “this type of explanation is typical of a
substance philosophy, focusing on substances or essences in the form of isolable abilities (depth
perception) associated with certain categories of people (infants)” (p.103).
But let’s start from the beginning, i.e. from a linguistic feature of the grammatical structure of
many languages, the so-called “hypostatization” phenomenon. Hypostatization occurs every time
we regard an abstract word as if it were a concrete word (Engel, 1995). Engel (1995) uses the
phrase “Nature decrees what is right” as an example of hypostatization. In this example, the abstract
concept of nature is treated as a concrete entity: it is seen as a unitary entity that is able to dispose of
or keep something and to evaluate what is right or wrong (i.e. as a personified agent that can do
things). Since it is able to decree and evaluate on its own, it is also considered a unitary, isolable,
and independent substance.
From a linguistic point of view, hypostatization is therefore an idiomatic phenomenon in
which the grammatical category of nouns is used to describe non-substantive entities such as
processes, series of actions or properties and qualities. For example, the noun “journey” is used to
describe a series of actions, and similarly the noun “walk” is used to describe the activity of
walking. However, the use of single nouns facilitates the interpretation of “journey” (or “walk”) as

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a kind of independent thing, whereas in reality it is a dynamic process rather than an independent
substance. Hypostatization is then an example of grammatical derivation, in which the “derived
‘noun’ term does not literally refer to a substance” (Zahnoun, 2020, p.87).
As Billig (2013) has shown, this linguistic practice is particularly relevant in the social
sciences, where complex processes are often described as static and independent substances.
Crucially, Billig has shown how technical terminology in this field tends to be based on what he
calls “nominalization”, that is the tendency to use nouns, even in the form of neologisms, rather
than the corresponding verbs
3
. Psychology as well as social sciences, whose object of study is
inherently complex, increasingly use a noun-based style of writing, which in Billig’s theory (2008;
2013) has important functions. Among these, Billig mentions the function of deleting agency (the
sentence “The police attacked the demonstrators” can easily be transformed into the sentence “An
attack on the demonstrators took place” that contains less information) and the function of
reification: by transforming verbs into nouns, it is conveyed that these entities “have a real and
necessary existence” (Billig, 2008, p.786). Through “nominalization”, processes and qualities
assume the status of objective and unchangeable things (Fowler, 1991; Billig, 2008).
Therefore, the linguistic phenomenon of categorical substitution leads to the psychological
phenomenon of reification. In other words, the effect of hypostatization (or nominalization in
Billig’s terminology) on cognition is what is called reification: “nouns lend themselves much more
readily to a conceptualization of what they stand for as ‘tilings’, and this greatly encourages the
illusion of reification. In actual fact, different shell nouns provide gaps for ontologically different
types of entities” (Schmid, 1998; p.5). In the context of this paper, reification is not seen as a
deliberate function of a nouns-based terminology as in Billig’s theory (which is also sometimes
understood as ideologically determined; Fowler et al., 1979), but as an (often implicit) effect of
3
Nominalization is itself a nominalization that conceals an extremely complex process (for a more detailed analysis of
the different types of nominalization processes, see Billig, 2008).

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linguistic practice on some cognitive processes such as categorization and perception. That is,
whereas for Fowler and colleagues (1979) reification is a consequence of cognition (“ideologically
charged”), in this paper reification is presented as a cognitive consequence of linguistic practice
(thinking in terms of substances is considered an implicit consequence of a specific terminology).
This view is consistent with the so-called “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” (e.g., Whorf, 1956),
according to which the linguistic forms we use to communicate and explicitly convey our thoughts
are also a factor that can shape important aspects of the cognitive system
4
. In a pioneering study of
Dietze (1955), one group of young children (pre-school), during a concept formation task, learned
names (pronounced by the experimenter) that were similar in their language structure, while a
second group learned names that were very different from each other. For example, the first group
learned names such as ‘been’, ‘meem’, and ‘peem’, i.e. nonsense names chosen to be alike except
for the aspiration of the initial consonants, whereas the second group learned ‘jod’, ‘daf’, and
‘meep’, i.e. names chosen to have different initial and final consonants and different vowel sounds.
Dietze (1955) found that the different-names group categorized faster than the similar-names group.
Similarly, and more recently, a number of cognitive science experiments have shown that
being exposed to a particular set of names indicating categories has several cognitive effects.
Research on the use of words to designate colors, for example, shows that the more names we have
at our disposal, the more likely we are to assign stimuli to a different colour category. Humans learn
to name colors with categorical labels that are specific to each language and culture, for example,
“red”, “green”, “yellow” and so on. Categorical labels also depend on specific experiences and
interactions with the environment. For example, professionals for whom color distinctions are
essential (e.g., painters) may develop a very extensive color vocabulary. The key point is that this
system not only facilitates communication, but also influences how colors are perceived. In a recent
4
This hypothesis was first put forward by the American anthologist and linguist Edward Sapir (1929) and then
reformulated by Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956).

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study, immediately after hearing a colour word/label, participants discriminated more between
colors from the named category and colors from nearby categories in an untimed task (Forder &
Lupyan, 2019). It is interesting to note that hearing the word also increases the distinction between
typical and atypical category members. In contrast to verbal cues, a preview of the target color (as
noted by the authors, arguably a more informative cue) did not lead to a change in discrimination
tendency. Otherwise put, colour words have a strong influence on color discrimination, suggesting
that verbal labels reinforce our tendency to categorize stimuli (Forder & Lupyan, 2019).
The crucial feature of this phenomenon is that it is somehow stable and pervasive (or in other
words, stored in our long-term memory). Indeed, these data have often been used to formulate the
so-called “label-feedback hypothesis” (Lupyan, 2007), according to which labels, once learned
(visually or auditorily), are also re-activated during visual experiences “and this activation feeds
back to affect ongoing visual processing” (Foster & Lupyan, 2019, p.1110). This sort of
“representational warping” caused by the use of specific verbal labels is demonstrated by the
augmented tendency to separate category members from nearby non-members (e.g., under the
influence of the label “green”, the representations of green colors move away from those of blue
colors) (Lupyan & Swingley, 2012). The presentation or even the self-production of a label before
the presentation of a set of inputs results in the inputs being processed in the light of the
“categorical prior” created by the label (e.g., Lupyan, & Swingley, 2012). Exploiting the same
mechanism, Lupyan (2009) demonstrated how verbal interference during a classification task
affected selective categorization and the literature on aphasic patients suggests that the
categorization ability (e.g., to classify objects on a specific dimension) is often impaired in patients
that are not able to produce verbal labels (e.g., Langland-Hassan et al., 2017). Further, since
linguistic labels reify categories and since linguistic labels vary across languages, it has been shown
that categorization changes across cultures (Winawer et al., 2007). There is also evidence that
categorical perception is stronger in the right visual field (which projects to the left hemisphere, the

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linguistic one), thereby confirming the relationship between the tendency to categorize and
linguistic processes (Drivonikou et al, 2007).
In sum, while the tendency to categorize is obviously an intrinsic feature of human cognition,
it is reinforced by the presence of verbal labels that expand cross-category differences and increase
within-category similarities. A possible explanation for these effects is that there may be no
homomorphism, no similarity in terms of form, between the empirical system (i.e. what happens in
the world) and the formal system that is used to describe it (i.e. the language). Taking as example
the domain of emotions categorization rather than colours, Van Geert & De Ruiter (2022)
highlighted the gap between the “open collection of all possible, concrete manifestations of
emotions” in individuals (better understood as fuzzy sets with gradual rather than strict boundaries;
see Kazemzadeh et al. 2013), and the system of labels used to describe them (a limited set of
emotion terms that implicitly belong to different categories, e.g., happy, angry, sad, etc.).
Why is the Phenomenon of Reification Important in Everyday Cognitive Science?
Why is reification important for cognitive research? The aim of this section is to show how
reification phenomena are implicitly at the basis of some “standard” cognitive theories and how, at
the same time, some alternative theoretical approaches and findings conflict with the substance-
view implicitly induced by reification phenomena.
For cognitive science, one form of reification underlies the implicit assumption that drives
both cognitive research and the interpretation of results: the assumption that different cognitive
levels and functions exist as ‘things’ and are therefore a-temporal, isolable and enduring. The use of
different nouns to describe the components of cognitive functioning led to the implicit assumption
that they are also different “things” that can be studied in isolation and independently of each other
as if they had clear boundaries. This approach has led to an “over”-categorizing tendency (the idea
that all things can be classified into different groups; Dika, 2020) which is typical of Cartesian

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dualism (Basar, 2011) and results from the rigid separation between res-cogitans and res-extensa
(the two main categories: cognition and the body)
5
. In cognitive science, this led to human
cognition being seen as constituted by different sub-ontologies (i.e. distinct and independent
cognitive entities), often resulting in juxtaposed metaphysical categories.
This Cartesian view was adopted by the “amodal” cognitive perspective, in which the
conceptual level is distinguished from the sensorimotor level according to the formula that an action
is first conceived by means of abstract mental representations and only then executed through the
activation of specific motor programs (e.g., Fodor, 1975; Mahon, 2015). Therefore, one can see
reification in the classic “three-level” architecture distinction (Searle, 1983) between what is called
“perception” (the structure able to catch stimuli coming from the environment), “cognition” (the
csystem which processes such stimuli) and “action” (the component able to generate a response),
i.e. the separation of perception and action from a central control system (see Hurley, 2001). The
implicit and crucial assumption deriving from this view is that these three levels are strictly separate
and ontologically independent (i.e. they are reified).
Crucially, the same reasoning can also hold between different cognitive systems: the implicit
assumption that has long prevailed in cognitive science is that there are distinct substance-entities
(categories) such as memory, perception, motor control, reasoning, etc., that have clear boundaries
and function independently of each other. This theoretical perspective has produced an
oversimplified, static, and generalized lens through which researchers view cognition, a kind of
“cartesian-split-mechanistic ontology” (Overton, 2015), which implies that the whole can always be
split into independent parts, and that it is possible to isolate these parts from each other (De Ruiter,
2023). Simultaneously, cognitive functions, viewed as “substances” (and thus isolable), are
considered and studied de-contextualized from the environment in which they operate.
5
In this regard, Ryle (1949) accused Descartes of having made a “categorical error” by treating the mind as if it were an
independent “thing” in contrast to the body.

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In cognitive science communication (e.g., scientific articles), the habit of referring to
cognitive functions in terms of substances is repeatedly affirmed, leading to the psychological effect
of conceiving these hypothetical entities as ontologically independent and with clear borders. Billig
(2013) and Notterman (2000) pointed out that scientific communication practices tend to
overemphasize the uses nouns to denote complex phenomena instead of the verbs needed to
describe the underlying processes, a kind of “nominalistic reductionism”. The problematic aspect of
this point for cognitive science is twofold. The most obvious, is that such entities are not things or
substances, but processes by which, e.g., we recover, perceive, we pay attention to given stimuli
and so on (Van Geert & De Ruiter, 2022). As processes, they are not stable and unitary. Cognitive
functions are all in a state of flux of interacting processes (Gernigon et al., 2023). Second and
consequently, they are not easily separable and isolable, even from a theoretical point of view as
Gibson (1975) reminds us:
“For where is the borderline between perceiving and remembering? Does perceiving go
backward in time? For seconds? For minutes? For hours? When do percepts stop and begin to
be memories or, in another way of putting it, go into storage? The facts of memory are
supposed to be well understood but these questions cannot be answered. Equally
embarrassing questions can be asked about expectation.” (p.299)
Having different verbal labels leads to arbitrary demarcation lines, a kind of “linguistically
induced” distortion, in which arbitrary boundaries on dynamic and continuous dimensions indicate
qualitative discontinuity (Van Geert & De Ruiter, 2022).
Recently Gatti and colleagues (2022), implicitly adopted a substance-view, stated: “Every
part of our lives has to do with memory, and memory is present at multiple levels within each
functionality, from language to spatial perception, from thinking to reasoning” (Gatti et al., 2022;
p.139). However, still embracing a substance-view, one could also claim the exact opposite, that is
that every other cognitive function is present in every “memory” process. For example, if I try to

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remember what I was doing at 6 p.m. yesterday, I have to focus my attention on internal
information and ignore the information coming from the environment; if the information does not
automatically come to mind, I have to reason about what is plausible or not at 6 p.m., and so on.
Therefore, different cognitive levels and functions are in constant interaction, to such an extent that
it is difficult to separate them even theoretically. In an interactionist and processual ontology, the
nature and meaning of these functions depend on their interactions with each other, and not on
intrinsic, essential properties that are independent of any interaction with other functions.
Exactly as Zahnoun (2020) pointed out with regards to the concept of inner “representations”,
many of the classical cognitive systems distinctions (e.g., different and separated cognitive
functions) therefore derive from “pre-theoretical elements” or “linguistic contingencies”.
Fragile Borders: Some Theoretical Approaches
This section aims at presenting some theoretical approaches suggesting that dynamics and
interconnectedness are natural parts of cognitive functioning. The fragility of some definitions and
the difficulty of drawing neat boundaries between different cognitive functions is in fact what a
large body of literature over the last two decades seems to indicate.
Recently, Viale (2023) has emphasized the so-called “horizontal relationship” between
cognition, the body with its postures and movements and the environment: while a vertical
relationship is hierarchically structured and the work of one component is subordinate to the work
of the others, a horizontal relationship is characterized by recursive interactions between them. The
following theoretical approaches emphasize the need for a “processual nature view” of cognitive
functions rather than “substance” one (Van Geert & De Ruiter, 2022). I will focus my analysis on
three main perspectives: (1) the embodied/enactive approaches, (2) the interactivist model and (3)
the “complex dynamic system” framework.
The embodied and enactive approaches are important here because they emphasize the
inherent recursive relationship between cognition, action and environment. In this view cognition is

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not limited only to what is contained in the individual’s skull (Noë, 2009), but it is extended, for
instance, to other people (Krueger, 2011), other bodies (Ianì, 2021; 2022), mnemonic supports
(Heersmink, 2017) and external computing devices (see, e.g., Clark & Chalmers, 1998).
Specifically, starting from the work of Gregory Bateson (1972), enactive approaches
proposed that mind and nature have to be considered a “necessary unity” (Drury & Tudor, 2023).
Enactive theories emphasize how much of what we call “perception” is inherent and immediately
tied to cognition, to such an extent that it is impossible to separate them; they are “fundamentally
inseparable in lived cognition” (Thompson, 2007). Therefore, there is inseparable continuity
between both the mind (the “subject”) and the environment (the “object”). In this context, the
concept of “affordance” (Gibson, 1979) is relevant. An affordance is neither a property of the
subject nor a property of the object: “An affordance cuts across the dichotomy of subjective-
objective and helps us to understand its inadequacy. It is equally a fact of the environment and a
fact of behaviour. It is both physical and psychical, yet, neither. An affordance points both ways, to
the environment and to the observer” (p. 129). According to this view, there is also inseparable
continuity between the subcomponents of the mind, such as perception, motor control and
cognition, emphasizing indeed the circular pathways between cognitive processes and those
involved in planning and control movements (Drury & Tudor, 2023). Likewise, various cognitive
processes are inherently relational and circularly influenced (Di Paolo & De Jaegher, 2012).
As pointed out by Di Paolo and Thompson (2014) such a relationship is not merely causal
(action processes cause changes in higher cognitive systems, i.e., memory, language etc…), but it is
“constitutive”: motor, perceptive and cognitive processes are ontologically connected. They are
essential parts that enable the recursive self-maintenance of the entire system. This means that it is
not possible to draw clear boundaries between them unless one uses conventional and arbitrary
definitions (Di Paolo & Thompson, 2014). According to the enactive view, “the explanatory unit of
perception (or cognition) is […] a dynamic relation between organisms, which include brains, but

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also their own structural embodied features that enable specific perception-action loops” (Gallagher
& Bower, 2014, p.242).
Another theoretical approach relevant to the topic of reification processes is the interactionist
model of Mark Bickhard (2009). The interactivist model of cognition is an “action and interaction
based approach” (p.547). The starting point of such theoretical perspective is that the cognitive
system is a “self-maintenant autonomous system” that “does things in and with its environment […]
in at least a minimal sense, it is an agent.” (p.569). What consequences does such a view have for
the ontologies of cognitive functions? For example, perception, rather to be modelled as an input-
receiving phenomenon as standardly viewed (e.g., Fodor, 1975), becomes a kind of interaction
between our functional abilities and the environment. In this sense, perception is not the passive
processing of input and memory is not a passive reappearance of specific memory traces neatly
stored somewhere in the mind. They are both “here-and-now” constructive and interactive process
(Bickhard, 2005). Bickhard (2009) also emphasized the need to shift toward a new theoretical
perspective, namely from a “metaphysical framework of substance” to a “metaphysical framework
of process”. The former involves the split between mind and body as well as the split between
different cognitive functions. The latter induces to study inherently complex phenomena that are
constantly changing and that “do not have inherent boundaries” (p. 553).
A third theoretical approach that emphasizes the need to re-consider some arbitrary
boundaries, and that implies the need to study cognition as inherently processual, is the “complex
dynamic system” (CDS) framework (e.g., Vallacher et al., 2015). Thelen (2005) criticized the
dominant metaphor in cognitive science according to which the mind is like a computer that
elaborate information units. She suggested another metaphor, namely, cognition as a “mountain
stream”. In this sense it “is moving all the time in continuous flow and continuous change” (p.259),
and it is not possible to say what directly causes what. Cognition is a nonlinear system as,
depending on the conditions, large changes in the system may be generated by small differences

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and it is dynamic as continuous in time. In other words, “mental activity is the product of many
interacting parts that work together to produce a coherent pattern under particular task, social and
environmental constraints” (Thelen, 2005; p. 261).
Thelen’s argument is based on a very basic but overlooked consideration: humans perceive
and move constantly every minute. This point implies that any complete analysis of a given
cognitive process cannot exclude or consider perceptual and motor processes as secondary.
Secondly, since cognitive processes are continuous in time, the state of the system at any point in
time depends on the previous states and, at the same time, they are the starting point for a coming
state. These processes are therefore completely nested within one another. Therefore, not only can
we not draw a spatial boundary between different processes or functions, but also no temporal
boundaries: “it is all change over time” (p.262). Similarly, van Gelder (1998) pointed out that,
differently from computationalists, “dynamicists […] think of processes as always ongoing, not
starting anywhere and finishing anywhere” (p.621). Further, dynamicists tend to see cognitive
processes as not static, and operating in parallel. This means that the cognitive system has structural
complexity in which there is simultaneous, mutually constraining interaction between several
different components. CDS literature is rapidly growing, covering an increasing number of
applications. For example, the CDS framework contributes to non-substance or entity oriented
views on the nature of psychopathology (Wichers et al., 2015; Scheffer et al.; 2024), as well as on
the development of cognitive abilities from childhood to adulthood (e.g., Kaplan & Garner, 2017).
CDS framework is also important from a neurocognitive perspective. While there is no doubt
that there are neural systems responsible for macro cognitive functions, it is also true that they often
interact to produce complex and inherently dynamic cognitive states (Gernigon et al., 2023). In
contrast to a substance-view, Pessoa (2022; 2023) pointed out that even the brain cannot be easily
reduced to separate units: “we don’t have to put functions inside little boxes in the brain and tell
neat stories. Reality is immensely more complex” (2022; preface x). Pessoa’s analysis emphasizes

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that cognitive functions depend on large-scale distributed circuits (networks); in other words, the
brain is not a rigid modular system. And even from a neurocognitive perspective, it is difficult to
draw clear boundaries between different anatomical areas. For example, subcortical areas have
several subdivisions (see e.g., the amygdala and the cerebellum), and some of them have boundaries
that are more like fuzzy zones (Pessoa, 2023). Recently, Stringer and colleagues (2019) discovered
that the activity of more than 10.000 neurons in the mouse visual cortex also reflects more than a
dozen features of motor information. This is particularly interesting because it seems to suggest that
visual perception and action themselves cannot be considered as two isolated and serial systems, but
rather as a ubiquitous system mixing sensory and motor information.
Moreover, parts of the brain should not be considered as isolated islands. The white matter
(the tissue containing the nerve fibres that serve as a communication highway between different
areas) is very extensive compared to the grey matter (the tissue containing the neurons), and
connectivity studies have identified about 20 major pathways connecting different lobes. Further,
even when two areas are not directly connected by anatomical pathways, their work, i.e. their
neurochemical signals, are synchronised. In other words, their activities are in some way correlated,
which indicates the presence of multi-component functional units (Pessoa, 2022). As Pessoa stated,
“we need to dissolve boundaries within the brain” (p.229).
Fragile Borders: Some Experimental Data
The creation of systems for classifying phenomena (i.e. taxonomies) is certainly important for
scientific activity. It permits to organize research projects and to share a common ground by which
it is possible to communicate scientific findings. The aim of this section is to highlight problems
concerning the individuation of mechanisms based on the standard taxonomy proposed by cognitive
psychology. In other words, the aim is to show data that indicate that supposedly independent
functions are in fact so strongly coupled that we cannot regard them as isolable and unitary.

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Let us take the paradigmatic case of theories about the functioning of memory, as it describes
well why we cannot draw clear boundaries between action and cognition. The first theoretical
perspective was dominated by the idea that memory as a kind of repository of discrete and
immutable elements neatly stored in our brain in different and isolable cognitive stores (see, e.g.,
the “multistore model” of memory, Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968). Even in later theories (e.g., the
“network model”, Collins & Loftus, 1975), memory was still understood as something that has
nothing to do with action and perception, but as a kind of isolable and independent multi-store (a
“thing”/“substance”). However, exactly as a “walk” is not a “thing” but the dynamic process of
walking that integrates many other processes at the same time, memory is the process by which
people try to retrieve information and that requires many other processes to work, such as those
involved in perception and action.
Several lines of research have shown that body and movement manipulations are inseparable
dynamic aspects of what we call memory. In particular, many studies have shown that the body, its
position in space and its movements are dynamic components of the process of remembering or
emotionally evaluating past events (Ianì, 2019). This idea was first developed experimentally by
Dijkstra and colleagues (2007) when they decided to investigate the role of posture in remembering
autobiographical events (e.g., the last visit to the dentist). The study participants were therefore
asked to adopt a certain posture, which could be congruent (lying on a chaise longue, for example)
or incongruent (an upright position) with the one adopted during the original event. Memory trace
was recovered in a shorter time if the posture at the time of retrieval was congruent with the posture
at the time of encoding (Dijkstra et al., 2007). Thus, reactivating the same physical state adopted
during the encoding phase may facilitate the recollection of the event itself.
Using the same logic, Casasanto and Dijkstra (2010) showed that the memory of
autobiographical events also interacts dynamically with simple actions at the time of recollection.
These results led the authors to conclude that there is a direct and causal relationship between our

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actions and the accessibility of certain autobiographical events in memory (Casasanto & Dijkstra,
2010). In a processual view and terminology, body posture and body movements are dynamic
constituents of a complex process of interactions that we call “a memory”.
Findings confirming this dynamic interaction come from a variety of research areas, including
gestures, eye movements and the expression of emotions (Ianì et al., 2018; Johansson & Johansson,
2014; Wilkes et al., 2017). Recently, similar effects have been observed in tasks involving memory
of simple objects. In a study by Dutriaux and Gyselinck (2016), participants were asked to
memorize a series of manipulable and non-manipulable objects. When, at recall, they were asked to
hold their hands and arms behind their back (a posture that impairs the motor patterns required to
interact with manipulable objects), a selective decrease in memory performance was found for
manipulable objects, but not for non-manipulable objects (see also Dutriaux et al., 2019; Limata et
al., 2023).
The fact that the body plays a causal role in “offline” cognitive processes such as memory, i.e.
processes that are detached from the real sensory inputs in the environment (Wilson, 2002),
contrasts with the presumed independence of some “thought nuclei”, the reified concepts deriving
from verbal labels. Memory is therefore not a passive re-collection of specific memory information
that is neatly stored somewhere in the mind, but a constructive and interactive process. Memories
are active “here-and-now” constructions, in the form of extended processes involving multiple
components. Thus, current evidence suggests that memory processes are distributed throughout the
nervous system rather than being a kind of (isolated and localized) storage (Drury & Tudor, 2023).
The action system is not a “subordinate” and independent system, but an integral part of the
memory system.
Let us take as example now the relationship between the action system and perception. In the
field of action perception, the observer’s posture and movements interact with the perception and
processing of a given stimulus. While, under normal circumstances, the participants are able to infer

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the weight of a box simply by observing lifting movements, the same does not hold when the
participants are engaged in a secondary motor task, and thus with sensorimotor resources not fully
available for processing the observed actions (Hamilton et al., 2004). This shows that observers use
their body to process the perceived stimulus in a way that is at least partially constitutive of the
cognitive process itself (see also Ianì et al., 2021). Here too, cognition (in terms of judgements) and
action are involved in a way that is inherently bidirectional and dynamic.
The same reasoning can be applied again to the relationship between perception and memory.
In this context, it has been emphasised that there is a natural and often automatic and implicit
propensity to attribute meaning to experiences (Mazzoni & Scoboria, 2007). One of the reasons
why it is difficult to draw a clear dividing line between these two components (perception and
memory) is that the way we attribute meaning is closely linked to what we have experienced in the
past (i.e. what we consciously or unconsciously remember). And the way we remember is
inextricably linked to the psychological, physical and contextual factors of the present. An example
of this constant and reciprocal relationship is what happens in the field of action observation.
Several authors have argued that when we perceive the actions of other conspecifics, we build
specific internal representations of the observed motor programs, a kind of “mental simulation” that
allows us to predict and anticipate what we observe (e.g., Ianì et al., 2020; 2024). The crucial point
is that previous experiences and thus memories are dynamic constituents of this process: the
perception of others’ actions and the corresponding internal simulations are modulated by the
observer’s familiarity and previous experiences (Casile & Giese, 2006). From a neurocognitive
perspective, it has also been shown that the “mirror” activations resulting from the observation of
an action vary in strength depending on the observer’s degree of familiarity with the observed
action (Calvo-Merino et al., 2005). These data suggest that the effectiveness by which we perceive
actions is intrinsic coupled with cognitive processes at stake in remembering previous experiences
(see also Teufel & Nanay, 2016). In this sense, our memory of previous experiences shapes our

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ongoing perception in a way that makes it impossible to separate the two components. Perception
and memory are not two isolated substances. They are interrelated processes involved in the active
constructions here-and-now of what we experience and what we call “percepts”, “sensations”, and
“feelings”. What we call separate components (in this example, memory and perception) are
dynamic components whose interaction results in the emergence of a property such as the ability to
perceive or remember.
The effects of reification can even be observed in some categorizations and dichotomies
within a given cognitive function (for reification implied in memory store approach see e.g.,
Macken & Jones, 2003). For example, the declarative and procedural memory systems have been
extensively studied in humans, and evidence of double dissociations has shown that the two systems
can function independently (e.g., Eichenbaum & Cohen, 2001; patients may show impairment in
explicit memory but not in procedural memory and vice versa, e.g., Klooster et al., 2015). The
potential independence between procedural and declarative information is certainly important.
However, to confirm the independence, it is sufficient to find a case in which the two systems
function in parallel without interfering with each other. This tells us little about what happens under
normal and ecological conditions. Indeed, in light of some experimental data, the concepts of
declarative and procedural memory appear to have more subtle boundaries in some cases. In two
recent studies, explicit and implicit memory of the position of letters on the QWERTY keyboard as
well as the mechanisms involved were investigated (Snyder et al., 2014; Ianì et al., 2024). Explicit
memory for the position of the letters was impaired when participants were engaged in a secondary
task requiring hands/arms movements. Specifically, taxing participants’ sensorimotor resources led
to a decrease in explicit memory performance when the secondary task required hands/arms
movements (hands/arms tapping) compared to the task requiring legs/feet movements (control
condition). That is, performance on the explicit task is impaired when participants are prevented

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from simulating their procedural knowledge, suggesting that these two processes constitute an
interacting system that leads to an emergent property of “memory”.
The idea that available procedural resources may be involved in the recovery of declarative
mnemonic traces is a core idea underlying many approaches, at least in the domain of embodied
memory (Ianì, 2019). Therefore, a processual approach to such functions would be better than a
reification-oriented approach that treats these functions as separate and isolated realities. Such data
are also relevant to the literature on enactivism, which is best read through a “know-how” lens
rather than a “know-that” lens (Drury & Tudor, 2023). In this sense, procedural knowledge appears
to be pervasive and inseparable from declarative knowledge.
There is also other data showing that two ideally separate cognitive functions can be
considered as one and the same phenomenon. Recently, imagining future events and remembering
past events have been considered to be “fundamentally the same process”, as acting on the same
information, governed on the same rules of operation and subserved by the same brain systems
(Addis, 2020; p.233; see also Schacter & Addis, 2007). Paradoxically, these data are surprising if
one starts from the implicit assumption that these entities are independent, stable and isolable things
(i.e. two substances).
Beyond the specific examples, these experimental results defy a substantialist and
reificationist interpretation and instead support a processual interpretation that rejects “essentialist
assumptions”, i.e. these functions as rigidly separate and independent modules or “things” with
specific and inherent properties. In other words, what emerges is a vision of human cognition as a
highly active, dynamic and flexible system. And as an active, dynamic and flexible system that is
easily prone to errors. In this view, the literature on false memories seems to suggest that they are
the result of adaptative and flexible cognitive processes (Schacter et al., 2011). Memory is
constantly changing and reconstructing (and then prone to false memories), because what we call
memory is a process inextricably associated with perception, action and numerous other cognitive

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systems that do not stop working between encoding and retrieval. Strongly trivializing, one could
say that false memories become cognitive phenomena “in need of explanation” if one starts from
the assumption that there is a specific, in some sense independent and isolated cognitive system
dedicated to remembering, whose main goal is to recall events in such a way that they correspond to
reality. If this assumption is questioned even a little, the problem tends to disappear
6
.
Toward a Pluralistic Approach: Same Label, Different Cognitive Strategies
The question of how to classify cognitive processes has deep historical roots in both
philosophy and psychology. As we have already seen, a classical way of dealing with this problem
is to define different cognitive entities on the basis of their function. Indeed, cognitive “entities” are
often understood as cognitive functions/capacities. For example, “episodic memory” is defined as
the cognitive process that makes it possible to retrieve a particular episode, “action prediction” as
the cognitive process that makes it possible to predict the final state of an observed action, and so
on. The same principle is applied in defining neural ontologies, trying to link each area or network
of areas to a specific function or set of functions (for a discussion se McCaffrey & Wright, 2022).
The aim of this section is to show that we cannot define ontologies via functional roles, as the
same function can be achieved using (very) different processes. Exactly how the word “journey”
refers to an enormous variety of different experiences but it “still seem to correspond to unitary,
well-integrated and holistic concept” (Schmid, 1998; p.5), the label “episodic memory” potentially
refer to an enormous variety of cognitive processes. A main point that has emerged in cognitive
science research over the last decade, in contrast to a “substance” and unitary view, is indeed what
we might call a “pluralistic” or “integrated” view of cognition. This view is based on the idea that a
given cognitive function (e.g., the retrieval of a memory, the understanding of an observed action)
6
For reasons of space, I will not extend the discussion to other cognitive domains, but for analogous problems with the
construct of ‘attention’ see e.g., Anderson (2011), who has highlighted the tendency of researchers to reify the concept
of attention and create circular explanations for their empirical findings. Similarly, Hommel and colleagues (2019)
provocatively claimed that “no one knows what attention is” (p.2288) and Anderson (2011) claimed “there is no such
thing as attention” (p.1).

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can be carried out following different (cognitive) strategies. Notwithstanding some epistemological
peculiarities, both the embodied/enactive cognition framework and the CDS framework mentioned
before refer to a notion of cognitive functioning as centred on the integration of multiple strategies
of information acquisition and thus on the interaction between different knowledge systems (e.g.,
sensorimotor, body-mechanics, and semantic). This means that different levels of cognitive
complexity or different cognitive strategies can coexist to solve a particular problem. In
highlighting the reification process involved in considering phonological loop and other memory
stores, Macken and Jones (2003) claimed that
“in principle, there is a vast number of possible ways in which participants may choose to
retain information. If the material allows it, syntactic or semantic transitions may be imposed
on the memory material, failing which speech-based transitions may be utilized, or any other
skill that the participant possesses that may be co-opted in order to meet the demands of the
task. […] We consider models of short-term memory to constitute a reification of the
characteristics of performance on particular types of task into bespoke stores and processes
whose function it is to perform those tasks […] on the evidence presented here, we argue that
such memory stores do not exist” (p.1286).
Further, there are some memories that immediately pop up in mind and other that require cognitive
effort to be fully accessible. For instance, the cognitive effort required to solve a given memory task
is critical for the involvement of motor strategies (Ianì et al. 2017). In other words, “memory is the
storage of changes in processing modes, and there are many kinds of such modes” (Bickhard, 2005;
p.4)
7
. Thus, cognitive activities are “soft-assembled” on the spot (Thelen, 2005), based on
7
It is noteworthy how this point and the idea of cognitive phenomena as “patterns emerging from non-decomposable
and non-isolable complex processes” (Gernigon et al., 2023; p.1) might also account for reproducibility issues in some
areas of cognitive science.

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dynamical interactions between the person (the person’s bio-dynamics, the person's history, etc…)
and the current context of the activity (see Spencer et al. 2011).
To better understand this pluralistic view, let us again take as an example the literature on the
observation of objects, which more than others seems to suggest the need for an integrated and
pluralistic approach. Several behavioural studies, frequently cited in the embodied literature, seem
to emphasize an automatic motor activation and motor feature processing while viewing
manipulable objects, a neurocognitive process responsible for correctly manipulating and
interacting with objects (e.g., Tucker & Ellis, 1998). However, developments in cognitive
neuroscience increasingly highlight how the same functions can arise as a result of specifically
human capacities of technical reasoning, understood here as a form of non-verbal knowledge of the
mechanical principles that regulate the physical world (Osiurak et al., 2020).
The idea is that semantic knowledge, while not representing a sine qua non condition for their
use, can dynamically intervene in the mechanisms through which tools are perceived, recognized
and used (Federico et al., 2021). Otherwise put, the literature has emphasised that during object
observation or interaction, in addition to a kind of internal “motor resonance” of the motor patterns
necessary to correctly use a particular object (Tucker & Ellis, 1998), also a kind of “functional
knowledge” of the tool plays a crucial role in guide our interactions. The latter is a kind of
“technical thinking” that is able to process the specific function of the object and the mechanical
principles that govern its operation (Osiurak et al., 2021, Reynaud et al., 2016; Reynaud et al.,
2019).
Therefore, this perspective emphasizes the interaction between distinct forms of knowledge
while sustaining the same cognitive function, and aims to restore an image of human cognitive
architecture that favors dynamic and flexible information processing: the same cognitive function,
different and integrated cognitive strategies.

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Similarly, different sorts of inferential mechanisms can be at stake during action observation.
It is well documented how after viewing a video or just an image representing an action (e.g., eating
a hamburger), we recognize the forward states of the seen action faster than the backward states
and, at least in some cases, to believe to have seen the natural continuation of the action (e.g., Chen
et al., 2021). These effects are usually supposed to be due to the mental simulation triggered by
action observation, i.e. a representation of the forward states of the action, generally the goal of the
actor’s intention. Again, how participants construct such internal representation can be the result of
different cognitive strategies. On the one hand, there is a kind of “motor resonance” (Uithol et al.,
2011) by which the observed action resonates in the observer’s motor system by using the intrinsic
“configural relationship between body parts” of the observed action (“how” the action is performed;
Thompson et al., 2019) and without the need for semantic inferential processing. On the other, there
is also a “goal identification” strategy by which we can understand the goal of others’ actions
(“why” an action is performed) via a conceptual mechanism, that is a “mechanical reasoning” about
the object in order to infer the goal (see Osiurak et al., 2021). Further, recent experimental data
suggest that it is possible to trigger one strategy or the other by manipulating participants’
attentional focus (Ianì et al., 2024).
Such data should caution us against the risk of exacerbating a reification of our theoretical
constructs if we do not assume a pluralistic view (see also Kirschner, 2006). In other words,
depending on the specific characteristics of the contingent interaction between an agent and
environment, several strategies can be pursued to achieve the same outcome.
Conclusion
In this paper, I have first discussed what reification is and then attempted to outline the origins of this
psychological phenomenon, by examining the linguistic practice of hypostatization and the well-documented
effects of verbal labelling on the ability and propensity to categorize. Cognitive scientists and psychologists
when they try to determine what mental functions exist and to describe the functioning of the cognitive

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system, they are ultimately engaging in a cognitive process that is subject to all the biases we know from the
(same) literature, such as the effects of language on perception and categorization. The verbal description of
our cognitive functioning creates delineations and boundaries where they do not actually exist. I concluded,
by exploring some theoretical approaches to cognition as well as some paradigmatic experimental results,
that we cannot draw clear boundaries between reified constructs. In this debate, both embodied/enactive,
interactionist and dynamic systems theories have made a strong innovative contribution by “putting
together” elements that were previously considered separate. According to the so-called “4Ecognition”
approach, cognition is indeed embodied, enacted, embedded in, and extended across environments (Newen
et al., 2018).
This view implies that different elements of cognition need to be studied considering their intrinsic
interconnections (Richardson et al., 2008), and their dynamical and processual nature. Failure to consider
these dimensions/connections would lead to a partial understanding of the whole phenomenon. Further,
since cognitive psychology knowledge is strongly and implicitly influenced by the linguistic forms
we use to describe cognitive functioning (increasing the tendency to categorize and to study
cognitive functions as separate substances), this perspective also implies the need to formulate and
argue hypotheses and communicate results, avoiding the use of nominalizations and the coupled
substance-view. Cognitive science has long since abandoned objectivism, the idea that knowledge is
independent of the human mind (for a discussion, see, Johnson, 1995, Raskin, 2002). Cognitive
science, however, has seldom applied this perspective to itself, in order to highlight how much its
knowledge depends on the practices that researchers use in their work, especially the linguistic
forms they employ.
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