Abstractions are good for brains and machines: A commentary on Ambridge (2020)

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.