[PaulDavisThe1st]

Sounds like a re-visit of a lot of the ideas in "situated action", popular in some AI circles in the 90s. That also included concepts about how we reduce cognitive load by storing information (and procedure) in our built environments.

I'm not, though, that I agree about the pen example. I mean, you're completely correct in your description of all these different elements of your "pen". But to the extent that a concept of/about something is really never anything like the thing, it's not a particularly important aspect of concepts. I think that what's important is that all of these embodied, semi-reflective elements of your "pen" concept sit in parallel with some abstract concepts about pens. Pens do have properties that are already there, but in many contexts as you note, these are less important than the ones embodied by you.

[mjburgess]

I suspect we'll find that these abstractions are no where within us. We dont have ML-like templates of stuff.

Whenever we need to reason about the properties of pens, our coordinative bodily structure generates these abstractions for cognition to operate on. They're ephemeral, and live only when cognising an issue.

To model cognition then, is to model only the symptom of intelligence; not the actual process itself.