Abstract

The notion of conceptuality is still unclear and vague. I will present a definition of conceptual and nonconceptual representations that is grounded in different aspects of the representations’ structures. This definition is then used to interpret empirical results from human and animal navigation. It will be shown, that the distinction between egocentric and allocentric spatial representations can be matched onto the conceptual vs. nonconceptual distinction. The phenomena discussed in spatial navigation are thereby put into a wider context of cognitive abilities, which allows for new explanations of certain features of spatial representations and how they are linked to other capacities, like perception and reasoning