Although the article makes no mention of them, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's research on conceptual metaphor[0] seems to be intricately tied to this, somehow. I recently read two books by them: Metaphors We Live By (see Peter Norvig's description here[1]), and Philosophy In The Flesh[2] and found the ideas in them on how humans use metaphors to make sese of things very interesting and intuitive. It actually left me wondering when and how AI would use these insights.
I started reading "Louder Than Words: The New Science of Meaning" which is based on embodiment. Instead of making up these grand hypotheses like Lakoff tends to do (not necessarily a bad thing) Bergen ties embodiment and more specifically simulation to new empirical research. I think that we could probably benefit from cross-pollination between cognitive linguistics/psychology and more technical AI.
Yeah, that's a valid criticism of Lakoff especially. This blog sums up the problems with his writins quite nicely, without losing sight of the good bits and the contributions of his work:
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor
[1] http://norvig.com/mwlb.html - because it stays focused on language it manages to make a clear and convincing case
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/lakoff-philosophy.html - by comparison a flawed but nonetheless good read. I agree with the critiques laid out this review: http://lesswrong.com/lw/871/review_of_lakoff_johnson_philoso...