ion, one of the hallmarks of human cognition, continues to be the topic of a strong debate. The primary disagreement concerns whether or not abstract concepts can be accounted for within the scope of embodied cognition. In this paper, we introduce the embodied approach to conceptual knowledge and distinguish between embodiment and grounding, where grounding is the general term for how concepts initially acquire their meaning. Referring to numerous pieces of empirical evidence, we emphasise that, ultimately, all concepts are acquired via interaction with the world via two main pathways: embodiment and social interaction. The first pathway is direct and primarily involves action/perception, interoception and emotions. The second pathway is indirect, being mediated by language in particular. Evidence from neuroscience, psychology and cognitive linguistics shows these pathways have different properties, roles in cognition and temporal profiles. Human development also places revealing constraints on how children develop the ability to reason more abstractly as they grow up. We recognize language as a crucial cognitive faculty with several roles enabling the acquisition of abstract concepts indirectly. Three detailed case studies on body-specificity hypothesis, abstract verbs and mathematics are used to argue that a compelling case has accumulated in favour of the ultimate grounding of abstract concepts in an agent's interaction with its world, primarily relying on the direct pathway. We consolidate the debate through multidisciplinary evidence for the idea that abstractness is a graded, rather than a binary property of concepts.

In this paper, through two perspectives on helping robots, we bring forth a discussion on what it means for passersby to help a commercially deployed robot in public spaces. With helping-as-work perspective we raise issues around precarity and invisible labor, asking: can helping robots be considered work? and with what consequences? While helping-as-care highlights the affective, relational aspects of help, which are taken advantage of, but rarely appreciated in typical robot studies. In the concluding section of the paper, we deepen our use of the notion of ambiguity as a productive lens through which to view the helping-robots situation. We argue that it offers both novel theoretical moments and a basis for various actors to take responsibility within the socio-technical system that service robots are embedded within.