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In cognitive linguistics, conceptual blending, also called conceptual integration or view application, is a theory of cognition developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner. According to this theory, elements and vital relations from diverse scenarios are "blended" in a subconscious process, which is assumed to be ubiquitous to everyday thought and language. Much like memetics, it is an attempt to create a unitary account of the cultural transmission of ideas.

The development of this theory began in 1993 and a representative early formulation is found in the online article "Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression". Turner and Fauconnier cite Arthur Koestler's 1964 book The Act of Creation as an early forerunner of conceptual blending: Koestler had identified a common pattern in creative achievements in the arts, sciences and humor that he had termed "bisociation of matrices." A newer version of blending theory, with somewhat different terminology, was presented in Turner and Fauconnier's 2002 book, The Way We Think. Conceptual blending, in the Fauconnier and Turner formulation, is one of the theoretical tools used in George Lakoff and Rafael Núñez's Where Mathematics Comes From, in which the authors assert that "understanding mathematics requires the mastering of extensive networks of metaphorical blends."

Conceptual blending is closely related to frame based theories, but goes beyond these primarily in that it is a theory of how to combine frames (or frame like objects). An early computational model of a process called "view application", which is closely related to conceptual blending (which did not exist at the time), was implemented in the 1980s by Shrager at Carnegie Mellon University and PARC, and applied in the domains of causal reasoning about complex devices and scientific reasoning. More recent computational accounts of blending have been developed in areas such as mathematics. Some later models are based upon structure mapping, which did not exist at the time of the earlier implementations. Recently, within the context of non monotonic extensions of AI reasoning systems (and in line with the frame based theories), a general framework able to account for both complex human like concept combinations (like the PET FISH problem) and conceptual blending has been tested and developed in both cognitive modelling and computational creativity applications.

In his book The Literary Mind, conceptual blending theorist Mark Turner states that Conceptual blending is a fundamental instrument of the everyday mind, used in our basic construal of all our realities, from the social to the scientific. Insights obtained from conceptual blends constitute the products of creative thinking, however conceptual blending theory is not itself a complete theory of creativity, inasmuch as it does not illuminate the issue of where the inputs to a blend originate. In other words, conceptual blending provides a terminology for describing creative products, but has little to say on the matter of inspiration.

As described by Fauconnier and Turner, mental spaces are small conceptual containers used to structure processes behind human reasoning and communication. They are constantly created as people think and talk to serve a specific purpose depending on the context.

Vital relations describe some of the connections between the elements of the different input spaces. For example, in the Buddhist Monk riddle, time is treated as a vital relation which is compressed in the blended space, and as a result, the monk can simultaneously walk up and down the mountain. Some of the other types of vital relations include cause effect, change, space, identity, role and part whole. These criticisms were answered directly by Fauconnier. The theory has also been criticised for unnecessary complexity. The minimal network model requires at least four mental spaces; however, David Ritchie (2004) argues that many of the proposed blends could be explained by simpler integration processes. He has also demonstrated that some examples of blends such as the Buddhist Monk can have an alternative interpretation.