Analogy and Metaphor Comprehension

Analogy is to human reasoning as bricklaying is too human building. In conjunction with categorization, it is one of the principal means by which knowledge about the world is acquired and structured. As a result, considerable effort has been put into the understanding of analogy by a variety of disciplines. Verbal analogies have been the target of a considerable amount of that attention, and such research has begun to be integrated with research on metaphor comprehension. The requirement for integration arises because it is known that some analogies can be metaphorical, and because metaphors can often be regarded as analogies. One view of metaphor is that it constitutes a mapping of the elements of one set on to another; and that it is the use of a given relation in a group of things to facilitate the discrimination of an analogous relation in another group. Simple, or sentential, metaphors are assumed to be represented by simple, proportional analogies (A: B: C: D), whereas extended metaphors, or models, require more complex analogical representation. There are many accounts of the nature of the relationship between analogy and metaphor, to which the interested reader is directed.

Analogical thinking, in the general propositional view, is a means of recording similarities between elements that already exist in the knowledge base, and whose properties are static; subject to a set of constraints. There is a similarity between this and a view of metaphor in which comprehension is seen to proceed by (a) a retrieval of sets of semantic features that are propositional in nature, and (b) a selection from these features of an appropriate ‘common ground’ for the metaphor. In terms of Miller, the propositional view of metaphor is more akin to the construction of semantic models than it is of memory images.

From the point of view of cognitive psychology, we come to know things by gathering, processing, and storing information. This is accomplished through sensation and perception, learning and memory, and thinking. Thinking involves mentally acting upon the information that senses, perceives, learns, and stores.

What do you mean when you say that we mentally act on information? Suppose you are Dave Bowman and, upset by the death of your fellow astronauts, you cloister yourself and a colleague inside a cubicle, away (so you assume) from the discerning ear of Hal. (Unfortunately, best known to you, Hal also has a discerning eye that is adroit at up‑reading.) As you discuss the astronauts' deaths and other computer‑related problems, you mentally picture Hal's computer console and the countless wires, computer chips, and other electronic hardware comprising Hal. You recall strange events and snatches of conversations you've heard in the past few days and start drawing connections between them. You trace the problems to Hal. You discuss ways to remedy the problems and decide on one: disconnect the source of the problems.

What have you been doing? You have been thinking. You have been using information that was previously gathered and stored and have been mentally acting on it by forming ideas, reasoning, solving problems, drawing conclusions, making decisions, expressing your thoughts, and comprehending the thoughts of others. Thinking involves a variety of mental processes and operations. The ones we will examine here are mental imagery, problem solving, and creativity. But before we get to these topics, we must address the large issue of how we think. By what means do we encode incoming information so that we can think about it?