Summary
Melanie Mitchell's *Analogy-Making as Perception* argues that analogy-making is a high-level perceptual process where the interplay of perception and concepts creates "conceptual slippages" essential for forming analogies. The book introduces Copycat, a computer model developed with Douglas Hofstadter, which simulates the intricate, subconscious interactions between perception and concepts that drive analogy creation.
Copycat posits that both concepts and high-level perception are emergent properties arising from numerous low-level, parallel, and non-deterministic activities. This approach positions Copycat as an intermediate cognitive modeling strategy between symbolic and connectionist systems, proving valuable for understanding the fluid nature of concepts and high-level perception.
Key concepts
- Conceptual slippages — The emergent phenomena from perception and concept interaction that enable analogies.
- Copycat — A computer model simulating the subconscious interaction of perception and concepts in analogy-making.
- Emergent phenomena — Concepts and high-level perception that arise from numerous low-level activities.
- Low-level, parallel, non-deterministic activities — The foundational operations from which higher-level cognitive processes emerge in Copycat.
From the book
Description: The psychologist William James observed that "a native talent for perceiving analogies is ... the leading fact in genius of every order." The centrality and the ubiquity of analogy in creative thought have been noted again and again by scientists, artists, and writers, and understanding and modeling analogical thought have emerged as two of the most important challenges for cognitive science. Analogy-Making as Perception is based on the premise that analogy-making is fundamentally a high-level perceptual process in which the interaction of perception and concepts gives rise to "conceptual slippages" which allow analogies to be made. It describes Copycat - a computer model of analogy making, developed by the author with Douglas Hofstadter, that models the complex, subconscious…