Metaphor and Cognition: An Interactionist Approach

✍ Scribed by Bipin Indurkhya (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 466
• Series: Studies in Cognitive Systems 13
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Many metaphors go beyond pionting to the existing similarities between two objects -- they create the similarities. Such metaphors, which have been relegated to the back seat in most of the cognitive science research, are the focus of attention in this study, which addresses the creation of similarity within an elaborately laid out interactive framework of cognition. Starting from the constructivist views of Nelson Goodman and Jean Piaget, this framework resolves an apparent paradox in interactionism: how can reality not have a mind-independent ontology and structure, but still manage to constrain the possible worlds a cognitive agent can create in it?
A comprehensive theory of metaphor is proposed in this framework that explains how metaphors can create similarities, and why such metaphors are an invaluable asset to cognition. The framework is then applied to related issues of analogical reasoning, induction, and computational modeling of creative metaphors.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xvii
Prologue....Pages 1-9
Front Matter....Pages 11-11
Characterizing Metaphor....Pages 13-37
Enter Similarity-Creating Metaphors....Pages 39-64
Approaches to Similarity-Creating Metaphors....Pages 65-91
Cognition as Interaction....Pages 93-128
Front Matter....Pages 129-129
An Interactionist Approach to Cognition: Informal Overview....Pages 131-188
An Interactionist Approach to Cognition: Formal Concepts....Pages 189-243
An Interaction Theory of Metaphor....Pages 245-281
Front Matter....Pages 283-283
Some Metaphor-Related Issues....Pages 285-314
On Predictive Analogy and Induction....Pages 315-356
On Computational Approaches to Metaphor and Analogy....Pages 357-409
Back Matter....Pages 411-457

✦ Subjects

Interdisciplinary Studies; Philosophy of Mind; Semantics; Philosophy of Language