Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 2008 - Volume , Issue 04  

Open Peer Commentary

Analogy is priming, but relations are not transformations

Fintan J. Costelloa1

a1 School of Computer Science and Informatics, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. fintan.costello@ucd.ie http://www.cs.ucd.ie/Staff/AcademicStaff/fcostello/

Abstract

Leech et al. make two proposals: that relational priming is central to analogy, and that relations between objects are best represented as transformations of those objects. Although their account of analogy as relational priming is a useful contribution to our understanding of analogical development, in this commentary I show that relations in general cannot be represented by transformations.

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