Open Peer Commentary Barsalou: Perpetual symbol systems
Creativity of metaphor in perceptual symbol systems
Bipin Indurkhya a1 a1 Department of Computer, Information, and Communication Sciences, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Tokyo 184-8588, Japan
bipin@cc.tuat.ac.jp
Abstract
A metaphor can often create novel features in an object or a
situation. This phenomenon has been particularly hard to account for
using amodal symbol systems: although highlighting and downplaying can
explain the shift of focus, it cannot explain how entirely new features
can come about. We suggest here that the dynamism of perceptual symbol
systems, particularly the notion of simulator, provides an elegant
account of the creativity of metaphor. The elegance lies in the idea
that the creation of new features by a metaphor proceeds in the same way
as the creation of regular features in a perceptual symbol.
