Afterthoughts on analogical representations
Aaron Sloman · 1975
In 1971 I wrote a paper attempting to relate some old philosophical issues about representation and reasoning to problems in Artificial Intelligence. A major theme of the paper was the importance of distinguishing “analogical ” from “Fregean ” representations. I still think the distinction is important, though perhaps not as important for current problems in A.I. as I used to think. In this paper I’ll try to explain why. Throughout I’ll use the term “representation ” to refer to a more or less complex structure which has addressable and significant parts, and which as a whole is used to denote or refer to something else. Thus maps, sentences, and phrases like “The paternal grandfather of the present mayor of Brighton ” are representations. There is much that’s puzzling and complex about the concept of using something to “denote ” or “refer to ” something else, but for the present I’ll dodge that issue and rely on our intuitive understanding thereof. The analogical/Fregean distinction is not new: people have been discovering and re-discovering it for a long time, though they rarely manage to say clearly and precisely what it is, despite agreement on (most) examples: e.g. maps, photographs and family trees are analogical representations whereas many sentences, referring phrases, and most logical and mathematical formulae are