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What makes human cognition distinct from animal and artificial forms of intelligence—and how analogies play a crucial role in our unique abilities.
In
Holyoak analyzes the similarities—and critical differences—between cognition in humans and in other intelligent animals, ranging from crows to chimpanzees. He also traces how relational thinking develops in children, emphasizing the distinctive advances that begin at about age three. Along the way, Holyoak paints a broad picture of how people use analogy in everyday life—to make jokes, to argue, to teach, to make moral judgments. He considers when an analogy counts as rational evidence—for or against a scientific hypothesis, or the judgment in a legal case. He also evaluates the most recent advances in artificial intelligence that have started to achieve complex tasks previously limited to humans, while highlighting the distinctive aspects of human creativity.
In a time of rapid technological change, with ominous portents for society, this book provides a timely reexamination of what really counts as the human edge....
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
1. What Is Analogy?
2. Relations between Things
3. What Really Matters?
4. Thinking through Analogy
5. Analogy in the Brain
6. The Analogy Gap
7. Communicating with Relations
8. Teaching with Analogy
9. Computational Models of Analogy
10. The Microstructure of Semantic Relations
11. Seeing Relations and Analogies
12. Massive Analogy Machines
13. The Analogical Spark
14. Summing Up
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Keith J. Holyoak is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Warren Medal from the Society of Experimental Psychologists, he is the author of several books in cognitive science, including
The Spider’s Thread, as well as four volumes of poetry and a book of translated classical Chinese poetry.
