Douglas R. Hofstadter (2001), in Dedre Gentner, Keith J. Holyoak and Boicho N. Kokinov (eds.), The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science, MIT Press, pp. 499–538 (book DOI 10.7551/mitpress/1251.001.0001) — DOI-10.7551/mitpress/1251.003.0020
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-01 at the owner’s request for Douglas Hofstadter’s work in this record. It is the short statement, under its own title, of the thesis the owner named: that analogy-making is the core of cognition. It closes a volume edited by the founder of the structure-mapping approach to analogy (Gentner), the approach whose program, the Structure-Mapping Engine, Hofstadter’s group had criticised nine years earlier for working on hand-built representations (LIT-414).
Unavailable because no lawful full text could be reached (see the history
note), so no NOTE is filed and nothing is said here about the chapter’s
argument beyond its title and place. Tagged cognition only: the title
alone justifies it, and further tags wait for a reading.
Where it would sit:
- The 1992 critique (LIT-414, read in full) already argues the weaker half of the thesis: that analogy-making is a perceptual process going on “constantly in the background of the mind”, not “a heavy weapon wheeled out occasionally”. A reading should check how far this chapter goes beyond that, to the claim in its title.
- Copycat (LIT-435) is the group’s program for the thesis; Hofstadter and Sander’s Surfaces and Essences (2013), being filed beside this work, is its book-length statement.
- Minsky’s frames (LIT-410), filed in the same session, are the other classic account in the record of how a mind brings stored structure to a new situation. Whether this chapter engages frames is for a reading.