Liked a tweet by Melanie Mitchell (Twitter)

Hofstadter & Sander, on the role of analogy in our understanding of situations: pic.twitter.com/C0UdbCiXjX

— Melanie Mitchell (@MelMitchell1) January 11, 2020

In the case that the Twitter image doesn’t live, I’ll excerpt it here in more accessible text:

The fact is, the interpretation of a situation is inseparable from the analogies (or categories) it evokes. Our categories are thus organs of perception; they extend our physiological senses, allowing us to “touch” the external world in a more abstract fashion. They are our means of applying the richness of our past experience to the present; without them, we would flail about helplessly in the world.

—Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander p.256 (Chapter 5)

A fascinating quote and a cool conceptualization of our ontologies.