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Comparison

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Towards a Theory of Thinking

Part of the book series: On Thinking ((ONTHINKING))

Abstract

The process of comparison plays a critical role in problem solving, ­judgment, decision making, categorization, and cognition, broadly construed. In turn, determination of similarities and differences plays a critical role for comparison. In this chapter, we describe important classes of formal models of similarity and comparison: geometric, featural, alignment-based, and transformational. We also consider the question of whether similarity is too flexible to provide a stable ground for cognition, and conversely, whether it is insufficiently flexible to account for the sophistication of cognition. Both similarity assessments and comparison are argued to provide valuable general-purpose cognitive strategies.

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Author Notes

This research was funded by National Science Foundation REESE grant DRL-0910218. Correspondence concerning this chapter should be addressed to rgoldsto@indiana.edu or Robert Goldstone, Psychological and Brain Sciences Department, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405. Further information about the laboratory can be found at http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA

    Robert L. Goldstone, Sam Day & Ji Y. Son

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  1. Robert L. Goldstone
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  2. Sam Day
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  3. Ji Y. Son
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Correspondence to Robert L. Goldstone .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Parmenides Foundation, Kardinal Faulhaber Str. 14 a, Munich, 80333, Germany

    Britt Glatzeder

  2. Dept. Psychology, York University, Keele Street 4700, Toronto, M3J 1P3, Canada

    Vinod Goel

  3. Parmenides Foundation, Kardinal Faulhaber Str. 14 a, Munich, 80333, Germany

    Albrecht Müller

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Goldstone, R.L., Day, S., Son, J.Y. (2010). Comparison. In: Glatzeder, B., Goel, V., Müller, A. (eds) Towards a Theory of Thinking. On Thinking. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03129-8_7

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