Josh : A blend is more like designing a helicopter by combining a dragonfly
and a
car. You take the general shape and behavior of the dragonfly, and the size,
interior seats, driver controls, etc, from a car.
In general in a blend you start with B and C without an A. Both relations
B->D
and C->D are analogies, mappings from one concept to another. (You could, if
you wanted, complete the square ("quadrature") and find an A -- but it's
typically the opposite of what you want. In the example you'd get a beetle,
with the size and provenance of the dragonfly and the shape and behavior of
the car!)
Josh,
Good example of how analogy/ blending works. But then you seem to be going
back (in my terms) to the idea that analogy works by symbolic mappings.
No way, I would suggest, that your example - or indeed the overwhelming
percentage of analogy - works in that fashion. (If you or anyone else
disagrees, please construct even the beginning of a symbolic mapping for
your example).
The obvious term that I have been searching for in these discussions is
MORPHING. The way analogy actually works, I suggest, both in your example
and most of the time, is by the brain morphing one graphic/image into
another or into a composite..
Since the animal/human brain is continually seeing shapes "morphing" all the
time - zooming in or out - as they move towards or away from the viewer -
"morphing" is fundamental to perception. And, of course, the brain is
continually morphing in dreams - constructing/morphing new,
never-before-experienced shapes out of old, actually-experienced ones.
That's what imagination is overwhelmingly - morphing. ReSHAPING the world,
not, for the most part, reWORDING it.
P.S. We need a new term for the "symbol addiction" (and resistance to
image-ination) of AI and our literate culture generally. It's a very
serious, hard-to-kick addiction!
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