PETER GARDENFORS

MENTAL REPRESENTATION, CONCEPTUAL SPACES AND

METAPHORS *

1. PROGRAM

What is the form of mental representation? One very influential contem-

porary answer to this question starts from the assumption that the brain
functions like a Turing machine. This assumption, which is basically a
metaphor, provides the foundation for much theoretical speculation in
cognitive science and related fields. According to one version of the com-
puter metaphor, the atoms of mental representations are symbols which
combine to form meaningful expressions. 1 These symbolic expressions
represent propositions and they stand in various logical relations to each
other. Information processing involves above all computations of logi-
cal consequences. In brief, the mind is seen as a kind of logic machine
that operates on sentences from a mental language by symbol manipula-
tion. Following Patricia S. Churchland (1986, Chapter 9.6), I will call this
approach to mental rep/esentations the sententialparadigm. 2
In my opinion, the sentential paradigm has a very limited applicability.
For most areas of representation and information processing, including
semantic representation, it is positively misleading. 3 Even if there exist
some proposals for alternative frameworks for representation of informa-
tion, the sentential paradigm has, by far, been dominating within AI and
the rest of cognitive science. 4 The main purpose of this article is to present
an alternativeframework for mental representations that is based on using
topological or geometric structures rather than linguistic or logical. The
bearing constructions of this approach I call conceptual spaces. It can be
seen as a generalization of the ' state space approach' of P. M. Churchland
(1986b) and the 'vector function theories' of Foss (1988).
The theory of conceptual spaces is a theory for representing informa-
tion, and thus not primarily empirical. Nevertheless, I believe it is possible
to connect it to some theories in the neurosciences. In particular, I shall
compare it to the tensor network theory of sensorimotor control proposed
by Pellionisz and Llinas (1979, 1980, 1982, 1985). One reason for this

Synthese 106: 2 1 4 7 , 1996.

@ 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
22 PETER G.ARDENFORS

comparison is that the information processing involved in sensorimotor

control seems to be much more fundamental for the cognitive functioning
of the human brain than the processes involved in symbolic manipula-
tions. Consequently, I see it as an advantage for the theory of conceptual
spaces that it can highlight the philosophical implications of neuroscien-
tific research in this area. The sentential paradigm is much weaker in this
respect.
In order to also show the viability of the theory of conceptual spaces for
philosophical problems in the use of language and other symbolic repre-
sentations, I will apply it to some puzzles in epistemology and semantics.
One problem area is concept formation, which I will exemplify by a brief
discussion of projectibility of concepts in inductive reasoning. 5 Another
application concerns the semantics of metaphors. I shall present a topo-
logical approach to the problem of how metaphors succeed in transferring
meaning. It will also be argued that the theory is congenial to the 'cogni-
tive semantics' developed by Jackendoff (1983), Langacker (1987), Lakoff
(1987) and others.

2. THE SENTENTIAL PARADIGM

The outline of the sentential paradigm to be presented here will not be

explicitly found in the works of any particular author. 6 However, a defense
of the general reasoning can be found, for example, in the writings of Jerry
Fodor (1981, Introduction, and Chapters 7 and 9) and Zenon Pylyshyn
(1984), and in their joint article Fodor and Pylyshyn (1988). It is also
clear that the sentential paradigm forms an implicit methodology for much
research in AI.
The central tenet of the sentential paradigm is that mental representa-
tion and information processing is essentially symbol manipulation] The
symbols can be concatenated to form expressions in a language of thought
- sometimes called Mentalese. A mental state is identified with a set of
attitudes towards such sentences.
The content of a sentence in Mentalese is a belief or a thought of a
person. The different sentential or propositional attitudes in the mental
states of a person are connected via their logical or inferential relations.
Pylyshyn writes (1984, p. 194): "If a person believes (wants, fears) P,
then that person's behavior depends on the form the expression of P takes
rather than the state of affairs P refers to ... ". In applications within AI,
first order logic has been the dominating inferential system, but in other
areas more general forms of inference, like those provided by inductive
logic or decision theory, have been utilized.
 MENTAL REPRESENTATION, CONCEPTUAL SPACES AND METAPHORS 23

Processing the information contained in a mental state consists in com-

puting the consequences of the sentential attitudes, using some set of
inference rules. The following quotation from Fodor (1981, p. 230) is a
typical formulation of the sentential paradigm:

Insofar as we think of mental processes as computational (hence as formal operations

defined on representations), it will be natural to take the mind to be, inter alia, a kind of
computer. That is, we will think of the mind as carrying out whatever symbol manipulations
are constitutive of the hypothesized computational processes. To a first approximation, we
may thus construe mental operations as pretty directly analogous to those of a Turing
machine.

The material basis for these processes is irrelevant to the description of

their results - the same mental state with all its sentential attitudes can be
realized in a brain as well as in a computer. Thus, the sentential paradigm
clearly presupposes afunctionalistphilosophy of mind. The inference rules
of logic and the electronic devices which conform to these rules are seen to
be analogous to the workings of the brain. In brief, the mind is thought to
be a computing device, which generates symbolic sentences as inputs from
sensory channels, performs logical operations on these sentences, and then
transforms them into linguistic or non-linguistic behaviors as output.
A further claim of the sentential paradigm is that mental representations
can not be reduced to neurobiological or other naturalistic categories. The
reason is that the functional role of the symbolic representations and the
inference rules can be given many different realizations, neurophysiolog-
ical or others. The causal relations governing such a material realization
of a mental state will be different for different realizations, even if they
represent the same logical relations. 8 Thus, according to functionalism, the
logical relations which characterize mental representations and the infor-
mation processing can not be reduced to any underlying neurological or
electronic causes (cf. E S. Churchland 1986, Chapter 9.5).
I do not claim that the sentential paradigm is totally without value: if one
is trying to imitate natural language understanding, it is necessary to use
some linguistic structures, for example, in order to be able to analyse the
grammar of the input. But even in this symbol-oriented area, we encounter
problems when it comes to providing a semantics for the linguistic expres-
sions. According to the sentential approach, the content of an expression
in a natural language would be represented by an expression in Mentalese.
But this would basically be a translation from one language to another and
it would not help us understand how the expression gets its meaning. 9
Palmer (1978, pp. 270-272) introduces a distinction between intrinsic
and extrinsic representation. Representation is intrinsic when the represent-
ing relation has the same inherent constraints as its represented relation.
24 PETER GARDENFORS

For example, if the age of a class of objects is represented by the height of

rectangles, the structure of the represented relation (age) is intrinsic in the
representing relation (height). In contrast, representing age by numbers is
an extrinsic representation since the structure of the digit sequences does
not have the same structure as the represented relation. Intrinsic represen-
tations resemble what they represent. In contrast, extrinsic representations
must be accompanied by a rule which specifies how the representation is to
be interpreted- such a rule provides the 'meaning' of the representation.
The sentential paradigm, which corresponds to what Palmer calls propo-
sitional representation (p. 294), uses extrinsic representations. As regards
mental representation, the controversy is about how much of the brain's
cognitive functions is based on such extrinsic representations. In contrast
to the sentential paradigm, I claim that most cognitive operations build on
intrinsic representations. To some extent, this claim will be supported by
the material in Section 4. Before that I want to present a general framework
for an intrinsic form of mental representation.

3. CONCEPTUAL SPACES

A conceptual space consists of a number of quality dimensions. This con-

cept is an idealized (theoretical) notion which, as a first approximation,
can be thought of as the aspects or qualities of the external world that we
can perceive or think about. As examples of quality dimensions, let me
mention color, pitch, temperature, weight, and the three ordinary spatial
dimensions (length, width, and height). The dimensions are taken to be
infra-linguistic in the sense that we (and other animals) can think about
the qualities of objects, for example when planning an action, without pre-
suming an internal language in which these thoughts can be expressed. 1°
Some of the dimensions are closely related to what is produced by our
sensory receptors, but, as will be clear later, many quality dimensions are
of an abstract, non-sensory character.
The notion of a dimension should be understood literally. It is assumed
that each of the quality dimensions is endowed with certain topological
or metric structures. For example, 'time' is a one-dimensional structure
which we conceive of as being isomorphic to the line of real numbers. (To
some extent the representation of time is culturally dependent; see below).
Similarly 'weight' is one-dimensional with a zero point, isomorphic to
the half-line of non-negative numbers. Some quality dimensions have a
discrete structure, i.e. they merely divide objects into disjoint classes, as
e.g. the sex of an individual. Discrete dimensions may also have additional
structure as, for example in kinship or biological classifications. 11
 MENTAL REPRESENTATION, CONCEPTUAL SPACES AND METAPHORS 25

At this point it is important to make a distinction between a psycholog-

ical and a scientific interpretation of the quality dimensions. For example,
our psychological visual space is not a perfect 3-dimensional Euclidean
space. For one thing, our perception of the vertical dimension is distorted
in comparison to our perception of the horizontal dimensions. However,
the scientific representation of visual space as a 3-D Euclidean space is an
idealization that is mathematically amenable.
A psychologically interesting example of a quality dimension con-
cerns color perception. In brief, our mental representation of colors can
be described by three dimensions: The first dimension is hue, which is
represented by the familiar color circle. The topological structure of this
dimension is different from the dimensions representing time or weight
which are isomorphic to the real numbers. One way of illustrating the
differences in topology is by noting that we can talk about psychologically
complementary colors, i.e. colors that lie opposite to each other on the col-
or circle. In contrast, it is not meaningful to talk about two points of time
or two weights being 'opposite' to each other. This simple example shows
that the structure of the mental representations of perceptual qualities will
have important consequences for the semantics of linguistic expressions
used to talk about these qualities) 2
There are two further psychological dimensions of color. The first is
saturation, which goes from gray (zero color intensity) to increasingly
greater intensities. This dimension is isomorphic to an interval of the
real line. The second dimension is brightness which goes from white to
black and is thus a linear dimension with end points. Together, these three
dimensions make up the color space which is a subspace of our perceptual
conceptual space (see Figure 1).
The neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the mental represen-
tation of color space are comparatively well understood. However, the
connections between what excites the cones and rods in the retina and
what color is perceived is far from trivial. According to Land's (1977)
results, the perceived color is not a function of radiant energy received by
the cones and rods, but rather determined by 'lightness' values computed
at three wavelengths.
We can also find related spatial structures for other sensory qualities.
For example, consider the quality dimension of pitch, which is basically a
continuous one-dimensional structure going from low tones to high. This
representation is directly connected to the neurophysioiogy of pitch per-
ception. The cochlea of the inner ear functions so that high frequency tones
stimulate receptor cells at the base of the cochlea, and lower tones stimulate
cells higher up in the spiral. In this way the positions in the cochlea-map
26 PETERG.ARDENFORS

White

Red
Green

Black
Fig. 1. The full color space.

the frequencies of the sounds received by the ear. Thus acoustic frequency
is spatially coded in the nervous system as illustrated in Figure 2. This is
a paradigm example of an intrinsic representation in the sense of Palmer
(1978).
Apart from the basic frequency dimension of tones, we can find some
interesting further structure in the mental representation of tones. Natural
tones are not simple sinusoidal tones of only one frequency, but constituted
of a number of higher harmonics. The timbre of a tone is determined by
the relative strength of the higher harmonics of the fundamental frequency
of the tone. An interesting perceptual phenomenon is 'the case of the
missing fundamental': if the fundamental frequency is removed by artificial
methods from a complex tone, the pitch of the tone is still perceived as that
corresponding to the removed fundamental. 13 Apparently, the fundamental
frequency is not indispensable for pitch perception, but the perceived pitch
is determined by certain of the lower harmonics.
Thus, the harmonics of a tone are essential for how it is perceived. This
entails that tones which share a number of harmonics will be perceived to
be similar. The tone which shares the most harmonics with a given tone
 MENTALREPRESENTATION,CONCEPTUALSPACESAND METAPHORS 27
Cochlea . ~ @ ~

Eardrum
0

~z
I
I i 'it
I L I ~ I I

• J It

I ,
Hair
cells

Basilar
membrane

Fig. 2, (a) Position of the cochlea relative to the eardrum. (b) The"unrolled" coclea. Points
along the internal membrane are resonant to specific frequencies so that local hair cells are
stimulated, Acoustic frequency is thus spatially coded in the nervous system. (From R S.
Churchland (1986)).

is its octave, the second most similar is the fifth, the third most similar is
the fourth and so on. This additional 'topological' structure on the pitch
dimension, which can be derived from the wave structure of tones, provides
the foundational explanation for the perception of musical intervals) 4
28 PETER G,~RDENFORS

As a final example of sensory space representations let me only mention

that the human perception of taste appears to be generated from four
distinct types of receptors: salt, sour, sweet, and bitter. Thus the quality
space representing tastes should be at most 4-dimensional. I do not know
much about the actual structure of the gustatory space. Suffice it to say
that it quite clearly has some non-trivial metric structure. For instance, we
can meaningfully claim that the taste of a walnut is closer to the taste of a
hazelnut than to the taste of popcorn in the same way as we can say that
the color orange is closer to yellow than to blue.
I cannot provide a complete list of the quality dimensions involved in
our conceptual spaces. Some of the dimensions seem to be innate and to
some extent hardwired in our nervous system, as for example color, pitch,
and probably also ordinary space. These subspaces are obviously extremely
important for basic activities like finding food and getting around in the
environment. Other dimensions are probably learned. 'Volume' may be an
example here. The experiments performed by Piaget and his school indicate
that small children have no separate mental dimension of volume: They
confuse the volume of a liquid with the height of the liquid in its container.
Learning new concepts often involves expanding one's conceptual space
with new quality dimensions.
This means that many of the quality dimensions of human conceptual
spaces are not directly generated from sensory inputs. This is even clearer
when we use concepts based on the functions of artifacts or the social
roles of people in a society. Even if we do not know much about the
topological structures of these dimensions, it is quite obvious that there
is some non-trivial such structure (see e.g. Vaina's (1983) analysis of
functional representation).
Still other dimensions may be culturally dependent. Take 'time', for
example: In some cultures time is conceived to be circular - the world
keeps returning to the same point in time and the same events occur over
and over again; and in other cultures it is hardly meaningful at all to speak
of time as a dimension. A sophisticated time dimension with the full metric
structure is needed for advanced forms of planning and coordination with
other individuals, but is not necessary for the most basic activities of an
organism. As a matter of fact, the standard Western conception of time
is a comparatively recent phenomenon.15 Another example of the cultural
relativity of the time dimension will be discussed in Section 6.
Finally, some quality dimensions are introduced by science. Witness, for
example, Newton's distinction between weight and mass, which is of cru-
cial importance for the development of his celestial mechanics, but which
has no correspondence in human perception. To the extent we have mental
 MENTAL REPRESENTATION, CONCEPTUAL SPACES AND METAPHORS 29

representations of the masses of objects in distinction to their weights,

this is something which clearly has to be learned by adopting Newton's
conceptual space in our mental representations.
The most drastic changes in science occur when the underlying concep-
tual space is changed. I believe that most of the 'paradigm shifts' discussed
by Kuhn (1970) can be understood as shifts of conceptual spaces. I do not
see any principal difference between this kind of change and the change
involved in the development of a child's conceptual space: Introducing the
distinction between'height' and 'votume' is the same kind of phenomenon
as introducing the distinction between 'weight' and 'mass'.
The conceptual space of Newtonian particle mechanics is, of course,
based on theoretical (idealized) quality dimensions and not on perceptual
dimensions. The quality dimensions are ordinary space (3-D Euclidean),
time (isomorphic to the real numbers), mass (isomorphic to the non-
negative real numbers), and force (3-D Euclidean vector space). Once
a particle has been assigned a value for all these dimensions it is fully
described as far as Newtonian mechanics is concerned.
This concludes my general presentation of conceptual spaces. I believe
it can be seen as a generalization of the state space approach, advocated
among others by R M. Churchland (1986b), and of the vector function
theories of Foss (1988). The theory of conceptual spaces is a theory for
representing information, not a neurological theory, which I believe can be
applied to a number of philosophical problems in epistemology and seman-
tics. Two such applications will be outlined in Sections 5 and 6. However,
when discussing the most realistic topological structure of dimensions like
color and pitch I have relied heavily on empirical results in neurophysi-
ology and cognitive psychology. Conversely, I also believe that much of
neuroscientific research on mental representations can be given a unified
theoretical framework by developing the philosophical theory of concep-
tual spaces (at least in comparison to what is provided by the sentential
paradigm). I next turn to another neuroscientific theory which, I submit,
supports the claim that conceptual spaces provide a more realistic frame-
work for mental representations than does the sentential paradigm.

4. THE TENSOR NETWORK THEORY FOR SENSORIMOTOR CONTROL

It is a common prejudice among cognitive scientists in general and philoso-

phers in particular that the brain processes governing motor control are of
little interest when trying to understand the processes that make for cog-
nition. This prejudice is amplified by the sentential paradigm of cognition
since it defines thinking and problem solving in terms of symbolic manip-
30 PETER G)kRDENFORS

ulations in a language of thought, while motor control does not seem to

involve any linguistic structures. According to the sentential paradigm,
research in cognitive psychology, let alone linguistics, may safely disre-
gard research on motor control. This kind of research has, by and large,
been ignored within AI, but is obviously important for robotics.
From an evolutionary and neurobiological point of view, the assumption
that motor control processes are irrelevant for cognition seems somewhat
naive. Cognitive mechanisms have evolved much later than perceptual
and motor processes, and they are dependent on the outcomes of these
processes. Consequently, the simplest hypothesis when studying cognitive
mechanisms would be to apply the same approach to mental representations
as in research on motor control.
Since my main concern is to discuss frameworks for mental repre-
sentations, I therefore want to consider ideas about representations from
research on sensorimotor control and compare them to the theory of con-
ceptual spaces outlined above. To this end, I present a brief outline of the
tensor network theory for sensorimotor control due to Pellionisz and Lli-
nas( 1979, 1980, 1982, 1985). For detailed discussions of the philosophical
relevance of this theory, see R S. Churchland (1986), Chapter 10.3-10.8,
R M. Churchland (1986a,b), and Foss (1988).
Extensive neurophysiological research has revealed a lot about the
brain mechanisms connecting sensory information with muscular control.
Basically, the transitions are performed in the cerebellum. The cerebellum
receives (transformed) inputs from all types of sensory receptors which
provide information about the current location of the parts of the body
(say, my hands are in my pockets) and its environment (I see an apple
within reach). But there are also massive inputs from the cerebral cortex.
This kind of input is thought to be grossly specified motor commands (take
the apple), the neurophysiological realization of an intention, for which the
cerebellum provides the finely tuned commands to the muscles (moving
one of my hands out of the pocket to grasp the apple).
So the in- and outputs of the cerebellum are representations; the inputs
represent the environment, the location of the parts of the body, and pre-
sumably also the intention of the organism; the output represents desired
muscle movements. How are these things represented?
According to Pellionisz and Llinas, inputs are vectors in some coor-
dinate system, representing, for instance, the locations of external objects
or the parts of my body. Different subsystems may be using different
coordinate systems. The magnitudes of the components of the vectors are
determined by the spiking frequencies of certain neuron fibers. The outputs
are again vectors, in yet other coordinate systems, specifying, for instance,
 MENTAL REPRESENTATION, CONCEPTUAL SPACES AND METAPHORS 31

the angles of my arm joints and thus representing the intended location of
my hand. In the terminology of Palmer (1978), this form of representation
is clearly intrinsic.
The job of the cerebellum is to transform the sensory vectors and the
"intention" vector into the appropriate output motor vector. In the simplest
cases this is mathematically the same as matrix multiplication which is
the standard technique for solving the geometrical problem of going from
one coordinate system to another. In the more general non-linear case,
the transformation is called a tensor, hence the name "tensor network
theory".
I will spare you the neurophysiological details of how the tensor oper-
ation may be implemented on the neuronal level. Let me only note that
it seems to be possible to realize it rather simply in terms of the spiking
frequencies of neuronal fibers. 16 The architecture of the different types of
neurons in the cerebellum seems to be well suited for the mathematical
operations postulated by Pellionisz and Llinas. In computer terminology,
the cerebellum works as a sophisticated parallel processor, operating on a
large number of neuronal 'coordinates' simultaneously. One important fea-
ture of this parallelism is that the tensor transformations can be performed
extremely rapidly, using only a few neuron cycles. (A similar transforma-
tion performed by a traditional sequential computer program would take
several orders of magnitude longer time and is thus not a neurophysiolog-
ically realistic model.)
Here it may objected that I am, after all, relying on the traditional
Turing machine metaphor of brain processes and thus reverting to the
sentential paradigm. My reply is that this form of parallel processing
works with patterns of intensities distributed over a large set of units. These
intensity patterns, which on my account represent positions in a conceptual
space, are non-symbolic and intrinsic representations. Furthermore, they
are transformed by mathematical operations like tensors. In contrast, the
sentential paradigm presumes sequential processing which operates on
symbols from some language. And here the transformations are performed
by applying inference or production rules to sequences of symbols. 17 In
my opinion, the Pellionisz-Llinas theory is an excellent example of how a
cognitive process can be described by non-symbolic computing; thus this
theory is incompatible with the sentential paradigm.
It is an open question to which extent connectionist models are suitable
for representing conceptual spaces (cf. Smolensky (1988) for a compar-
ison between connectionism and the sentential paradigm which he calls
'symbolism'). But at least it seems that the theory of conceptual spaces is
consistent with the connectionist paradigm. One reason is that the topolog-
32 PETER GARDENFORS

ical structures which are fundamental for conceptual spaces are generally
continuous rather than discrete. 18 Conceptual spaces are put forward as
a theory of information representation, while connectionist models are
indeed models of different theories in cognitive science.
The main reason for presenting the tensor network theory here is that
if Pellionisz and Llinas are on the right track (which still remains to be
seen), their concepts of mental representation would fit much better with
the notion of quality dimensions in a conceptual space than with cognition
as sentence-crunching as in the sentential paradigm. The neuronal vectors
of their theory represent points in different cognitive spaces.
Apparently, spatial representation is not unique to the cerebellum. The
cortex also abounds in topographic maps, whereby neighborhood relations
at the sensory periphery are preserved in the arrangement of neurons in
various 'deeper' CNS regions.19 For example, one finds 'retinotopic' maps
in the lateral geniculate nuclei which are arranged in six layers, each
layer arranged in a topographic representation of the retina; there are
'somatotopic' maps representing sensory positions on the body; and there
are 'tonotopic' maps where the orderly mapping of neurons with sound
frequencies is preserved from the cochlea (see the preceeding section) to
diverse areas of the auditory cortex. Another interesting aspect of these
maps are that most of them preserve the modularity of the senses, in the
way that distinct types of receptor neurons are sensitive to different features
of our environment and these features are kept distinct in the maps higher
up in the projection system.
The quality dimensions of these perceptual spaces and motor spaces can
be extracted by empirical neurophysiological and psychophysical research,
as is witnessed, for instance, by the results on color perception. And from
an evolutionary point of view, the simplest hypotheses for the cognitive
scientist is that this topological or geometric mode of representation is
also used for higher forms of mental processes. The research program
associated with the theory of conceptual spaces consists in establishing the
validity of this hypothesis. 2°
According to this picture the linguistic representations postulated by
the sentential paradigm would be rather exceptional and parasitic upon the
topological. In brief, conceptual spaces would provide a more unified way
of accounting for brain processes in general, and mental representations in
particular, than would the sentential paradigm. The idea is congenial to the
general methodology of Pellionisz and Llinas:
This view assumes that the brain is a 'geometrical object', that is to say, (1) activity in the
neuronal network is vectorial, and (2) the networks are organized tensorially: i.e. activity
vectors remain invariant to changes in reference-frames. Understanding brain functions
becomes, then, the establishment of the inherent geometrical properties of the activity
 MENTAL REPRESENTATION, CONCEPTUAL SPACES AND METAPHORS 33

vectors and, more fundamentally, the determination of the proper vectorial transformations
occur." (1980, p. 1125)

In this context it should be noted that the first 'geometrical theory' of

sensorimotor control was proposed by Descartes (1664). Figure 3 summa-
rizes the main components of his account (presented on pp. 180-183 in
the French 1909 edition). Instead of relying on the cerebellum Descartes
assigns the pineal gland (marked with H in Figure 3) the role as the trans-
former of sensorial input to motor output. Since the pineal gland is where
physical information is transformed to mental and vice versa, the inten-
tional part of a movement is no problem for the Descartes's dualism: The
intention comes from the soul and is used in combination with the infor-
mation provided by the senses to determine the proper bodily movement.
Note also that Descartes sketches a topographic theory of how the light
that passes through the lens to the retina is transformed into patterns in the
optic nerves. In Figure 3, the points A, B, and C on the arrow correspond
to the positions 1, 3, and 5, respectively, on the two retinas, which in turn
correspond to the double set of nerve fibers 2, 4, and 6.

5. PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS: PROJECTIBLE PROPERTIES AND COGNITIVE

SEMANTICS

I finally want to argue that the theory of conceptual spaces is also useful
for more traditional philosophical purposes. As applications of the theory
I will outline two problematic examples of concept formation. The first is
the problem of projectible predicates in inductive inferences which I have
analysed in terms of conceptual spaces in G~irdenfors (1990). The second
is the problem of how metaphors function, which will be the main topic
of the next section. Before this problem is tackled, let me present a brief
outline of the first application.
However, before I turn to these applications I want to make some
remarks on the relation between the theory of conceptual spaces and the
cognitive approach to semantics that has been developed by Jackendoff
(1983), (1987), Langacker (1986), (1987), Lakoff (1987), and others. One
unifying idea of this approach is that semantics is not seen as a map-
ping from language to 'the external world' (traditionally construed as truth
conditions), 21 but rather as a relation between language and a conceptu-
al structure. Langacker (1986) formulates this by the slogan 'meaning is
equated with conceptualization'. He develops an elaborate notation for the
conceptual structures in his (1987). In Lakoff (1987, p. 68) the correspond-
ing structures are called 'idealized cognitive models'.
34 PETERG.~RDENFORS

/
I

o
1 t
- /
67.
t

) 7
\
,r

Fig. 3. Descartes' topographic theory of sensorimotor control.

The conceptual structures developed in cognitive semantics presume

some underlying framework which, I submit, is provided by conceptual
spaces. The following quotation from Langacker (1986, p. 5) concerning
his notion of 'domains' strongly supports this thesis:

What occupies the lowest level in conceptual hierarchies? I am neutral in regard to the
possible existence of conceptual primitives. It is however necessary to posit a number
of 'basic domains', that is, cognitively irreducible representational spaces or fields of
conceptual potential. Among these basic domains are the experience of time and our
capacity for dealing with two- and three-dimensional spatial configurations. There are
 MENTAL REPRESENTATION, CONCEPTUAL SPACES AND METAPHORS 35

basic domains associated with various senses: color space (an array of possible color
sensations), coordinated with the extension of the visual field; the pitch scale; a range
of possible temperature sensations (coordinated with positions on the body); and so on.
Emotive domains must also be assumed. It is possible that certain linguistic predications
are characterized solely in relation to one or more basic domains, for example time for
(BEFORE), color space for (RED), or time and the pitch scale for (BEEP). However, most
expressions pertain to higher levels of conceptual organization and presuppose nonbasic
domains for their semantic characterization.

The first steps in developing a cognitive semantics for (a fragment of)

a natural language would be to provide appropriate conceptual models
for the basic linguistic categories. To a large extent, this is the goal of
Langacker (1987) and Lakoff (1987). One central part of this program
would be to give an account of how property expressions are modelled
and how these models relate to other cognitive processes. This brings us
to the first philosophical application of the theory of conceptual spaces,
which concerns the relation between conceptual models of properties and
inductive reasoning.
The problem of 'projectibility' is the problem of which properties can
be used in inductive inferences and which can not. This problem has
got its sharpest formulation in Goodman's (1955) 'riddle of induction':
Why do we accept inductive inferences formulated in terms of 'blue' and
'green', but not inductions in terms of 'grue' and 'bleen' ?22 Also Hempel's
(1965) 'paradox of confirmation' points to the same problem: Why does
a black raven, but not a white shoe, confirm the inductive generalization
"All ravens are black" even if the logical reasoning involved is perfectly
symmetrical (because "All ravens are black" is logically equivalent to "All
non-black things are non-ravens")?
The starting idea for my solution to the projectibility problem is that a
property is defined as a region of a given conceptual space. For example
"bitter" can be identified with a subset of the gustatory space. A natural
property can then be defined as a convex region of the space (a convex
region is characterized by the criterion that for every pair sl and s2 of points
in the region all points between Sl and s2 are also in the region). "Bitter" is
probably a natural property in this sense since if two bitter tastes are mixed,
the resulting intermediate taste is presumably also bitter. This definition can
be applied to classificatory spaces (like biological taxonomies) as well.
Most properties expressed by simple words in natural languages are
natural properties according to this definition. For instance, I conjecture
that all color terms in natural languages express natural properties with
respect to the psychological representation of the three color dimensions.
(It would be an interesting project to investigate our words for tastes in
relation to the gustatory space).
36 PETER GARDENFORS

The key hypothesis for inductive reasoning is that only naturalproper-

ties are projectible. "Green", "blue", and "raven", are all natural proper-
ties in relation to the standard psychological conceptual space, but "grue",
"bleen", and "non-raven" are not. This explains, for instance, why "All
emeralds are green" is an acceptable inductive generalization while "All
emeralds are grue" is not. For further details of this analysis, the reader is
referred to G~irdenfors (1990). A problem for the applicability of the anal-
ysis is that as long as we deal with sensory properties we may know what is
the topological and metric structure of the underlying quality dimensions
(which is necessary to determine the convexity of regions), but for higher
forms of properties the structure of the relevant conceptual space is in
general totally unknown.

6. METAPHORS

The main philosophical application of this article concerns the way

metaphors work. This is a problem which has been notoriously difficult
to handle within semantic theories based on the sentential paradigm. In
the mainstream of formal grammars and semantic theories metaphors have
been treated as a deviant phenomenon that should be ignored or incorpo-
rated via special rules (cf. Johnson and Malgady (1980)). My view is that
metaphors should be treated on par with all other semantic processes. Here
I will present an extended version of the theory of metaphors outlined in
G~irdenfors (1988).
The core hypothesis is that a metaphor expresses a similarity in topo-
logical or metrical structure between different quality dimensions. A word
that represents a particular structure in one quality dimension can be used
as a metaphor to express a similar structure about another dimension. In
this way one can account for how a metaphor can transfer knowledge about
one conceptual dimension to anotherY Incidentally, this analysis fits well
with the etymological root of 'metaphor' which derives from the Greek
#c~-o~ + ~bcpc~u (to carry), i.e., literally 'to carry across'.
As a simple example, let us consider words that refer to the length
dimension, like 'longer', 'distant', 'in front of', and 'forward'. This dimen-
sion refers to the most salient direction of the two-dimensional surface we
are normally moving on. Unless altered by the communicative context, the
default direction of this dimension is determined by the speaker's front and
back. The spatial length dimension is represented by a topological structure
that is isomorphic to the real line, where we, for the present purposes, can
take the zero point to represent 'here'.
 MENTAL REPRESENTATION, CONCEPTUAL SPACES AND METAPHORS 37

In our conceptual space (modem Western), the time dimension has

the same structure as the real line. According to the hypothesis about
how metaphors work we can then use some of the words we use to talk
about length when we want to say something about time. In support of the
hypothesis it can be noted that we speak of 'longer' and 'shorter' intervals
of time, a 'distant' future; and we say that we have some tasks 'in front
of us, that some events are 'behind' us, and that we are looking 'forward'
to doing something. Here the structure underlying the length dimension is
transferred to the time dimension and we know what the words mean as
expressions about time since we can identify the corresponding structure
on the conceptual time dimension.
I propose that the length dimension is the more fundamental one and
these expressions are thus used metaphorically for the time dimension.
This may be difficult to see since these expressions about time are so
idiomatic in our language that we no longer think of them as metaphors.
However, their origin as metaphors can be highlighted by comparing our
time expressions to those of other cultures. We need not go very far from
the standard Western view of time; a particularly revealing example can be
found in the ancient Greek conception of time. The Greeks thought of time
as a river flowing past us. We sit in the river with our backs towards the
future and see the events pass by, become distant and eventually disappear
in oblivion. But we do not see what is coming. Indeed, one Greek word
for 'future' (oTcLaq~E) is the same as the word for 'behind'! In contrast,
we think of time rather as a road we are travelling along in which the
past is 'behind' us and we are looking 'forward' to the future. Both the
ancient Greeks and we view time as a one-dimensional line (in contrast to
a circular conception of time as in some cultures) - the only difference is
the 'direction' of the line.
This is an example of how a study of the basic metaphors of a lan-
guage can reveal the structure of the underlying conceptual dimensions.
Another linguistic category that is essentially metaphorical is the class of
prepositions. Words like 'in', 'at', 'on', 'under' etc. originate in spatial
metaphors and when combined with non-locational words they create a
'spatially structured' mental representation of the expression. Herskovits
(1986) presents an elaborated study of the fundamental spatial meanings
of prepositions and she shows how the spatial structure is transferred in a
metaphoric manner to other contexts. 24 A sentence like "We meet at six
o'clock" provides a further illustration to the dependence of temporal lan-
guage on spatial dimensions (Herskovits (1986), p. 51). Here "six o'clock"
is conceived as a point on a travel trajectory, and the locational preposition
'at' is used in exactly the same way as in "The train is at the bridge".
 38 PETERGARDENFORS

OSI CS2
I I

First conceptual ~l~ce ~econd conceptual space

Fig. 4. A schematic representation of metaphoric transfer of meaning.

The general idea of how metaphors work can be illustrated diagram-

matically as in Figure 4. A linguistic expression E originally denotes a
particular structure in relation to one conceptual space CS 1 (sometimes
called the vehicle of the metaphor). When E is used metaphorically about
another conceptual space CS2 it expresses that the same structure can be
found also in this domain (the subject or tenor of the metaphor).
Sometimes the metaphor E is creative for the hearer in the sense that
the Conceptual structure expressed by E has no corresponding structure
in the CS2 of the hearer. Accepting the metaphor as valid means that the
hearer adds the structure expressed by E to the domain of CS2 (such new
connections are indicated by the dotted lines between some of the nodes
in CS2 in Figure 4). If the metaphor is of a 'revolutionary' character this
may entail considerable revisions of the quality dimensions of CS2.
A very common type of metaphors use shapes of things as vehicles
(the 'legs' of a table, the 'hands' of a clock, the 'mouth' of a river, the
'peak' of a career, etc.). On my account, shapes are second order structures,
generated from the spatial dimensions (roughly in the same way as a vector
space is a second order structure on a Euclidean space) and as such the
space of shapes has its own topological structure.
Several theories of shape have been outlined within various branches
of cognitive science. Perhaps the most noticed attempt of reducing our
representations of shapes to more fundamental topological notions is the
one suggested by Marr and Nishihara (1978) (expanded in Marr (1982),
Chapter 5). Their scheme for describing biological forms uses hierarchies
of cylinder-like modelling primitives. Each cylinder is described by two
coordinates (length and width). Cylinders are combined by determining
the angle between the dominating cylinder and the added one (two polar
 MENTAL REPRESENTATION,CONCEPTUAL SPACES AND METAPHORS 39

h u m a n 3 - D model

arm 3-D model

. . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . fore-.arm 3:___Dmodel

Fig. 5. Hierarchical organization of shape information in a 3-D model description according

to Marr and Nishihara. (From Marr and Nishihara (1978)).

coordinates) and the position of the added cylinder in relation to the dom-
inating one (two coordinates). The details of this representation are not
important in the present context, but it is worth noting that on each level of
the hierarchy an object is described by a finite number of coordinates based
on lengths and angles. Thus the object can be identified as a hierarchical
structured Vector in a (higher order) conceptual space. Figure 5 provides
an illustration of the hierarchically structure of their representations.
A related analysis of shape has been proposed by Pentland (1986). He
uses so called 'superquadrics' instead of cylinders as the basic building
blocks and then adds a fractal analysis of surface structure. Also in this
theory, objects are represented by a small number of coordinates. Thus
both Marr and Nishihara's and Pentland's representations of shapes are
amenable to topological and metric analyses. I believe that this kind of
research will be very helpful for our understanding of how shape metaphors
work.
I will conclude my discussion of metaphors by comparing the present
analysis to some recent theories. One such theory, based on a wealth
of linguistic evidence, is presented by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). They
analyse several networks of metaphors used to talk about special topics.
Among other things, they argue, in line with the description above, that
the introduction of a new metaphor c r e a t e s similarities of a new kind.
These similarities are not 'objective', but once one quality dimension has
been connected to another via a metaphor this connection may serve as a
generator for new metaphors based on the same kind of similarity.
A closely related point is raised by Tourangeau and Sternberg
(1982). Their 'domains-interaction' view is based on the observation that
40 PETER G.,~RDENFORS

"metaphors often involve seeing in a new way not only two particular
things but the domains to which they belong as well . . . . Metaphors
can thus involve whole systems of concepts" (p. 214). In other words,
a m e t a p h o r does n o t c o m e a l o n e - it is not only a comparison between
two single concepts, but involves an identification of the structure of two
quality dimensions. Black (1979, p. 31) makes essentially the same point
by the phrase "Every metaphor is the tip of a submerged model."
Tourangeau and Sternberg's analysis is obviously congenial to the
present one. They even use the notion of 'dimension' when spelling out
their view: "In interpreting a metaphor, we see one concept in terms of
another by construing features or dimensions that apply within in the
domain of the first concept (the subject or tenor of the metaphor) as some-
how parallel to those that apply within the domain of the second concept
(the vehicle); further tenor and vehicle are asserted to have similar values
on these corresponding dimensions" (p. 215). However, Tourangeau and
Steinberg do not interpret dimension as a topological or metric concept;
on the contrary, they assume that "the meaning or structure of concepts
uses semantic networks ... as the chief representational device" (p. 219).
As they point out, this representation means that the two domains that a
metaphor relates "include the same skeleton of semantic relations, repre-
sented as labelled arrows" (p. 420). This mode of representation misses
much of the content of metaphors which, in my opinion, is much better
captured by comparing the structure of the underlying quality dimensions
(their examples of semantic networks on pp. 220-221 do not seem to tell
us much about the meaning of any metaphors). Also Indurkhya (1986)
interprets metaphors in terms of mappings between different domains, but,
again, the topological structure of the domains are not exploited.
Verbrugge (1980, p. 95) notes that "[m]etaphoric processes are not sole-
ly dependent on language as a source of activation or medium of expres-
sion. Perceptual experiences can be metaphoric - for example, recognizing
a familiar object in the guise of a cloud, or recognizing a familiar ocean-
wave undulation in a field of grain." According to the present proposal, this
feature of metaphoric processes is easily explained: Because perception
produces mental representations of objects in a conceptual space, these
representations can be used for metaphoric transfers in precisely the same
way as the mental representations generated by linguistic inputs. 25 As a
wild speculation, I would like to suggest that what happens in s y n e s t h e s i a
(for example seeing colors when listening to music) is a kind of 'automat-
ic' transfer from one quality dimension to another. 26 In contrast, ordinary
metaphors involve a creative 'discovery' of similarity in topological struc-
ture.
 MENTAL REPRESENTATION, CONCEPTUAL SPACES AND METAPHORS 41

Another feature pointed out by Tourangeau and Sternberg, but without

giving it a satisfactory analysis, is the asymmetry of metaphorical compar-
ison. For example, we frequently use the expressions based on the space
dimension metaphorically for the time dimension like in "Yesterday's party
is behind us". On the other hand, it is much more difficult to use expres-
sions from the time dimension metaphorically for the spatial dimensions.
For instance, if I want to express that the mirror is behind me, I would
hardly be understood if I said "The mirror is in the past".
The explanation of the asymmetry of metaphorical comparisons is, I
submit, that the quality dimensions of a conceptual space are partially
ordered with respect to how fundamental they are. The spatial dimensions
are probably the most fundamental dimensions. (By the way, this explains
why prepositions are primarily spatial). And the reason for the asymmetry
of metaphors is that they always carry information from a more fundamen-
tal quality dimension, for which the topological structure is well established
conceptually, to a less fundamental dimension for which the structure is not
yet completely determined. For example, we often use optic terminology
when describing our mental capacities: "A bright mind", "a brilliant idea",
"a transparent argument" etc. Metaphors die when the structure carried
over by them to a comparatively novel dimension become an established
part of the standard structure of that dimension.
Tourangeau and Sternberg are on the right track in their analysis of
the asymmetry of metaphors when they introduce a distinction between
'earlier' and 'later' dimensions "in terms of their order of appearance in,
say, a multidimensional scaling or factor analysis" (p. 241). The distinction
is the correct one, but, in my opinion, the ordering should be determined
from considerations of cognitive development (along the same lines as
Piaget's research).
These arguments can only indicate the general direction of a systematic
analysis of metaphors. In spite of the simplicity of the examples used here,
I hope they show that an analysis of metaphors in terms of similarities of
topological structures between dimensions is a promising program.

7. CONCLUSION

I have outlined a theory of conceptual spaces as an alternative to the

sentential paradigm for understanding mental representations. The theory
emphasizes topological structures rather than logical and linguistic. The
theory of conceptual spaces is intended to be a theory of how information
is represented: I do not claim that the topological structures of the various
quality dimensions have any precise correspondences in our neurological
42 PETER G~_RDENFORS

w e t w a r e . (In this r e s p e c t it is l i k e l o g i c ; t h e r e is n o e x a c t m a t c h i n g b e t w e e n
logical theory and the way people reason).
O n t h e o t h e r h a n d , I b e l i e v e that a t h e o r y o f c o n c e p t u a l s p a c e s c a n
b e v e r y u s e f u l f o r generating hypotheses a b o u t t h e n e u r o l o g i c a l f u n c t i o n -
i n g o f m e n t a l r e p r e s e n t a t i o n s a n d f o r interpreting s o m e o f t h e r e s u l t s o f
n e u r o s c i e n c e . 27 I b e l i e v e t h a t it d o e s far b e t t e r in t h e s e r e s p e c t s than t h e
s e n t e n t i a l p a r a d i g m . A s an e x a m p l e , I h a v e s h o w n h o w t h e t e n s o r net-
w o r k t h e o r y o f m o t o r c o n t r o l fits v e r y w e l l w i t h t h e t h e o r y o f c o n c e p t u a l
spaces.
A p a r t f r o m its r e l a t i o n s to the n e u r o s c i e n c e s , I a l s o b e l i e v e t h a t t h e
t h e o r y o f c o n c e p t u a l s p a c e s m a y b e a u s e f u l t o o l f o r t a c k l i n g p r o b l e m s in all
c o g n i t i v e s c i e n c e s . In p a r t i c u l a r , it can p r o v i d e the c o n c e p t u a l f r a m e w o r k
f o r a c o g n i t i v e s e m a n t i c s . I h a v e i l l u s t r a t e d this b y a p p l y i n g it to t w o
p r o b l e m areas: p r o j e c t i b i l i t y in i n d u c t i v e r e a s o n i n g in G ~ r d e n f o r s (1990)
a n d t h e f u n c t i o n i n g o f m e t a p h o r s in the p r e s e n t paper. I h o p e that f u t u r e
w o r k w i l l r e v e a l its v i a b i l i t y for f u r t h e r p r o b l e m areas.

NOTES

* I wish to thank Ruth Barcan Marcus, Max Black, Martin Edman, Jaakko Hintikka, David
Pears, and A_saWikforss for helpful comments on a much earlier version of this paper which
was presented at the entretien of the International Institute of Philosophy in Stockholm,
September ! 987. For comments on a later version I am grateful to Paul Churchland, Paul
Hemeren, and Mark Johnson. Research for this work has been supported by the Swedish
Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Here I am referring to the traditional sequential kind of computer programs with 'explicit'
symbol representation and not to parallel distributed processing which may use 'intrinsic'
representations (cf. Palmer 1978). More about this in Section 4.
2 Marcus (1987) names this position "the language centered theory of belief". It is also
closely related to what Palmer (1978) calls 'propositional representation' and what Smolen-
sky (1988, p. 3) calls 'the symbolic paradigm'. Lakoffs presentation of objectivism (1987,
pp. xii-xiii) also encompasses a linguistically oriented version of the sentential paradigm.
3 p. S. Churchland (1986, Chapter 9.6) presents some of the most important theoretical
drawbacks of the sentential paradigm.
4 Cf. Fodor (1981, p. 200): "And, if we have to have internal representations anyhow, why
not take them to be the objects of propositional attitudes ... really we have no choice. For
the account is well evidenced, not demonstrably incoherent, and, again, it's the only one in
the field."
5 This topic is studied at greater length in G~irdenfors (1990).
6 My presentation is inspired by R S. Churchland (1986, Chapter 9.6).
7 Cf. Pylyshyn (1984), p. 29: "... to be in a certain representational state is to have a certain
symbolic expression in some part of memory".
8 Pylyshyn writes (1984, p. 27): "My brain states are not, as we have noted, causally con-
nected in appropriate ways to walking and to mountains. The relationship must be one of
content: a semantic, not a causal relation".
 MENTAL REPRESENTATION, CONCEPTUAL SPACES AND METAPHORS 43

9 Cf. Fodor (1981 ): "If mental processes are formal, then they have access only to the formal
properties of such representations of the environment as the senses provide. Hence, they
have no access to the semantic properties of such representations, including the property
of being true, of having referents, or, indeed, the property of being representations of the
environment" (p. 231) and "We must now face what has always been the problem for
representational theories to solve: what relates internal representations to the world? What
is it for a system of internal representations to be semantically interpreted?" (p. 203). These
problems arise for the sentential paradigm because it operates with external representa-
tions.
10 The notion of a quality dimension is closely related to the 'domains' in Langacker's
(1986) semantic theory,
11 The topology of discrete dimensions is further discussed in Gardenfors (1990).
I2 For further connections between conceptual spaces and semantic problems, cf.
GS.rdenfors (1990). See also Sections 5 and 6 of the present paper.
13 See Gabrielsson (1981, pp. 20-21 ).
14 For some further discussion of the structure of musical space cf. G~irdenfors (1988),
Sections 7-9.
i5 See Toulmin and Goodfield (1965).
16 Cf, P, M. Churchland (1986a,b).
iv Pylyshyn (1984, pp. 73-74) has the following remarks on the relation between parallel
processing and the sentential paradigm: "I would not be the least surprised to find that the
mind's architecture is so different from that of a v o n Neumann machine that it might not
be recognized as one of our computers. No doubt, the correct architecture will contain a
great deal of parallel processing. Many people think that a substantial degree of parallel
processing makes a fundamental difference in what is considered computing. The issue,
however, is not whether the mind is a serial computer or a highly parallel one; it is whether
the mind processes symbols, whether if has rules and representations . . . . My point here is,
so long as cognition (human or otherwise) involves such semantic regularities as inferences,
and s~long as we view cognition as computing in any sense, we must view it as computing
over symbols. No connectionist device, however complex, will do, nor will any analog
computer;... ". I agree with everything except that we must view cognition as computing
over symbols.
18 Lakoff (1988, p. 40) discusses the relation between 'cognitive semantics' and connec-
tionism As is clear from the following quotation, cognitive semantics (to be presented in
Section 5) fits very well with the theory of conceptual spaces: "The basic mechanisms of
cognitive semantics include cognitive psychology, mental spaces, metaphor, and metonymy.
Technically, cognitive semantics is consistent with the connectionist paradigm but not with
the symbol manipulation paradigm . . . . At present there is a gap between connectionism
and cognitive semantics: We do not know how cognitive topology can be implemented in
connectionist networks".
i9 Cf. P. M. Churchland (1986b), pp. 281-283, and Cook (1986), Chapter 2. In P. M.
Churchland (1986b, p. 280), we find the following idea: "... the brain represents various
aspects of reality by a position in a suitable state space; and the brain performs computations
on such representations by means of general coordinate transformations from one state to
another", here Churchland uses 'state space' basically in the same way as 'conceptual
space' is used in this article.
20 Again, the relation between connectionism and conceptual spaces is unclear. Lakoff
(1988, p. 39) notes in his criticism of Smolensky (1988) that "Smolensky's discussion
makes what I consider a huge omission: the body. The neural networks in the brain do not
44 PETER GJxRDENFORS

exist in isolation; they are connected to the sensorimotor system. For example, the neurons
in a topographics map of the retina are not just firing in isolation for the hell of it. They are
firing in response to retinal input, which is in turn dependant on what is in front of one's
eyes. An activation pattern in the topographic map of the retina is therefore not merely a
meaningless mathematical object in some dynamical system; it is meaningful".
21 Or a mapping from language to a class of possible worlds, as in intensional types of
semantics, e.g. Montague semantics; or a mapping from a language to a partial world, as
in situation semantics.
22 For those not familiar with the riddle, "grue" is defined as "green and observed before the
year 2000, or blue and observed after 2000" and "bleen" is defined as "blue and observed
before the year 2000, or green and observed after 2000."
23 This analysis is congenial with Lakoff's 'Spatialization of Form hypothesis'. He writes
(1987, p. 283): "Strictly speaking the Spatialization of Form hypothesis requires a metaphor-
ical mapping from physical space into a 'conceptual space'. Under this mapping, spatial
structure is mapped into conceptual structure. More specifically, image schemas (which
structure space) are mapped into the corresponding abstract configurations (which structure
concepts). The Spatialization of Form hypothesis thus maintains that conceptual structure
is understood in terms of image schemas plus a metaphorical mapping.
24 Also cf. Langacker (1986) for some interestnng ideas about spatial structures in seman-
tics.
25 Cf. Verbrugge (1980) " . . . the medium of metaphoric comprehension is closely related
to direct experience" (p. 104) and " . . . semantic descriptions should be cast in terms of
the invariants that structure perception and action, rather than forcing them into a single
mathematical mold, such as a calculus of propositions . . . . Since metaphor traffics in similar
and transformed identities, the assumptions one makes in defining 'identity' are crucial to
a theory of metaphoric structure and process. Realism suggests that a linguistic semantics
rooted in perception and action is the most appropriate basis for explaining the compre-
hension process and the experienced identities of topic and vehicle." (p. 105). Already
Aristotle emphasized the perceptual aspect of metaphor when he wrote that " . . . to make
good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances" (Poetics, 1459a10).
26 Cf. Osgood (1980, p. 204): " . . . the cognitive processes in both color-music synesthesia
and in metaphorical use of language can be described as the parallel alignment of two or
more dimensions of experience, defineable verbally by pairs of polar adjectives and with
'translations' occurring between equivalent regions of the continua".
27 Cf. P. M. Churchland (1986b, p. 41): "There has been a tendency among neuroscientists
to restrict the term 'topographic map' to neural areas that mirror some straightforward
aspect of the physical world or sensory system, such as the retina, or the surface of the skin
This is unfortunate, since there is no reason for the brain to show any such preference in
what it constructs maps of. Abstract state spaces are just as mappable as concrete physical
ones, and the brain surely has no advance knowledge of which is which. We should expect
it, rather to evolve maps of what is functionally significant, and that will frequently be an
abstract state space."

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Department of Philosophy
University of Lund
Sweden

Note added in proof." This paper was completed in 1989. In the meantime, I have further
developed the theory of conceptual spaces and applied it to new areas. See e.g., the following
articles:

G~denfors, P.: 1990, 'Frameworks for Properties: Possible Worlds vs. Conceptual Spaces',
in L. Haaparanta, M. Kusch, and I. Niiniluoto (eds.), Language, Knowledge, and Inten-
tionality, (Acta Philosophica Fennica, 49, pp. 383-407), Helsinki. Reprinted in From a
Logical Point of View, Vol. 2, (1993), pp. 15-32. Reprinted in S~miotiques, D6cembre
1994, No. 6-7, pp. 99-120.
G~denfors, P.: 1993, 'Inducation and the Evolution of Conceptual Spaces', in E. C. Moore
(ed.), Charles Peirce and the Philosophy of Science: Papers from the Harvard Sesqui-
centennial Conference, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, pp. 72-88.
 MENTAL REPRESENTATION, CONCEPTUAL SPACES AND METAPHORS 47

Gardenfors, R and Holmqvist, K.: 1994, 'Concept Formation in Dimensional Spaces',Lund

University Cognitive Studies 26, Lund.
G~irdenfors, E: to appear a, 'Conceptual Spaces as a Framework for Cognitive Seman-
tics', to appear in J. Ezquerro (ed.), Philosophy and Cognitive Science: Categories,
Consciousness and Reasoning, Kluwer, Dordrecht.
G~irdenfors, E: to appear b, 'Meanings as Conceptual Structures', to appear in M. Carrier
and E Machamer (eds.), Philosophy and the Sciences of the Mind, Pittsburgh University
Press.