analogisen

Analogisen is a hypothetical concept in cognitive science and philosophy that describes the cognitive mechanism by which agents identify and exploit structural similarities between different domains to generate explanations, predictions, or plans.

The term is a neologism intended to highlight the relational character of analogy-making. It is not widely standardized and appears mainly in theoretical discussions and some pedagogical writings.

At its core, analogisen emphasizes relational mapping over surface features: an effective analogy transfers relational structure such as roles, positions, or dependencies from a known source domain to a target domain. The analogisen would be the underlying representational scaffolding that enables these mappings to be detected, maintained, and re-applied during reasoning.

Relation to established theories: analogisen is closely related to structure-mapping theory and to theories of analogical inference in artificial intelligence. It is sometimes presented as a general framework that can be instantiated by various computational models or cognitive architectures.

Applications: in education, analogic explanations guided by the analogisen can support transfer of knowledge; in science and engineering, it informs problem solving by reusing known designs; in AI, research on analogical retrieval and mapping seeks to implement analogisen-like processes.

Evaluation and criticism: the main challenges include formalizing the concept, distinguishing it from existing notions of analogy, and providing empirical evidence of a distinct mechanism. Proponents argue that articulating analogisen clarifies the role of relational structure in reasoning, while critics warn against proliferating terminology without predictive gains.