Analogy, Amalgams, and Concept Blending

Concept blending — a cognitive process which allows for the combination of certain elements (and their relations) from originally distinct conceptual spaces into a new unified space combining these previously separate elements, and enables reasoning and inference over the combination — is taken as a key element of creative thought and combinatorial creativity. In this paper, we provide an intermediate report on work towards the development of a computational-level and algorithmic-level account of concept blending. We present the theoretical background as well as an algorithmic proposal combining techniques from computational analogy-making and case-based reasoning, and exemplify the feasibility of the approach in two case studies.. © 2015 Cognitive Systems Foundation.The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Future and Emerging Technologies programme within the Seventh Framework Programme for Research of the European Commission, under FET-Open grant number: 611553 (COINVENT)Peer Reviewe