Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

What does it mean for analogy to be rational? John StuartMill described a probabilistic underpinning for analogicalinference based on the the odds of observing systemicpairwise correspondence across otherwise independentsystems by mere chance. Although proponents and criticshave debated its validity, Mill’s approach has yet to beimplemented computationally or studied psychologically. Inthis paper we examine Mill’s approach and show how it canbe instantiated using Bayes theorem. Then we describe twoexperiments that present subjects with partially-revealed,aligned binary strings with varying degrees of intra- and inter-string regularity. Experimental results are compared to aformal rational analysis of the stimuli revealing conditionswhereby participants exhibit confidence patterns consistentand inconsistent with Mill’s rational basis of analogy.