Critical thinking is most fundamentally described by Ennis as " reasonable reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do" (Ennis, 1987, p. 10). Inherent in this definition is the notion of a problem, what to believe or do, implying a problem-solving function. There are many tools and strategies for solving this problem, among which the most fundamental may be what I shall call analogical thinking. Primarily, analogical thinking refers to a process of finding and using a known experience or domain to understand an unknown phenomenon or domain. In this case, the term thinking is used quite broadly, and may embrace subconscious or unconscious responses.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a model or the structure for organizing thinking about the operation of analogical thinking, particularly with regard for critical thinking. It is necessarily a cross-disciplinary discussion. I risk some simplistic conceptions, and welcome informed amendments. I suggest there are three types of analogical thinking, including what I call analogical reasoning, the creative use of metaphor, and habitual use of metaphor. There is also a structural procedure that includes search for analogy, selection and testing, development, and a search for insights.

Background

The idea of using a known domain or experience to understand an unknown domain or phenomenon is more fundamental than thinking, itself. Signs, used by all aware creatures, may serve as tools to evoke prior experiences. A scent on a tree may evoke an awareness of or reaction to a prior territorial tussle. That awareness is compared to current circumstances and the creature makes a choice (to the extent the behavior can be called choosing). The fundamental process of learning may be a process of examination of the unknown in light of the known in this and other ways. What human consciousness brought to this process is deliberate and complex analysis, comparing an unknown phenomenon to a prior similar experience, and inferring or predicting more complex qualities of the unknown.

What human intelligence added was a greater capacity to use such comparisons to express to others a total experience, not simply a linguistic description. In accounts of communication among various indigenous peoples, for instance, one can hardly miss the use of rich and powerful metaphorical expression. The development of words, the naming and "nouning" process, to the degree that it maps qualities of one experience onto another ("Crazy Horse," "lunatic"), is a form of analogical expression.

Philosophers such as Suzanne Langer (Langer, 1942), structural anthropologists, philologists, and semioticians have tried to trace and understand the operation of our forms of expression. They have sought to unravel the complex web of inherent meaning in our expressions. Many insights have come from increased cross-disciplinary work with psychologists, and an academic thread has been developed for the study of metaphor, primarily between philosophers and cognitive scientists. George Lakoff (Lakoff, 1992), with Mark Johnson and following Michael Reddy, has argued that metaphor, contrary to past thinking, is a form of mapping across conceptual domains, not only linguistic ones. As a result, "It is a system of metaphor that structures our everyday conceptual system, including most abstract concepts, and that lies behind much of everyday language."

Definition

I define analogical thinking as use of cross-domain or cross-experience mapping, as a means either of understanding, or of expressing an unfamiliar concept. I suggest there are three ways this facility is commonly used:

Analogical reasoning. When faced with a need to understand and make decisions about an unknown situation or phenomenon, a powerful technique is to explore parallels with some other experience. I suggest there is a procedure by which this tends, or should tend to occur.

Creative use of metaphor. Where analogical reasoning focuses upon an analytical function_an attempt to find a framework for understanding something, this function is for communicating a concept to others. I suggest this is a deliberate use, and involves a procedure similar to analogical reasoning.

Habitual or unconscious use of metaphor. This use is embedded in our expression and our language, and occurs without regard for the kind of deliberative procedure involved in creative metaphor.

Analogical reasoning

Critical thinking is most clearly involved in, and incorporates, analogical reasoning. If the purpose of critical thinking is to decide what to believe or do, an important approach is to use another circumstance to structure thinking about the problem. This procedure functions as an analytical tool, and is used to support both reflection and communication. Use of analogy in argument, for instance, is to lead the auditor through the analytical journey, selectively, that was undertaken by the thinker. I suggest the following procedure by which this takes place:

-Problem is conceptualized.
-Search for prior experiences, proximal experiences.
-An analog is selected and tested.
-The analogy is developed.
-Insights are sought from the exercise.

This procedure appears linear, and the overall movement through the procedure tends to follow this path. Certainly, there are frequent reversions to prior steps as insights are gained. It is also worth noting that the procedure requires alternation between convergent and divergent thinking, and between deductive and inductive reasoning, and involves complex skills in comparison.

The problem is perceived and conceptualized by the thinker, and she decides that an analogy might help her understand the problem. She then searches for something in her past, some prior experience that has at least some characteristics in common with her problem. Depending on the situation, awkward correspondences may be desirable to stimulate creative thinking. An analog is selected. Preliminary probes test this analog by attempting to find a few other common qualities between the source domain or experience (analog) to the target domain or phenomenon (problem).

If there are sufficiently provocative parallels, the analogy is developed. This step requires a certain knowledge base about the source domain, and seeks to examine critically how qualities of the source relate to or describe qualities of the target. At this point the procedure can become much less linear, as insights emerge through and during the development, further stimulating it.

First, there is a comparison of qualities between the source and the target. Correspondences and mismatches are noted. The thinker must determine how important those differences are, and draw conclusions about the overall value of the analogy.

Second, as determinations are made about various correspondences, the thinker begins to draw inferences of invisible correspondences between the source and target. These inferences may range from the nature of abstract qualities to predictions of future behavior. This is the "mapping" process in operation. I suggest this involves both deductive and inductive processes. Deductively, if target is something like source, and if source has quality x, then target may have quality x. At the same time, the process is inductive because it involves extrapolation from the knowledge base. In using the known to suggest the qualities or behavior of the unknown, it supports predictions about various options regarding what to think or do. In this way, the thinker begins to form conceptions about the target domain, which should lead to insight and understanding.

If this is unclear, the following, not uncommon example will help. (An example, of course, is a form of analogical reasoning in itself, as the qualities of both the application and the theory are mapped back and forth between them.) There is considerable discussion about the workload and accountability of college faculty. I could think about the circumstances in an isolated way, analyzing the qualities and conditions of faculty work, and assessing their reasonableness relative to the internal circumstances of the profession. But perhaps I need to understand faculty work within the context of work life in the culture, and perhaps there are opportunities for improvement or change that will not appear from an exclusively internal analysis. If I can compare faculty work to the work life of others in the culture, I might obtain a better understanding of it. Thus, I have conceptualized the problem.

I begin looking for analogues. Two possibilities readily appear: the work life of the contracted professional, and the work life of the professional employee. In each case I look for similarities: Faculty and contracted professionals perform unique work from a highly educated background with considerable independence; faculty and professional employees have highly educated backgrounds and stable employment. There appear to be many other parallels and differences, so these analogues look promising.

There are several ways the analogies could be developed, and the specific method depends upon circumstances. Whether working with lists or less orderly methods, important qualities of each source domain are compared to the target domain. It can be seen readily that the contracted professional is responsible for his own resources, has broad discretion in conducting his work, has open and less secure terms of work, is fundamentally independent, and is accountable for his product. Some of these things correspond to faculty work life, others do not. The professional employee has more rigid terms of work, less discretion, connection to and identity with the employer, substantial security and benefits, and is accountable for the work he does. Again, some things correspond across domains, others do not.

Through the development step, the idea is to identify meaningful correspondences, and to think critically about the meaning of the mismatches. Is there really a mismatch, or is it a matter of how the quality is conceptualized? To what degree, for instance, is there or is there not a correspondence between the flexibility of working time of a faculty member and a contracted professional? Different conceptualizations of flexibility could yield different answers. In this way, each analog provides a framework for understanding faculty work.

The mapping process, that of inferring invisible or unknown qualities of the target from known qualities of the source, can also be an important source of insights. For instance, if studies about professional employees show they resent a certain management style, we might infer that faculty will share the same perspective.

The accretion of insights in this matter comes from the aggregate experience of the exercise, and from the answers to the array of questions that it should provoke. I may conclude, for instance, that faculty are really very much like professional employees, and that faculty work life should be made to correspond more closely to professional employee work life. In fact, much more subtle conclusions can be derived from this analysis, given the nature of differences in the product of the enterprise and other distinctions.

What I have done in this procedure is to use an analog to think critically about circumstances and decide what to think or do. In this way I have demonstrated analogical reasoning.

Creative use of metaphor

Historically, metaphor has received most attention as an expressive tool. Its use linguistically has been seen as a poetic device, one that seeks to communicate more than a verbal description of a concept. In this sense, metaphor embraces a range of poetic expressions, including simile, metonymy, personification, and similar devices. Historically, artists have relied heavily upon metaphor as a means of evoking experience. I select nearly at random from Shakespeare, part of Olivia's speech to Viola in Act III, scene 1, of Twelfth Night:

. . . What might you think?
Have you not set mine honour at the stake
And baited it with all th' unmuzzled thoughts
That tyrannous heart can think? To one of your receiving
Enough is shown. A cypress, not a bosom,
Hides my heart. So, let me hear you speak.
(Shakespeare, 1602, p. 296)

In this case the author uses the metaphor of the bear-baiting sport to evoke an image of cruel and aggressive teasing with regard to Olivia's honor as a virtuous woman. The metaphor of tyrannical rule is used to evoke an image of mindless control by her heart, which is actually a metaphor for her infatuation. A cypress evokes a complex image, one of a stoic conifer as a guard or barrier, perhaps also incorporating its value as a symbol for mourning. While each case lacks the typical syntax of metaphor or simile, in none of these is Shakespeare suggesting a literal meaning. He is, in fact, mapping qualities of a shared, known experience, onto Olivia's emotional state, which he hopes to make more fully known to us through this comparison. In doing so, he is making creative use of metaphor and analogical thinking.

This example is drawn from the literary arts, but other art forms use creative metaphor to their own advantage. Visual art and design have relied equally heavily on symbols, shapes, forms, and whole images to evoke complex experiences in the viewer. In architecture, for instance, the use of classical forms to suggest permanence and cultural authority has a long history, particularly in banks and government buildings that resemble Greek or Roman temples. As with the literary arts, this is an example of cross-domain mapping. This mapping can occur at a very fundamental level. It is possible the expression of the metaphor, linguistically or visually in this case, operates as a symbol for an experience. This sets it only slightly apart from a sign that functions on a non-conscious level, such as a scent, as suggested above.

The procedure for using metaphor creatively resembles the procedure for analogical reasoning in many ways. The artist or other communicator conceptualizes a problem in terms of creating the fullest expression of a concept. She searches for an appropriate metaphor, which may or may not come easily. In some cases this becomes such a significant part of a work of art that it demands great attention. In other cases the metaphor may come to mind intuitively. Typically, differences in domain for creative and artistic use of metaphor are much greater than in analogical reasoning. Ultimately, a metaphor is selected.

The procedure differs somewhat in the final steps, the development and the exploration of insights. While the artist or communicator may perform these steps in the creative procedure, it is the recipient of the communication who must respond ultimately to the metaphorical evocation. When one uses a metaphor purposefully, there is likely to be much greater reliance on the inferential aspect, often implying all likely correspondences, as can be seen in the passage from Shakespeare, above. In some cases the target domain is simply named for the source domain, as in "heart" for infatuation or love. The experience that is evoked by the metaphor is applied or layered upon the target, implying a range of possible qualities not readily evident in the target. Insights occur to the recipient of the communication when he or she acquires greater knowledge about the target domain through these inferences.

The locus of critical thinking in this procedure is less clear. Critical thinking may be required to understand fully the larger work through its use of metaphor. It is required on the artist's or communicator's part in structuring the imagery and knitting it together into a whole work. Critical thinking is required certainly in efforts to understand critically how the piece functions as a communicative or artistic phenomenon. Yet, only some metaphors operate at a cognitive level, which critical thinking would seem to require, while most operate primarily on the affective or intuitive levels. One would not be expected to think about Olivia's heart being a metaphor for her infatuation, for example.

Habitual or unconscious use of metaphor

If one does not need to think about the analogous relationship, particularly in its creation, it is used out of habit. I suggest this is the primary world of the conceptual metaphor described by Lakoff. While he makes no distinction among uses, his application of metaphor is so fundamental that it forms the foundation of much of our discourse. For the most part, we use these metaphorical expressions with little or no deliberate thought at all, making the usage habitual and unconscious. To the extent that these expressions represent deliberate choices on the part of the communicator, however_and these choices can be made very rapidly as a mental process, I place them in the category of creative use of metaphor, above.

An example of Lakoff's argument:

The love-as-journey mapping:

The lovers correspond to travelers.
The love relationship corresponds to the vehicle.
The lovers' common goals correspond to their common destinations on the journey.
Difficulties in the relationship correspond to impediments to travel.
(Lakoff, 1992)

Lakoff argues that linguistic expressions arise out of the conceptual basis of the metaphor, such as "dead-end street, crossroads, stuck, spinning one's wheels, not going anywhere," and so on. He also argues that the metaphor becomes the ground for inferences about love relationships. He maintains that there are many more such mappings that are fundamental to our patterns of thought, including "classical categories are containers," "more is up, less is down," "linear scales are paths," "time passing is motion," etc. Lakoff has a World Wide Web site at the University of California at Berkeley, "The Conceptual Metaphor Home Page" (http://cogsci.berkeley.edu/MetaphorHome.html), that is attempting to categorize the metaphors we constantly use. For example:

Form Is Motion

Source Domain

motion, movement

Target Domain

form, shape

- 1 The roof slopes.
- 2 The tower leans.
- 3 The road bends.
- 4 The roof slopes down before it drops off steeply.
- 5 The road led me to an inn

Clearly, these are deeply constructed metaphorical expressions and commonly used without thought regarding the cross-domain mapping that is implied. The implications for critical thinking, then, have to do with the manner in which those expressions are instrumental in our worldview, our frames of reference. One of the more active areas of scholarship and critical comment in the past two decades has been the reading, or "unpacking" of these metaphors. This has led to new conceptions of our culture and collective behavior.

Some examples of metaphor clearly cross the line between creative and habitual use, as suggested above. One such area has to do with popular street language. Street language is often creative use of metaphor, but the expressions become so broadly used that they become habitual. Such language can be used for group identification or marking one's status according to its acceptability.

Other creative or deliberate uses of metaphor may be so broadly understood that they are conventions. They may provoke thinking, but vary in the amount of critical thinking that is involved in their creation, and the use of the model procedure is limited. One is the analogy of amount as visual space, which is fundamental to bar charts, for example. When a spreadsheet program automatically builds the bar chart from a table of figures, there would seem to be no analogical thinking in the creative sense. Yet, our choice of scales used in the chart and selection of figures to be charted are deliberate choices that determine the appearance of the chart.

There are similar, non-linguistic metaphors to which we respond and which we use without thinking. One such is time as space, as evident in a clock face. Rate of change is constant, but time is determined by the distance the hands travel between observations. In a calendar, time progresses ("marches"?) across the space of a page, or in an appointment book, down the page.

There is a world of metaphor that is employed habitually and unconsciously, involving little or no active thought. Current scholarship is beginning to tell us that it is vast and pervasive, and, ultimately, fundamental to our capacity to conceptualize our world.

Summary and conclusion

Analogical thinking is a powerful tool for thinking about and communicating concepts and experiences. When used in an analytical or creative way, in which there is a deliberate intent, there appears to be a procedure of thought that occurs. That procedure, as outlined here, includes conceptualization of the problem, a search for analogues, and the selection and testing of them. When used analytically, as in analogical reasoning, this is followed by development of the analogy, and capturing of insights. When used creatively, as a tool for communication, the procedure is completed by the recipients of the communication, hopefully constructing the connections themselves between the evoked image and the subject.

Another realm of analogical thinking occurs at a much more habitual or unconscious level. This is the world of analogies that we have constructed deeply in our thinking and conceptualizations of the world around us. It is infused in our language at all levels and embodies our attitudes and ways of thinking about the world. Critical thinkers need to be aware of this level of meaning in our expression, for it colors our understanding of the world, and it imposes our structures of meaning on those with whom we communicate.

These conceptions are an attempt to understand the ways in which we use cross-domain mapping to aid our thinking and communicating. The impulse is so fundamental that it can be said to blur and disregard distinctions between the cognitive and the affective realms of mental activity. This model of its pervasive involvement in our thinking and expression would benefit from the observations of others.

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Bibliography

Ennis, R. H. (1987). A taxonomy of critical thinking dispositions and abilities. In J. B. Baron & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Teaching thinking skills: Theory and practice (pp. 9-26). New York: W. H. Freeman.

Lakoff, G. (1992). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and Thought (2nd ed., ): Cambridge University Press.

Langer, S. (1942). Philosophy in a new key: A study in the symbolism of reason, rite, and art. New York: New American Library of Literature, Inc.

Shakespeare, W. (1602). Twelfth Night; or, What You Will. In W. A. Neilson & C. J. Hill (Eds.), The complete plays and poems of William Shakespeare (pp. 278-310). Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.

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