Analogy and cognitive architecture: Two kinds of systematicity, one kind of (universal) construction

Cognitive science recognizes two kinds of systematicity: (1) as the property where certain cognitive capacities imply certain other related cognitive capacities (Fodor & Pylyshyn, 1988); and (2) as the principle that analogical mappings based on collections of connected relations are preferred over relations in isolation (Gentner, 1983). These two kinds of systematicity were shown to derive from one type of (universal) construction (Phillips, 2014), using category theory (Mac Lane, 2000). Underlying both forms of systematicity is a kind of optimization. We provide an informal summary of this result, and suggest an extension to address other (semantic) aspects of analogy.