---
title: "structure-mapping theory"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "concept"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "structure-mapping theory"
aliases: ["structure mapping","Gentner's structure-mapping theory"]
first_seen: "2026-10-29T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Dedre Gentner","analogy","mere appearance match","literal similarity","mechanism underdetermination"]
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
---


A framework for analogical comparison, introduced by [[entity-dedre-gentner|Dedre Gentner]] (1983), classifying a comparison between a base and a target domain by which kind of predicate maps across: object-attributes (one-place predicates — "yellow," "large") versus relations between objects (two-or-more-place predicates — "revolves around," "collides with"). The theory names four cells of resulting comparisons: **literal similarity** (both attributes and relations shared), **analogy** (relations shared, few attributes), **abstraction**, and the degenerate fourth case, **mere appearance match** — strong attribute overlap with no relational overlap, which the theory marks as "appealing and locally useful" but of "sharply limited" explanatory power.

Matters to this vault as a decades-old, general-cognitive-science vocabulary for a split the vault separately encounters in a narrower, mechanistic-explanation context: whether a measured surface-level match (e.g. representational geometry) licenses a claim about shared underlying structure (a mechanism). See [[claim-gentner-1983-mere-appearance-match-is-closest-analogue-to-mechanism-underdetermination]] for the specific comparison against [[claim-representational-similarity-underdetermines-mechanism|RSA's representational-similarity underdetermination finding]].

## References
- [[claim-gentner-1983-mere-appearance-match-is-closest-analogue-to-mechanism-underdetermination]]
- [[entity-dedre-gentner]]
- [[observation-no-literature-names-surface-match-without-mechanism-identity-spanning-minsky-and-rsa-cases]]
- Captures: 2026-10-29-does-philosophy-of-science-or-citation-analysis-literature