Letters

And, "If Cohen is taken (overly) seriously, then every major MAD will prove generally useful. The authors relied heavily on the analysis of metaphor proffered by Earl MacCormic, and his distinction between epiphor and diaphor is useful in the analysis of metaphor in science. Readers of AI Magazine should be apprised, however, of other works on metaphor which may help clarify some of the issues. For one thing, there exists a considerable literature of experimental research on metaphor comprehension which bears on the claim that metaphors can be described as similarity statements. Suffice it to say that the scaling of the fruitfulness of metaphors by means of simple metrics of the features that are shared by the terms in a metaphor is not so straightforward as West and Travis imply Furthermore, the distinction between diaphor and epiphor is rather slippery, and the slipperiness is compounded by West and Travis' additional concept of "paraphor."