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John:
I read your original comment as one offering a solution and replied to it in that vein. For instance, you wrote:

"In order for metaphors or analogies to take on meaning, they must, of necessity, relate to logical and reasoned connections, once established, meaningfully refer back to the original proposition or idea."

This is probably true, and I suspect that nearly everybody who has studied the question agrees on that point. The question is how you know which connections to make. Ultimately, until we have a computer model that "understands" novel metaphors and analogies, we don't have a complete theory. One example of a project that pushes that direction is work by Deidre Gentner.

Should my own writing be held to the same standard? Definitely. But the standard is not one of a complete explanation: there is no area in cognitive science where we are close to a complete explanation (low- and mid-level vision probably gets the closest). The goal, then, is to offer not a complete explanation, but an explanation that is more than just a restatement of the problem.

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