Should we resist the seductiveness of the space:time::vision:audition analogy?

According to Handel (1988), the analogy space:time::vision:audition is seductive but misleading: We cannot "imagine a visual or auditory event that is nonspatial or atemporar ' (Handel, 1988, p. 315); this statement either begs the question or is false. He claims that people mentally transform space and time in both modalities; I argue that we never mentally transform auditory space but often transpose in pitch and translate in time. Handel claims that all other "modality translations, " including my theory of indispensable attributes (space-time:pitchtime::vision:audition), "are possible and relevant " (p. 316) and that theoretical commitment on this matter is unnecessary; I reject this tolerance. I show that the analogy rejected by Handel is partly true: (a) Space is the province of vision. (b) Vision is not inherently temporal. (c) Audition is intimately tied to time. (d) Audition is not inherently spatial. These statements are implied by my theory of indispensable attributes. People who are not cognitive psychologists have theories about cognitive phenomena; the corpus of such theories constitutes folk cognitive psychology. (For the analogous idea of folk taxonomy, see Lakoff, 1987, pp. 32-38). Some scientific