Metaphors as Conceptual Tools

Stefano Fiori ()
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Stefano Fiori: University of Torino

Chapter Chapter 2 in Machines, Bodies and Invisible Hands, 2021, pp 9-29 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The literature on the cognitive role of metaphors discussed in this chapter shows how scientific theories often develop, not in spite of metaphors, but thanks to them. This literature, although made up of heterogeneous lines of research, formulates a number of ideas that guide the present analysis. One is that metaphors reorganize our ideas about the world, help re-describe it and orient the search for causal links that explain phenomena. For these reasons, many of our philosophical beliefs depend on how we conceptualize the world out there through metaphors. Complex and unknown events are first analyzed by transferring characteristics of known domains to them, on the basis of analogies.

Keywords: Principal subject; Subsidiary subject; Mary Hesse; Theory-constitutive metaphors; Conceptual metaphor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-85206-1_2

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-85206-1_2

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