Sign-In
Cart
Metaphor as a Way of Thought
Paperback
Series: Philosophical Questions, Book 9
Please select the version of book you would like to purchase.
ISBN13: 9798270689988
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Oct 19 2025
Pages: 360
Weight: 1.06
Height: 0.75 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Oct 19 2025
Pages: 360
Weight: 1.06
Height: 0.75 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
This book explores metaphor not as an ornament of language but as the fundamental mechanism of human cognition. It argues that every act of understanding-scientific, poetic, or everyday-is rooted in the transfer of structure from one experiential domain to another. Metaphor is presented as the mind's first technology, a generative tool through which complexity is compressed into meaningful form. Far from being a deviation from literal speech, it is shown to be the very fabric of thought itself, underlying logic, mathematics, and the formation of conceptual categories.
Revisiting Donald Davidson's influential thesis that metaphors have no meaning beyond their literal content, the book reconstructs the debate that defined late twentieth-century philosophy of language. While acknowledging Davidson's rigor and his commitment to semantic clarity, it demonstrates the limits of his reductionism by tracing how metaphor actually produces new cognitive and ontological structures. Through dialogue with Black, Ricoeur, Lakoff, and contemporary cognitive science, the author situates metaphor at the crossroads of philosophy, linguistics, and natural philosophy, restoring its status as a principle of knowledge rather than a stylistic device.
Integrating insights from physics, biology, and psychology, Metaphor as a Way of Thought proposes a unified vision of meaning creation across disciplines. The book concludes that to think is to inhabit metaphors, to live within patterns of resemblance that shape perception and reality alike. Each dominant metaphor-of flow, light, path, or network-functions as a world-making matrix, defining how societies imagine time, matter, and mind. Thus, understanding and transforming our metaphors becomes an ethical and creative task: by changing the images through which we think, we change the world we live in.
Keywords
metaphor, cognition, philosophy of language, Donald Davidson, cognitive science, conceptual thinking, natural philosophy
Integrating insights from physics, biology, and psychology, Metaphor as a Way of Thought proposes a unified vision of meaning creation across disciplines. The book concludes that to think is to inhabit metaphors, to live within patterns of resemblance that shape perception and reality alike. Each dominant metaphor-of flow, light, path, or network-functions as a world-making matrix, defining how societies imagine time, matter, and mind. Thus, understanding and transforming our metaphors becomes an ethical and creative task: by changing the images through which we think, we change the world we live in.
Keywords
metaphor, cognition, philosophy of language, Donald Davidson, cognitive science, conceptual thinking, natural philosophy
Also from
Kriger, Boris
Freedom from Taxes: Introduction of Automated Payment Transaction Tax and Universal Basic Income
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$9.60
The Law of Imperative Uncertainty: Why Any Complex World Requires Uncertainty
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$23.88
Foundations of Intellectual Substrate Mining: A Methodology for Extracting Formal Laws from Raw Wisdom
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$28.80
Spinoza, Evolution, and the Model Trap: Why We Cannot Perceive Reality Directly
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$26.40
Irrational Reason and Rational Faith: Pascal and the Structural Limits of Rationality
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$22.56
The Dawn of Shared Intelligence: How Autonomous Technology Will Reshape Civilization
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$28.80
The Next Sexual Revolution: Ideas of Wilhelm Reich in the Age of Artificial Intimacy
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$16.80
Absurd Faith for an Absurd World: The Tertullian Paradox in the Age of Unreason
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$17.20
Also in
Logic
True Facts That Sound Like Bull$#*t: 500 Insane-But-True Facts That Will Shock and Impress Your Friends 1
Carley, Shane
Paperback
$12.30
The Fallacy Detective: Thirty-Eight Lessons on How to Recognize Bad Reasoning
Bluedorn, Nathaniel
Bluedorn, Hans
Paperback
$35.00
The Thinking Toolbox: Thirty-Five Lessons That Will Build Your Reasoning Skills
Bluedorn, Nathaniel
Bluedorn, Hans
Paperback
$35.00
True Facts That Sound Like Bull$#*t: 500 Insane-But-True Facts That Will Shock and Impress Your Friends
Carley, Shane
Hardcover
$18.95
Walden - On Walden Pond - Life in the Woods - The Transcendentalist Masterpiece
Thoreau, Henry David
Paperback
$16.24
Mastering Logical Fallacies: The Definitive Guide to Flawless Rhetoric and Bulletproof Logic
Withey, Michael
Paperback
$16.14
The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher
Baggini, Julian
Paperback
$17.10
Logically Fallacious: The Ultimate Collection of Over 300 Logical Fallacies (Academic Edition)
Bennett, Bo
Hardcover
$47.45
Socratic Logic: Edition 3.1: A Logic Text Using Socratic Method, Platonic Questions, & Aristotelian Principles
Kreeft, Peter
Hardcover
$63.00
Logically Fallacious: The Ultimate Collection of Over 300 Logical Fallacies (Academic Edition)
Bennett, Bo
Paperback
$28.45
The Art of Logical Thinking: Inductive, Deductive and Hypothetical Reasoning and the Use of Syllogisms and Fallacies
Atkinson, William Walker
Paperback
$11.23
The Power of Critical Thinking: Effective Reasoning about Ordinary and Extraordinary Claims
Vaughn, Lewis
Paperback
$154.49
Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language
Gula, Robert J.
Paperback
$11.40
The Foundations of Arithmetic: A Logico-Mathematical Enquiry into the Concept of Number
Frege, Gottlob
Paperback
$30.00
Deleuze's Philosophy of Time and Logic: Kant, Bergson, and the Labyrinth of the Continuum
Paetsch, John
Hardcover
$172.50
The Critical Thinking Toolkit: Your Guide to Success in Learning, Thinking and Writing at University
Cooke, Belinda
Morris, Laurence
Beesley, Paula
Paperback
$35.00
Good Reasoning Matters!: A Guide to Critical Thinking in a Digital Age, Sixth Edition
Carozza, Linda
Tindale, Christopher W.
Groarke, Leo
Paperback
$104.93
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Chiron Academic Press - The Original Authoritative Edition)
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Paperback
$9.13
The Duck That Won the Lottery: 100 New Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher
Baggini, Julian
Paperback
$22.00
The Critical Thinking Toolkit: Your Guide to Success in Learning, Thinking and Writing at University
Cooke, Belinda
Morris, Laurence
Beesley, Paula
Hardcover
$58.80
With All Your Mind: A Course on Logic and Argument for the Christian Classroom
Finkbeiner, Brad Paul
Paperback
$23.99
How to Think about the Great Ideas: From the Great Books of Western Civilization
Adler, Mortimer
Paperback
$49.35
Swirling Symmetry: Thoughts and Images on Mathematics, Motion & Pattern
Coleman, Sandra DeLozier
Hardcover
$23.70
The Annotated Gödel: A Reader's Guide to his Classic Paper on Logic and Incompleteness
Prince, Hal
Paperback
$11.64
Master Your Mind: Critical-Thinking Exercises and Activities to Boost Brain Power and Think Smarter
Danesi, Marcel
Paperback
$15.19
Gateway to the Stoics: Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, Epictetus's Enchiridion, and Selections from Seneca's Letters
Epictetus
Seneca
Aurelius, Marcus
Paperback
$17.10
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Royal Collector's Edition) (Case Laminate Hardcover with Jacket)
Smith, Adam
Hardcover
$62.49
Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life
Paul, Richard
Elder, Linda
Hardcover
$70.00
Critical Reasoning: A Romp through the Foothills of Logic for the Complete Beginner
Talbot, Marianne
Paperback
$27.59
Playing God with Emerging Technologies: How to Avoid the Traps of Techno-Optimism and Techno-Pessimism
Mizrahi, Moti
Hardcover
$165.00
Stoic Quotes: 365 Daily Reflections & Thoughts of Wisdom to Strengthen your Perspective.
Harris, Tate
Paperback
$12.34
Good Thinking: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World
Grimes, David Robert
Paperback
$17.05
Autonomy, Consciousness, and Personhood: A Primer for the Public Dialogue on Abortion
Bujno, Stephen
Hardcover
$54.15