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Mical embler12/25/2023 ![]() MacCormac, Consulting Professor of Radiology, Duke University Medical Center `Most discussions of metaphor tacitly assume that literal meaning is direct, precise, and unproblematic, while metaphorical meaning is indirect, vague, and fraught with semantic and epistemological difficulties. I highly recommend Radman's work for both readers familiar with the various controversies about metaphor and new readers unacquainted with this topic. His text is rich with examples drawn from English and German writers. ![]() Radman draws on both contemporary accounts of metaphor and classical works. He further examines the metaphorical claims of artificial intelligence and the use of Stephen Pepper's `root metaphors' or `key metaphors' as Radman calls them, to create worldviews. Radman properly embodies the mind exploring not only metaphorical accounts of mind, but also the metaphorizing, cognitive function of mind. Radman has presented in Metaphors: Figures of the Mind a clear, excellent account of how metaphor serves as a necessary cognitive key for all human intellectual activity. Certainly, by adopting this basic strategy we also simultaneously increase our knowledge of metaphors, of their functions and importance. Most of the aspects discussed, therefore, are examined not so much for the sake of gaining some new knowledge about metaphor (work conducted in the »science of metaphor« is presently so huge that an extra attempt to spell out another theory of metaphor may have an infiatory effect) the basic strategy of this book is to view metaphor within the complex of language usage and language competence, in human thought and action, and, finally, to see in what philosophically relevant way it improves our knowledge of ourselves. In this sense it is not, strictly speaking, a contribution to metaphorology instead, it is an attempt to define the place of metaphor in the world of overall human intellectual activity, exemplary thematized here in the span that ranges from problems relating to the articulation of meanings up to general issues of creativity. In other words, it is about what I think we can learn from metaphor and the possible consequences of this lesson for a more adequate understanding, for instance, of our mental processes, the possibilities and limitations of our reasoning, the strictures of propositionality, the cognitive effect of fictional projections and so on. Rather it is concerned with the argument from metaphor. This book deals with various aspects of metaphorics and yet it is not only, or perhaps not even primarily, about metaphor itself.
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