Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Metaphors are frequently praised and maligned for their capacity to induce frames or perspectives for understanding.  Compared to other tools for perspectival thought, such as models and exemplars, metaphors are especially rhetorically and cognitively powerful because they are novel and analogical, and because they often evoke vivid imagistic and affective associations.  But can perspectival tools in general, and metaphor in particular, contribute to genuine understanding and knowledge? Or are they at best prods for arriving at insights we might have had, and must ultimately earn, on independent grounds?  Different cognitive projects – imaginative play, effective communication, scientific investigation – induce distinct norms for constructing and evaluating perspectival tools, not all of which have truth as their primary aim.  Further, perspectival tools can generate the illusion of knowledge by inducing a felt 'click' of comprehension.  Nonetheless, I argue that perspectival tools, including metaphor, can support knowledge and understanding by underwriting a more robust epistemic access to the world.  I identify norms for assessing their epistemic aptness, and explore means for engaging with them critically to combat their risk of epistemic complacency.