Metaphors We Live By

The heart of metaphor is inference. Conceptual metaphor allows inferences in sensory-motor domains (e.g., domains of space and objects) to be used to draw inferences about other domains (e.g., domains of subjective judgment, with concepts like intimacy, emotions, justice, and so on). Because we reason in terms of metaphor, the metaphors we use determine a great deal about how we live our lives. In viewing labors as a kind of activity, the metaphor assumes that labor can be clearly identified and distinguished from things that are not labor. It makes the assumptions that we can tell work from play and productive activity from nonproductive activity. These assumptions obviously fail to fit reality much of the time, except perhaps on assembly lines, chain gangs, etc. The view of labor as merely a kind of activity, independent of who performs it, how he experiences it, and what it means in his life, hides the issues of whether the work is personally meaningful, satisfying, and humane. One obvious utility for the study of formal objectivist models in the human sciences is that they can allow us to understand, in part, the ability to reason and function in terms of a consistent set of metaphors. This is a common activity and an important one to understand. It can also allow us to see what can be wrong with imposing a requirement of consistency-to see that any consistent set of metaphors will most likely hide indefinitely many aspects of reality - aspects that can be highlighted only by other metaphors that are inconsistent with it.