The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"—metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them. In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.

The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"—metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them. In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.

Objects of Metaphor contains a philosophical account of the phenomenon of metaphor radically different from those currently on offer. Yet for all that it is different, the underlying rationale of the account is genuinely ecumenical. If one adopts its perspective, one should be able to see how substantially correct many other accounts are, whilst at the same time seeing why they are not in the end completely correct. The book opens with a transparent classification of types of account, and concludes with detailed discussions of three important recent contributions to the subject. The origins of the account lie in our conception of predication. Unreflectively thought of as a task accomplished by words, it is argued that predication, or something very much like it, can also be accomplished by objects. So understood, predication becomes the genuinely equal partner of reference - a function no one doubts can be as easily accomplished by objects as by words - and, liberated in this way, predication becomes one central element in the account of metaphor. The other element is the move from language to objects which, adapting an idea of Quine's, is thought of as semantic descent. Whilst Samuel Guttenplan's account allows us to see other accounts in a new light, its main importance lies in what it tells us about metaphor itself. Powerful and flexible enough to cope with the syntactic complexity typical of genuine metaphor, it offers novel conceptions of both the relationship between simile and metaphor and the notion of dead metaphor. Additionally, it allows us to see why metaphor is a robust theoretic kind, related to certain other tropes, but not to be confused with tropes generally, or with the figurative and non-literal. Metaphor has often been thought merely an ornament to language. Whilst acknowledging the truth in this thought, Guttenplan shows the fundamental importance of metaphor to language. Rather than being a specialist topic in philosophy and related disciplines, he thus suggests that the study of metaphor is central to the study of language.

This collection of papers contains historical case studies, systematic contributions of a general nature, and applications to specific sciences. The bibliographies of the contributions contain references to all central items from the traditions that are relevant today. While providing access to contemporary views on the issue, the papers illustrate the wide variety of functions of metaphors and analogies, as well as the many connections between the study of some of these functions and other subjects and disciplines.

Guttenplan puts forward a philosophical account of metaphor much different from those used currently. Powerful and flexible enough to cope with the syntactic complexity typical of genuine metaphor, he offers novel conceptions of the relationship between simile and metaphor and the notion of dead metaphor.

Metaphor, as an act of human fancy, combines ideas in improbable ways to sharpen meanings of life and experience. Theoretically, this arises from an association between a sign—for example, a cattle car—and its referent, the Holocaust. These “sign-vehicles” serve as modes of semiotic transportation through conceptual space. Likewise, on-the-ground vehicles can be rich metaphors for the moral imagination. Following on this insight, Vehicles presents a collection of ethnographic essays on the metaphoric significance of vehicles in different cultures. Analyses include canoes in Papua New Guinea, pedestrians and airplanes in North America, lowriders among Mexican-Americans, and cars in contemporary China, Japan, and Eastern Europe, as well as among African-Americans in the South. Vehicles not only “carry people around,” but also “carry” how they are understood in relation to the dynamics of culture, politics and history.

What is reality, really? Are humans more special or important than the non-human objects we perceive? How does this change the way we understand the world? We humans tend to believe that things are only real in as much as we perceive them, an idea reinforced by modern philosophy, which privileges us as special, radically different in kind from all other objects. But as Graham Harman, one of the theory's leading exponents, shows, Object-Oriented Ontology rejects the idea of human specialness: the world, he states, is clearly not the world as manifest to humans. At the heart of this philosophy is the idea that objects - whether real, fictional, natural, artificial, human or non-human - are mutually autonomous. In this brilliant new introduction, Graham Harman lays out the history, ideas and impact of Object-Oriented Ontology, taking in everything from art and literature, politics and natural science along the way. Graham Harman is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at SCI-Arc, Los Angeles. A key figure in the contemporary speculative realism movement in philosophy and for his development of the field of object-oriented ontology, he was named by Art Review magazine as one of the 100 most influential figures in international art.