Enter Similarity-Creating Metaphors

Abstract

As I mentioned in the prologue, the interaction theory of metaphor has been proposed primarily to account for the creation of similarity that, it is claimed, accompanies certain metaphors. The proponents of this theory however — almost all of them philosophers — take the phenomenon of creation of similarity more or less for granted. That is, while they use this phenomenon to discredit the comparison theories of metaphor, and articulate their version of the interaction theory to account for it, the fact that certain metaphors can, indeed, create similarities is itself not established in any reasonable fashion, beyond occasionally mentioning a fleeting example.