Metaphors We Live By

Physical and cultural basis: In our culture people view themselves as being in control over animals, plants, and their physical environment, and it is their unique ability to reason that places human beings above other animals and gives them this control, CONTROL IS UP thus provides a basis for man is up and therefore for RATIONAL IS UP.

Physical and social basis: good is up for a person (physical basis), together with a metaphor that we will discuss below, SOCIETY IS A PERSON(in the version where you are not identifying with your society). T

Metaphors as linguistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person's conceptual system.

Standard theories of meaning assume that all of our complex concepts can be analyzed into undecomposable primitives. Such primitives are taken to be the ultimate "building blocks" of meaning. The concept of causation is often taken to be such an ultimate building block. We believe that the standard theories are fundamentally mistaken in assuming that basic concepts are undecomposable primitives.

Continental tradition in philosophy.
Sandra McMorris Johnson, James Melchert, Newton and Helen Harrison, and David