Our tools are extensions of our purposes, and so we find it natural to make metaphorical attributions of intentionality to them; but I take it no philosophical ice is cut by such examples.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We often attribute 'understanding' and other cognitive predicates by metaphor and analogy to cars, adding machines, and other artifacts, but nothing is proved by such attributions.
The thing about metaphors is that, if you give them away, you give away the mystery.
Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.
Metaphor matters because it creates expectations.
Sometimes I think that creativity is a matter of seeing, or stumbling over, unobvious similarities between things - like composing a fresh metaphor, but on a more complex scale.
Metaphor is embodied in language.
Metaphor is not just the detection of patterns; it is the creation of patterns.
We are the only living creatures who can create a context, and as far as we know, everything else can only follow a context, without recognizing the context as such. Herein lies the source of creativity and the genuinely new.
Metaphor creates a kind of conceptual synesthesia, in which we understand one concept in the context of another.
The strangest thing that human speech and human writing can do is create a metaphor. That is an amazing leap, is it not?