When Metaphors Bewitch, Analogies Illustrate, And Logic Fails: Controversies Over The Use Of Metaphoric Reasoning In Philosophy And Science

This is Tim Rohrer's dissertation page. If you'd like to read the dissertation, there are three possibilities.

• Here is my entire dissertation (March 1999 release), for those of you who would like to wade through it. It is in pdf format.
• This is chapter 5 only of my dissertation--the most interesting one for cognitive linguists. It contains a short history of the embodiment hypothesis, an argument calling for using a levels of investigation framework in cognitive linguistics, and a discussion of the differences between blending and metaphors with respect to the cognitive neuroscience of attention. It is a pdf document.
• Here is chapter 4 only of my dissertation--also of some interest to philosophically minded cognitive linguists. In it I argue for that a theory of the embodied mind should be accompanied by a pragmatic metaphysics. I follow John Dewey to construct such a metaphysics, with appropriate contributions from contemporary cognitive science such as Antonio Damasio and Gerald Edelman. I conclude by arguing that theorizing is best conceived not as a triangulation on truth, but as an aesthetic and biological process of variation, error and selection. It is a pdf document.