Representations As Metaphiers

Julian Jaynes, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1982, 5, 379-380.
Reprinted in Marcel Kuijsten (ed.), The Julian Jaynes Collection (Julian Jaynes Society, 2012).

Excerpt: … We understand something by finding a metaphor for it with which we are more familiar, and the feeling of familiarity is the feeling of understanding. In such metaphors, the thing to be understood is what I have called a metaphrand, and that more familiar thing to which it is compared, the metaphier (intentionally connoting multiplicand and multiplier in mathematics). This relationship between metaphrand and metaphier is at the basis of all knowledge. New phenomena are found to be similar to previous phenomena and are brought under their rubric. …