Art Is Metaphor

Abstract

Art and metaphor both seem unnecessary for survival yet are unlikely to be spandrels given their ubiquity and apparent value. We discuss how art and metaphor play a similar, important role in cognition. Specifically, both are communications that are neither true nor false and so convey information by drawing attention to a limited isomorphism between target and source, a relationship that allows for ambiguity because it is assessed by “goodness of fit.” This combination of features means that art and metaphor require and, in turn, tune domain-general capacities for counterfactual reasoning and pattern detection.