So some of you might be going: ‘that’s not a metaphor, that’s just learning a new concept’. Well, yeah. But they’re essentially the same.

This thing here is not the same thing as the concept in your head. The concept is a vast network of information. How to use this thing. What does it smell like? What’s the normal weight for one of these? All the emotions related to using it and your memories of using one. And all this information you can get a hold of using the concept ‘spoon’.

The actual object isn’t literally that. It’s just a bunch of atoms and molecules. This is not the same thing that’s in your head. There is no spoon.

The spoon is made of non-spoon elements as is the concept in your head. It’s an abstraction of this pair and therefore a metaphor.