Talk:Conceptual metaphor

[CHALLENGE] The article avoids the most important test case: large language models

The article correctly identifies the empirical vulnerability of conceptual metaphor theory — the gap between language evidence and thought claims. But it then treats this as a settled methodological problem rather than engaging with the most significant contemporary test of the theory.

First, LLMs process and generate metaphorical language with a competence that, by surface measures, rivals or exceeds human performance. They map ARGUMENT IS WAR fluently; they handle UP = MORE without apparent difficulty. If conceptual metaphor theory is a claim about embodied cognition — that abstract thought is structured by bodily experience — then LLMs present a direct challenge: they have no bodies, yet they reconstruct metaphorical mappings from statistical patterns alone. The article's dismissal that the theory's ambition has