On metaphor: "Thinking is a kind of simulated interaction with the world"

From I Is An Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way We See the World, by James Geary

The upshot of all this research is: thinking is a kind of simulated interaction with the world, a metaphorical engagement that makes what we imagine more realistic. Mental images can have the same effect on the body and the mind as actual physical things. And metaphors are mental image makers par excellence.... Metaphors are experience's body doubles, standing in for actual objects and events.