Metaphor and (Dis)belief

In chapter 7 the importance of insight into how metaphor works in law (“seeing resemblance” according to Ricoeur) is elaborated upon in relation to the legal professional’s development of practical wisdom. The chapter discusses how metaphoric insight is both cognitive and perceptual. It argues that the professional needs to develop his or her legal imagination to be able to perceive similarity in what is initially thought of as dissimilarity to bridge the gap between the generality of the legal rule and the particularity of the individual situation in the case at hand. The chapter also connects the topic of metaphor to an understanding the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance and its negative side-effects such as the confirmation bias and belief perseverance as the obverse phenomena of what Coleridge called poetic faith, i.e. the ability to comprehend contraries and to deal with uncertainties before jumping to conclusions.