Why are the targets of metaphor abstract?

From the very beginning (i.e., Metaphors We Live By), metaphor theory has recognized that metaphors seem to seek a greater understanding of abstract things. We do not normally use metaphors to understand concrete, physical, and perceptual dimensions of our experience. Instead, we use concrete structures, which Mark Turner calls "little stories," to make sense of things in the distinctly human world--psychology, social life, relationships, history, power, authority, ethics, value, etc.

This is a paradox, insofar as metaphor is marked--in distinction from conceptual thought--by its concrete content. Metaphor is image thinking. The very means by which it carries out its reasoning is concrete. Our friendship is on thin ice. The economy is in free-fall. I don't think my explanation holds water. How, then, can it also be that the targets of metaphor are abstract?

Let us agree that whatever we seek to understand, through metaphor or not, lacks something that our thinking intends to address or provide. All cognitive targets are targets because, in some sense, they lack something. This lack is about them, but the lack is also a functions of our needs. If a potential target lacks something that we do not care about, it does not become a target of thought. I may not understand how my cell phone works, but I do not spend much time thinking about that. If and when it becomes a cognitive target of mine, what it may lack reflects what I want to understand about it. But the experience of thinking about something is the experience of a lack--in the thing and in our understanding of it.

Returning to the case of metaphor, the question can be formulated in this way: What is it about the abstract targets of metaphor that we find lacking, and which motivates our cognition about them? Why do these kind of subjects or situations--precisely those involving abstract meanings--become the constant targets of our thinking? What do they lack, and why?

Has Metaphor Theory asked these questions?

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