Online research in philosophy

A number of philosophers, linguists and psychologists have made the dual claim that metaphor is cognitively significant and that metaphorical utterances have a meaning not reducible to literal paraphrase. Such a position requires support from an account of metaphorical meaning that can render metaphors cognitively meaningful without the reduction to literal statement. It therefore requires a theory of meaning that can integrate metaphor within its sematics, yet specify why it is not reducible to literal paraphrase. I introduce the idea of a "second-order meaning", of which metaphor is but one instance, that is a function on literal-conventional, i.e., first-order meaning, and outline a linguistic framework designed to provide a representation of linguistic meaning for both. This framework is designed to represent linguistic units ranging from a single word to an entire text since I argue that the by-now familiar position that the sentence is the appropriate unit for metaphor has mislead us into asking the wrong questions about metaphorical meaning. With this apparatus, we can specify the conditions under which an utterance may transcend the constraints on first-order meaning (transgressions not always apparent on the sentential level), without thereby being "meaningless". Conversely, we can specify the conditions that may render apparently odd utterances first-order meaningful rather than metaphorical. In this way we see how metaphorical language differs both from deviant language and from specialized language such as technical language, fanciful and fantastical language (in fairy tales, science fiction, etc.).

This paper investigates the issue whether metaphors have a metaphorical or secondary meaning and how this question is related to the borderline between philosophy and linguistics. On examples by V. Woolf and H. W. Auden, it will be shown that metaphor accomplishes something more than its literal meaning expresses and this “more” cannot be captured by any secondary meaning. What is essential in the metaphor is not a secondary meaning but an internal relation between a metaphorical proposition and a description of its effects. In order to understand metaphors, we have to share an ability to construe metaphorical meanings at once. The aim of this ability is to uncover an internal relation, which lies behind a particular metaphor.

Most theories of metaphor look at what occurs inside a metaphorical phrase and posit a shift in meaning in the metaphorical words. This includes the classic “Models and Metaphor,” by Max Black, who distinguishes between the literal words of the phrase and the metaphorical words. On this view, the two interact in such a way that the meanings of the metaphorical words change. In another view, Donald Davidson takes a radical stance in his “What Metaphors Mean” to assert that the words in a metaphor mean nothing other than their original, literal meaning. Both theories suffer from problems: Black fails to explain how the metaphorical words change in meaning. Davidson, on the other hand, while succeeding in refuting most of the “other meaning” theories, only weakly suggests “use” of metaphor to explain its power. In this paper, I will clarify the two respective theories and attempt to reconcile or fuse them. We will find that Black looks to the language itself and finds a shift in meaning, while Davidson asserts that meaning stays literal, and we must instead look at what occurs between the speaker and hearer. An examination of Davidson’s later theory of interpretation applied to Black’s theory of metaphor will clarify Davidson’s ‘use’ as well as allow for literal meaning to stay in metaphor.

In this essay, I focus on Recanati's treatment of 'What is said' in his book Literal Meaning. I discuss Recanati's conception of Minimalism, his views on propositional completeness, and his understanding of the processes governing the semantic interpretation of meaning-controlled contextuality. In the final sections, I draw some conclusions pertaining to Recanati's assessment of the interface between pragmatic and semantic processes. /// En este ensayo me enfoco en el trato que le da Recanati a "lo que se dice" en su libro Literal Meaning. Discuto su concepción del minimismo, su posición sobre la completud proposicional y su comprensión de los procesos que rigen la interpretación semántica de la contextualidad controlada por el significado. En las secciones finales, extraigo algunas conclusiones acerca de la evaluación que Recanati hace de la interfase entre procesos semánticos y pragmáticos.

A summary of François Recanati's book Literal Meaning (section 1), followed by his response to the critical reviews of the same book by Stefano Predelli (section 2) and Manuel García-Carpintero (section 3). /// Este texto da respuesta a los que, en este mismo número, Predelli y García-Carpintero dedican a mi libro Literal Meaning. En la primera seccíon hago un breve resumen de esta obra; en la segunda respondo a los comentarios críticos de Predelli y en la tercera a los de García-Carpintero.

Alice Crary has recently developed a radical reading of J.L. Austin's philosophy of language. The central contention of Crary's reading is that Austin gives convincing reasons to reject the idea that sentences have context-invariant literal meaning. While I am in sympathy with Crary about the continuing importance of Austin's work, and I think Crary's reading is deep and interesting, I do not think literal sentence meaning is one of Austin's targets, and the arguments that Crary attributes to Austin or finds Austinian in spirit do not provide convincing reasons to reject literal sentence meaning. In this paper, I challenge Crary's reading of Austin and defend the idea of literal sentence meaning.

This paper argues that the literal meaning of words in a natural language is less conventional than usually assumed. Conventionality is defined in terms that are relative to reasons; norms that are determined by reasons are not conventions. The paper argues that in most cases, the literal meaning of words—as it applies to their definite extension—is not conventional. Conventional variations of meaning are typically present in borderline cases, of what I call the extension-range of literal meaning. Finally, some putative and one or two genuine exceptions are discussed.

In this paper I show that two conflicting theories of literal meaning can be found in Donald Davidson's philosophy of language. In his earlier writings, Davidson espoused the common sense idea that words have literal meanings independently of particular contexts of use. In his later writings, however, Davidson insisted that the literal meaning of a word is a function of the speaker's intentions in using it, from which it follows that words do not have literal meanings independently of particular contexts. In this paper I examine and evaluate the transition from Davidson's earlier to his later view of literal meaning. I show that the change in view came about through Davidson's efforts to extend a theory of literal meaning to malapropisms but that Davidson's understanding of malapropisms is seriously flawed. I conclude that Davidson had no good reason for espousing his later intentions-based theory of literal meaning.

The paper argues that colouring is a conventional ingredient of literal meaning characterized by a considerable degree of semantic under-determination and a high degree of context-sensitivity. The positive, though tentative, suggestion made in the paper is that whereas in the case of words such as "but" and "damn" we are dealing with words lacking in specificity, in the case of pejoratives in general, and racist jargon in particular, we are dealing with words that express concepts that purport to describe the world as being in a certain way. The circumstance that in certain contexts of utterance colouring can be cancelled out, does not show that it forms a detachable part of a word's literal meaning. It only shows that to account for the interplay between context, literal meaning and assertoric content is much trickier than meets the eye.

Literal meaning is often identified with conventional meaning. In A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs Donald Davidson argues (1) that literal meaning is distinct from conventional meaning, and (2) that literal meaning is identical to what he calls first meaning. In this paper it is argued that Davidson has established (1) but not (2), that he has succeeded in showing that there is a distinction between literal meaning and conventional meaning but has failed to see that literal meaning and first meaning are also distinct. This failure is somewhat surprising, since it is through a consideration of Davidson's notion of radical interpretation that the distinction between literal meaning and first meaning becomes apparent.