Many sentences can be interpreted both as a metaphor and as a literal claim, depending on the context. The aim of this paper is to show that there are discourse-based systematic constraints on the identification of an utterance as metaphorical, literal, or both (as in the case of twice-apt metaphors), from a normative point of view. We claim that the key is contextual coherence. In order to substantiate this claim, we introduce a novel notion of context as a (...) rich and heterogeneous body of information, including previous discourse, elements coming from the surroundings of the utterance, background information, and Questions Under Discussion (QUD) issued from these three sources. We then define contextual coherence as a relation between what we call the minimal paraphrase of the metaphor and the context, and argue that for an interpretation to be coherent two conditions must be met. First, the minimal paraphrase must address some question in the QUD stack. Second, it must be externally consistent, i.e. consistent with the available contextual information. Finally, we argue that an approach based on contextual coherence is better suited to deal with twice-true and twice-apt metaphors than traditional approaches based on semantic deviance or pragmatic lack of fit. (shrink)

This article compares the poetics of Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu and Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire du cinéma in order to realign our understanding of metaphor, metonymy and montage with the inter-formal dialogues that new media artworks increasingly demand of audiences. An analysis of Godard's ‘quotation’ of Proust's words and ideas from Le Temps retrouvé sets out an explicit rivalry between text and image. However, drawing on formalist and structuralist approaches to both literature and cinema, including Roman (...) Jakobson and Gérard Genette, as well as more recent discussions developed by Gilles Deleuze and Lev Manovich, I will argue that the nature of the image manifested in both artworks corresponds to a shared aesthetic that exceeds distinctions between word and image, literature and video. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Epigraphs Twice‐Told Tales Darwin to the Rescue? Back to the Subject Contradiction? The Problem of Obsessive Repetition Reading Again—Again The End of the Beginning.

Prop oriented make-believe is make-believe utilized for the purpose of understanding what I call “props,” actual objects or states of affairs that make propositions “fictional,” true in the make-believe world. I, David Hills, and others have claimed that prop oriented make-believe lies at the heart of the functioning of many metaphors, and one variety of fictionalism in metaphysics invokes prop oriented make-believe to explain away apparent references to entities some find questionable or problematic (fictional characters, propositions, moral properties, numbers). (...) Elisabeth Camp has argued against my and David Hills’ views of metaphor. Her arguments, many of them echoed by Catharine Wearing, demolish a very implausible account of metaphor, but leave entirely untouched the views that Hills and I actually proposed. Clarifying what we say about metaphor serves also as a defense of fictionalist theories that invoke prop oriented make-believe. (shrink)

Metaphor enters contemporary philosophical discussion from a variety of directions. Aside from its obvious importance in poetics, rhetoric, and aesthetics, it also figures in such fields as philosophy of mind (e.g., the question of the metaphorical status of ordinary mental concepts), philosophy of science (e.g, the comparison of metaphors and explanatory models), in epistemology (e.g., analogical reasoning), and in cognitive studies (in, e.g., the theory of concept-formation). This article will concentrate on issues metaphor raises for the philosophy of (...) language, with the understanding that the issues in these various fields cannot be wholly isolated from each other. Metaphor is an issue for the philosophy of language not only for its own sake, as a linguistic phenomenon deserving of analysis and interpretation, but also for the light it sheds on non-figurative language, the domain of the literal which is the normal preoccupation of the philosopher of language. A poor reason for this preoccupation would be the assumption that purely literal language is what most language-use consists in, with metaphor and the like sharing the relative infrequency and marginal status of songs or riddles. This would not be a good reason not only because mere frequency is not a good guide to theoretical importance, but also because it is doubtful that the assumption is even true. In recent years, writers with very different concerns have pointed out that figurative language of one sort or another is a staple of the most. (shrink)

Metaphor is an issue for the philosophy of language not only for its own sake, as a linguistic phenomenon deserving of analysis and interpretation, but also for the light it sheds on non‐figurative language, the domain of the literal which is the normal preoccupation of the philosopher of language. If all we mean by paraphrase is the ability to say what one means in other words, then it does seem true that there is a difference between idiom and (...) metaphor here. In a paper that has attracted a great deal of commentary, Donald Davidson has argued that we should indeed cease talking about figurative meaning in connection with metaphor altogether; and he seems prepared to accept the consequences that follow from this rejection. The theory of figurative language prompting the rethinking of some of the basic concepts in the philosophy of language generally. (shrink)

In this note I discuss what seems to be a new kind of counterexample to Lewis’s account of counterfactuals. A coin is to be tossed twice. I bet on ‘Two heads’, and I win. Common sense says that (1) is false. But Lewis’s theory says that it is true. (1) If at least one head had come up, I would have won.

Donald Davidson holds that metaphors have no linguistic meaning in addition to their literal meaning. Max Black and Frank B. Farrell each contends that Davidson’s view is inconsistent with the fact that metaphors are appropriate objects of explication and evaluation. However, as I show, Davidson’s view actually is entirely consistent with this fact. I also argue that Black’s and Farrell’s own accounts of metaphor imply that sometimes the linguistic meaning of a sentence is other than a product of the (...) meanings of its words and its logical form, and I give a reason why accounts of metaphor with this implication are best rejected. E.M. Zemach, for his part, agrees with Davidson about what metaphors mean, but contends that, on Davidson’s recent account of language and interpretation, all metaphors turn out to be true; metaphors express novel or impractical but nonetheless literally true comparisons or categorizations. Zemach, however, I argue, has neglected the distinction between how speakers actually apply their words to things and their standards of correct application. (shrink)

Earlier work on literal motion has shown that English and Turkish belong to typologically distinct classes of languages, with English speakers paying greater linguistic attention to the manner dimension of motion events (e.g., Özçalişkan and Slobin 1999a, 2003). As a further step, this article investigates whether typological differences hold true for the metaphorical extensions of motion events. Thus, the article compares two types of languages with regard to their lexicalization patterns in encoding metaphorical motion events: (1) verb-framed languages (or (...) V-languages, represented by Turkish), in which the preferred pattern for framing motion events is the use of a path verb with an optional manner adjunct (e.g., enter running), and (2) satellite-framed languages (S-languages, represented by English), in which path is lexicalized in an element associated with the verb, leaving the verb free to encode manner (e.g., run in). The analysis of written texts and elicited responses in the two languages shows clear typological contrast, with English speakers encoding manner of motion in their metaphorical descriptions more frequently and extensively than Turkish speakers, using a variety of linguistic devices (e.g., verbs, adverbials). Overall, the results indicate that the degree of codability of a semantic dimension in a lexical item (i.e., motion verb) has a spillover effect on the choice of other lexical items in a sentence, suggesting the conceptual salience of this dimension for its speakers. This effect is observable in both the literal and the metaphorical uses of the lexicon. (shrink)

According to one widely held view of metaphor, metaphors are cases in which the speaker (literally) says one thing but means something else instead. I wish to challenge this idea. I will argue that when one utters a sentence in some context intending it to be understood metaphorically, one directly expresses a proposition, which can potentially be evaluated as either true or false. This proposition is what is said by the utterance of the sentence in that context. We (...) don’t convey metaphorical meanings indirectly by directly saying something else. One consequence is that, contrary to what Searle (1993: 110) suggests, we do not arrive at the metaphorical meaning that the speaker intended via a literal interpretation of the sentence the speaker utters. The defense of this view depends on articulating a conception of what is said that is more generous than that allowed for by Searle (1993) and others such as Bach (2001). I hope to motivate this broadened conception of what is said (what I call a contextualist conception of what is said), and to show some of the benefits of adopting a direct expression view of metaphor. (shrink)

The author continues the preceding exchange of views on the nature of metaphor with the American philosopher Nelson Goodman that has been published in 'Poetics Today'. He offers his own theory of metaphor, which assumes a middle ground between Goodman's semantic theory and Davidson's pragmatic conception. The article also presents another argument in support of the thesis that there are only true metaphors, and that the logical space assumed by Goodman for the metaphorical falsehood is already reserved (...) for the category of statements that are nonsensical. (shrink)

This chapter speculatively addresses the nature and effects of metaphorical views that a mind can intermittently use in thinking about itself and other minds, such as the view of mind as a physical space in which ideas have physical locations. Although such views are subjective, it is argued in this chapter that they are nevertheless part of the real nature of the conscious and unconscious mind. In particular, it is conjectured that if a mind entertains a particular (metaphorical) view at (...) a given time, then this activity could of itself cause that mind to become more similar in the short term to how it is portrayed by the view. Hence, the views are, to an extent, self-fulfilling prophecies. In these ways, metaphorical self-reflection, even when distorting and inaccurate, is speculatively an important aspect of the true nature of mind. The chapter also outlines a theoretical approach and related implemented system (ATT-Meta) that were designed for the understanding of metaphorical discourse but that have principles that could be at the core of metaphorical self-reflection in people or future artificial agents. (shrink)

The relation of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy to skepticism seems to be ambiguous, since he rejects radical skepticism but also highlights the groundlessness of our beliefs. In this paper, I am going to discuss Wittgenstein’s hinge propositions in this respect. Against the usual view, I will show that they do not function as a contextualist or foundationalist refutation of skepticism. What is more, they also do not confirm skepticism. In contrast, I will argue that following Wittgenstein skepticism is neither false nor (...) true, but still has a point, which can be elucidated with Stanley Cavell’s concept of a truth of skepticism. This concept roughly states that we can not know about the existence of the world and the others, but that we have to acknowledge them. With the help of Wittgenstein, I am going to clarify this position. The key idea is that the problem of skepticism can be understood as a metaphorical way of presenting the finiteness of the human condition and that vertiginous skeptical irritations lead to an adequate human self-understanding in this respect. (shrink)

It was a bad day. First I presented my idea about a Central America protest to the faculty committee, but the committee played ping-pong with the idea until it was crushed. Then I met Robinson, who has somehow been able to present his theory of action in a serious journal. But the theory is a house of cards, and once his critics rattle the table a bit, the theory will come crashing down. And his book on the history of philosophy, (...) just published, is a cheap TV dinner. He does not understand how to study the history of thought. It is necessary to dig into hidden layers of thought, to uncover earlier strata, to map the subterranean patterns, and then to explain why upheavals take place when they do.The above paragraph contains a number of metaphorical sentences. Now all of the following are, I believe, facts about, or relevant to, those sentences. They can be true or false, and our behavior towards them shows that we take them as candidates for truth. I will be expected to offer evidence in support of their truth, and Robinson's supporters on the faculty, if they hear me state the sentences about him, will accuse me of having made false claims. It is generally clear, in regard to the metaphorical sentences under consideration, what would count as evidence for them and against them. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that there are indispensable and irreducible metaphors in religious language and that this does not threaten a realist interpretation of religion. I first sketch a realist theory of religious language and argue that we cannot avoid addressing the problems metaphor poses to semantics. I then give a brief account of what it means for a metaphorical sentence to be true and how metaphors can refer to something even if what they mean is not (...) expressible in literal terms. Finally, I discuss how this realist theory of metaphor influences our understanding of negative theology and gives a new perspective on religious pluralism. (shrink)

This book develops a new approach to the mind called mental fictionalism. The key idea behind this approach is that the mind is a useful fiction. The book begins with our ordinary conception of the mind (known as folk psychology). At present, the dominant interpretation of folk psychology sees it as an attempt to describe our inner machinery (a view the author calls Cartesianism). The representational theory of mind (or representationalism) argues that our folk theory is true, and that (...) our thoughts (especially our propositional attitudes, such as beliefs and desires) are representations inside our heads. Mental fictionalism offers a new interpretation of folk psychology. According to mental fictionalism, when we attribute beliefs and desires, we do not claim that people have representations inside their heads; we merely pretend that they do. Our ordinary conception of the mind is fundamentally metaphorical: we project the ‘outer world’ of human culture (especially language) onto the ‘inner world’ of the mind. This is an enormously useful way of making sense of people and their behaviour. But we should not forget that this inner world is only a fiction. (shrink)

Powerful transformer models based on neural networks such as GPT-4 have enabled huge progress in natural language processing. This paper identifies three challenges for computer programs dealing with metaphors. First, the phenomenon of Twice-Apt-Metaphors shows that metaphorical interpretations do not have to be triggered by syntactical, semantic or pragmatic tensions. The detection of these metaphors seems to involve a sense of aesthetic pleasure or a higher-order theory of mind, both of which are difficult to implement into computer programs. Second, (...) the contexts relative to which metaphors are interpreted are not simply given but must be reconstructed based on pragmatic considerations that can involve presuppositional pretence. If computer programs cannot produce or understand such a form of pretence, they will have problems dealing with certain metaphors. Finally, adequately interpreting and reacting to some metaphors seems to require the ability to have internal, first-personal experiential and affective states. Since it is questionable whether computer programs have such mental states, it can be assumed that they will have problems with these kinds of metaphors. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers of science argue that models are a major vehicle of scientific knowledge. This applies to highly theoretical inquiry as well as to experimental or otherwise observational research, in both the natural and the social sciences. Making this claim is not yet very illuminating, given that there is a large variety of different kinds of model, and a number of ways in which they function in the service of science. The ambiguity of the term ‘model’ and the multiplicity of (...) kinds of model are illustrated by Pierre Duhem’s famous comparison of the mind of a continental physicist to that of an Englishman: the former strives for ‘theories’ that are formulated in ‘the clear and precise language of geometry and algebra’ and consist of abstract and idealized notions and formulae, while the latter insists on having mechanical ‘models’ that satisfy ‘his need to imagine concrete, material, visible, and tangible things’ that are familiar to ordinary experience. While the French or German physicist deals with a formalized theory in his account of electrostasis, the English account is in terms of ‘strings which move around pulleys, which roll around drums, which go through pearl beads, which carry weights; and tubes which pump water while others swell and contract; toothed wheels which are geared to one another and engage hooks. We thought we were entering the tranquil and neatly ordered abode of reason, but we find ourselves in a factory’ (Duhem 1954, pp. 70–1). Models in this sense—iconic models —employ analogies to visualize the mechanisms depicted, while formalized theories supposedly lack this property. On the other hand, it is nowadays customary to use the term ‘model’ also for such formal systems of equations, conspicuously so in the social sciences—and, much of the time, such formal systems are used for representing causal mechanisms. In relation to such a formal system, ‘model’ is also used for its various interpretations, or just for the interpretation that makes it true. The model muddle needs to be sorted out. (shrink)

This article discusses a number of metaphors about the nature of science, in connection with three types of metaphysical realism: minimal, moderate and essentialistic realism. From the beginning, Kuipers accepts the first and rejects the third type of realism, but it is only later on that he endorses the second type. It is argued that this makes his remarks on essentialistic realism somewhat misleading; and his moderate realism is compared with some realist positions taken by other philosophers. It is further (...) argued that the metaphors of the mirror, the net and the map correspond to essentialistic, minimal and moderate realism, respectively. This explains why the map metaphor is by far the most suitable one in the context of Kuipers' theory of science. This does not imply, however, that it is the (only) true one and that the others are false. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Shelley's "A Defense of Poetry" is best understood as a defense of poetic language, which is in turn best understood as a defense of metaphorical language. According to Shelley, the metaphors of the poets reveal (extra-linguistic) reality, and have a truth value – they are true insofar as they capture reality. The literal language of "mere reasoners" of science and philosophy, by contrast, only reveals relations between ideas already known, and their statements are (...) true in virtue of the meanings of the words. Shelley's essays has been misunderstood because writers on metaphor such as David Cooper and Richard Rorty have assumed that metaphors are neither true nor false, and that defenders of metaphorical language such as Shelley are defending non-truth-apt language. Even those writers on metaphor who believe that metaphors are truth-apt, such as Raymond Gibbs, fail to understand that Shelley should be included in their number. (shrink)

Patina is the word used for the green or brown film formed on the surface of old bronze, an excess of which can mask the true characteristics of the original masterpiece. Filippo Baldinucci used the word patina in a modern sense for first time in his book “Tuscan Vocabulary of the Art of Design”. Metaphors have been part of philosophical speech since the time of Plato. This figure of speech is used to attempt to provide a sensitive presence of (...) an idea to improve understanding and to make a more vivid perception of that concept. On analysing the creative process of contemporary re-search on health topics and its further dissemination, we defend the epistemological thesis that there is always some degree of patina on an original article and this may obscure the underlying scientific work. Conclusion: We consider that patina in scientific papers is very different from the concept of epidemiological bias. We think that any researcher who reads an original article acts as a restorer of knowledge. If a reader is aware of the existence of scientific patina, that reader will know how to look through it and see the masterpiece hidden underneath. (shrink)

The relation of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy to skepticism seems to be ambiguous, since he rejects radical skepticism but also highlights the groundlessness of our beliefs. In this paper, I am going to discuss Wittgenstein’s hinge propositions in this respect. Against the usual view, I will show that they do not function as a contextualist or foundationalist refutation of skepticism. What is more, they also do not confirm skepticism. In contrast, I will argue that following Wittgenstein skepticism is neither false nor (...) true, but still has a point, which can be elucidated with Stanley Cavell’s concept of a truth of skepticism. This concept roughly states that we can not know about the existence of the world and the others, but that we have to acknowledge them. With the help of Wittgenstein, I am going to clarify this position. The key idea is that the problem of skepticism can be understood as a metaphorical way of presenting the finiteness of the human condition and that vertiginous skeptical irritations lead to an adequate human self-understanding in this respect. (shrink)

This paper examines different functions of metaphors in religious language. In order to do that it will be analyzed in which ways metaphorical language can be understood as irreducible. First, it will be argued that metaphors communicate more than just propositional contents. They also frame their targets with an imagistic perspective that cannot be reduced to a literal paraphrase. Furthermore, there are also cases where metaphors are used to fill gaps of what can be expressed with literal language. In order (...) to clarify this function of catachresis the notion of de re metaphors will be introduced. With those metaphors we can convey contents that we cannot conceptualize independently from a certain context of utterance. Hence, with such metaphors we can reach beyond the limits of our conceptual repertoire which is a crucial function for religious language. Finally, the consistency and plausibility of the radical position that all assertions about God are irreducibly and necessarily metaphorical if they are supposed to be true will be discussed on the basis of the results of the former considerations about the irreducibility of metaphors. (shrink)

The primary significance of the adoption of Black’s (1962) interaction view of metaphor by Hesse in her network model of theories (1966, 1972 and 1974) and in her network model of meanings (1984a) is the fact that it leads to a fundamental modification of the hypothetical-deductive account of scientific theorizing and a relativization of the traditional logical positivist distinction between observation language and theory language. Hesse argues that what holds for metaphorical language in ordinary language use, namely that it (...) is affected by the contextual interaction between the various elements present in the metaphor, is also true of scientific models. They function in a similar fashion (1972, p. 254). She does not reject the distinction between literal and metaphorical language, but claims that the distinction is a pragmatic one. The distinction concerns the way in which speakers learn, use, and if necessary, define the words of their language. (shrink)

The science of the mind, and of consciousness in particular, needs carefully to consider people's common-sense views of the mind, not just what the mind really is. Such views are themselves an aspect of the nature of (conscious) mind, and therefore part of the object of study for a science of mind. Also, since the common-sense views allow broadly successful social interaction, it is reasonable to look to the common-sense views for some rough guidance as to the real nature of (...) the mind. On the other hand, to the extent that common-sense views are inaccurate, and perhaps even in gross conflict with the true nature of the mind, one interesting scientific question is: why do we hold such views, given our access to our own minds? Why should introspection be limited in a way that allows inaccurate views to hold sway? Now, common-sense views of the mind are revealed in natural language discourse that describes mental states, and such descriptions are largely metaphorical. The metaphors are used within thinking about the mind as well as in language. Therefore the study of metaphor is central to the study of mind. The present article is a preliminary study of the importance of metaphor in the scientific study of consciousness. It concentrates on analysing the nature of a range of important metaphors of mind, briefly discussing the extent to which they can be used to describe or qualify states of consciousness, and pointing to important questions about the nature of consciousness that the study of the metaphors raises. The article further conjectures that the reason people use metaphors in describing themselves is often not (just) that they have intellectually worked out some structural analogy --- e.g., between interactions of physical objects in physical space and interactions of ideas in the mind --- but rather that they {\it feel} their own minds to be as described by the metaphor --- e.g., they feel that the ideas in their minds are interacting physical entities. This matter of how a mind feels to itself is an aspect of the central issue of consciousness, namely its phenomenal quality. -/- (NB: The archived file is a preprint. However, it is substantially the same as the published version.). (shrink)

This thesis is concerned with the ways in which meaning is generically mediated in the novel. In particular it addresses the productive diversity of meanings generated by critical interpretation and asks how, given this diversity, comprehension and consensus might be possible. I argue that the construction of subject, object, space and time is achieved in the novel through different manifestations of four key metaphors: voice, view, setting and event. These metaphors supply meanings that rely on a common experience of embodiment. (...) Embodiment supplies the basis for an intersubjectively established consensus which identifies subjects and objects in terms that correspond to the semiotic, syntagmatic and semantic uses of metaphor. I begin by surveying and reviewing certain constructionist accounts of language and meaning in order to establish the importance of metaphor in conveying meaning in rhetorical, rather than linguistic, terms. I then discuss two examples of continental philosophy on speech: Derrida on voice and Foucault on discourse. I demonstrate how meaning is rhetorically constructed according to the use to which metaphors are put—whether they denote formal, semantic, or functional aspects of meaning—through an explication of Foucault’s theory, reserving Derrida’s grammatology for my analysis of the stabilisation of meaning in the theory of certain narratologists (Gérard Genette and Marie-Laure Ryan). Voice and view are key terms in literary theory, and I examine refinements to these metaphors in Genette and Ryan. The insistence of these narratologists on restricting the rhetorical dimension of meaning undermines the value of the literary work, prompting me to argue for a relaxing of such constraints. I read Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang for its uses of voice and point of view, many of which expose the limitations of the narratological approach. This is a theoretical thesis, which engages a wide range of perspectives—constructionist, deconstructionist, sociological and structuralist—together with their various accounts of language, metaphor, speech and meaning. In terms of sociological approaches to genre and discourse, I employ the chronotope as a critical tool, examining it in the context of the theme of the country house to demonstrate the role of two of my key metaphors, setting and event, which are important for the construction of space and time in abstract terms. Focusing on novels by Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and Kazuo Ishiguro, in which the country house defines the space and the temporality through which thematic and “material” elements are mediated, I reveal how the chronotope supplies an overarching coherence that unites thought and event in narrative. My readings of these novels describe a theory that is concerned with the rhetorical capacities of genre rather than with taxonomic constructions of form. To this end I argue that the metaphorical dimensions of narrative—voice, view, setting and event—be loosely drawn, according to the acknowledged mutability of genre. I also emphasise the constructive effect of metaphor whilst according it a rhetorical versatility consistent with the mutability and instability of genre as a semiotic tool, concluding that consensus is achieved in our readings of novels through the form’s reliance on these four key metaphors of embodiment. These metaphors have ordinary, everyday, widespread usage beyond narrative theory; in appreciating their rhetorical value, it must be noted nonetheless that any confusion that ensues is productive, for it results in the diversities of meaning and form celebrated in the literary work. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Santa, Genealogy, and History Power/Knowledge: The Gift That Keeps on Giving “He sees you when you're sleeping”: Foucault's Theory of Panopticism “He's making a list, he's checking it twice” Naughty or Nice: The True Meaning of Discipline The Archeology of Christmas.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feeding Tiger, Finding GodScience, Religion, and "the Better Story" in Life of PiGregory Stephens (bio)Yann Martel's Life of Pi is an allegorical castaway story about a sixteen-year-old Indian polytheist who survives 227 days on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. Martel frames this postmodern variant on the Noah's ark tale as "a story that will make you believe in God" (viii). But these words are neither Martel's, nor those (...) of the semifictional "Martel-like" narrator one encounters in the "Author's Note" (Innes 25). Rather, they are voiced by Mr. Adirubasamy, an elderly Indian man whom the Canadian quasi-author meets at a coffee house in Pondicherry. The virtual author, like the real Martel, is the author of two failed books, and looking for a capital-S "Story."1 Yet after tracking down the primary narrator of the novel (Pi Patel) in Toronto, reading his diaries of his Pacific Ocean ordeal, and listening to taped interviews with Pi, the quasi-author agreed with Mr. Adirubasamy that "this was, indeed, a story to make you believe in God" (x).That apparently "evangelical premise" could awaken resistance among readers who take this "explicit but deceptive statement" too literally (Ishmael). As one reviewer notes, "Martel's statement is likely to have the opposite effect on his reader, provoking a determined counter-reaction not to succumb to a didactic religious agenda."2 Although the novel has its didactic moments, most reviewers seem to have taken a measured view of the author's "religious agenda." In interviews, Martel notes that he comes from a secular background in Quebec. There are no indications that writing this book represented a Damascus conversion experience for him. Life of Pi is not a conversion narrative perse, but it is in part an ascent narrative (a journey toward enlightenment) that also contains elements of descent narratives.3 As a secular writer with sympathies for the religious imagination, Martel can pitch his revisioning of comparative religion to readers who have what Salman Rushdie once called a "God-shaped hole" in their heart.4 These "implied readers" (Iser) would have a hunger for some of the animating power of faith, if not a capacity for blind commitment to dogmatic faith itself.Reviewing Life of Pi for the Nation, Charlotte Innes describes it as "a religious book that makes sense to a nonreligious person" (25). In similar fashion, the Pequod argues that Martel's book "achieves something more quietly spectacular" than a literal conversion, or a restoring of one's faith in God: "it makes the reader want to believe in God. Martel gives the reader the democratic choice: the desire to believe rather than the belief itself" (Ishmael).Those responses of the secular left contrast sharply with the responses of my first-year students at the University of the West Indies, to whom I have twice taught Life of Pi. For students from a fundamentalist background, it is a challenge to buy into a narrative [End Page 41] that proclaims a God that transcends the imaginations of most believers in the three faiths in which the young Pi has been trained (Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam). In analyzing the theme of finding God, I position the text at a midway point between two different kinds of reception: secular readers for whom the notion of religious belief is at best metaphorical, and religious readers who may resist the narrative's conceit that the true God exists outside the confines of institutional religion.Life of Pi is suffused by a pervasive liminality.5 The teenaged Pi is in motion between continents, between faiths, and between childhood and adulthood, which means that the novel is also a bildungsroman.6 I here focus above all on the text's and Pi's location in the contested space between believers and nonbelievers, and on the novel's attempted mediation between those seeming binary opposites. I ask two perhaps paradoxical questions: In what ways would this be seen by the nonreligious as a religious book with appeal? Put differently, to what degree and in what ways might this text actually give secular readers a desire to believe, even if it does... (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 279—285. Concerning its Transitive Nature, the Conversion of Native Americans of Spanish Colonial California, Indoctrinated Catholicism, & the Creation There’s no direct archaeological evidence that Jesus ever existed. 1 I memorized the Act of Contrition. I don’t remember it now, except the beginning: Forgive me Father for I have sinned . . . This was in preparation for the Sacrament of Holy Reconciliation, where in a confessional I confessed my sins to Father Scott, who looked like Jesus, (...) at least in Western cultural representations of Jesus since the middle ages, and if Jesus put on a few pounds. Father Scott was long-haired, redheaded, bearded, chubby, and tall. When he left church with the procession of altar servers and Eucharistic ministers, yelling, “Sing a Good Song Unto the Lord,” he smiled, hands folded, and he gazed over his parishioners, and bounced along. For four months every year he lived among the Crow Nation in Montana, where towards the end of his tenure at Our Lady of Refuge, they adopted him as an honorary member of their tribe. * This is the prayer we chanted, holding hands, every night before dinner: Bless us oh Lord, for these our gifts, which we are about to receive, our bounty through Christ, our Lord, Amen. Then we all said, God bless the cook! When we were with my grandparents, Grandpa said, God bless Chicky, and Holly, and Harvey, and Boots—all the dead dogs. * My sister tells me that she sits next to a handsome man on a flight across the country. After chitchat, she withdraws her book. She’s reading Kevin Sampsell’s A Common Pornography . After a few moments, the handsome man also reads from his book—his leather-bound Bible. Sister thinks, Oh, Jesus—too bad. She falls asleep. Later, settled in Nashville, she opens her volume and out falls a Jesus-covered card that reads, You can still find God and Salvation! Because that handsome God-fearing young man saw that word— pornography . * I suppose Father Jim’s dark hair, beard, and glasses made me think doctoral-ly of him. He called while I was in the midst of a breakup, after I’d twice attempted suicide, and my mother was desperate for help. She somehow found and phoned him. And Jim, now years out of Our Lady of Refuge’s parish, twenty years since my baptism, years even since he’d left the priesthood and the Catholic faith, still made the effort to bring me back into the fold. He said, “Have you seen a priest?” I did not respond, as I was more shocked to hear his voice than anything, so I said, “How are you, Father Jim? Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t call you ‘Father.’” And I said, “Why did you leave the priesthood? Do you have a girlfriend?” He said that I should call him just “Jim.” He said, “Do you need someone to talk to?” I said, “Not really.” He said, “Call your mother; she’s worried about you.” That was the last time I talked to Father Jim. * Mother let me know just how disappointed Jesus was. I cried and cried, and said I was sorry. Into my hands she placed my missal, ordered forty Rosaries. She said next Saturday I would go to confession. I hated confession. Who wouldn’t? * I realize, of course, that this page is a kind of confessional. * The Kumeyaay, Ipai, Tipai, Chumash, Esselen, Rumsen—all Native Americans of Alta California—shared similarities in their religions. Southern Californian tribes made use of Datura, or jimpson weed, a hallucinogen, for religious rituals. In the creation, God made brother sky and sister earth. Brother and sister mated, and sister gave birth to all things on Earth, including people, but it was difficult to distinguish people from all other aspects of Earth because everything was alive: granite and obsidian, the Pacific and its waves, the San Diego and Los Angeles Rivers. Wiyot—a hero—was very powerful, born from lightning, the son of the Creator and a virgin. When Wiyot thought that human women’s legs were more beautiful than Frog’s, Frog became jealous and poisoned Wiyot. The dying Wiyot went to all the people’s villages, and he distributed his power among them. He said, “When I die, I should be cremated.” The people built the fire and funeral pyre. When the fire was ready, and the people about to place Wiyot’s body upon it, Coyote came and snatched away Wiyot’s heart. * My friend Nick told me once how he ate some jimpson weed and that he hallucinated for three days. His family took a road trip and, while driving over the Sierra Nevada mountains, he kept seeing dinosaurs roaming the open meadows and charging down snowy slopes. So it’s no wonder that Native Americans who ingested this plant would have developed religion. * Walking Castroville’s streets after school I got into fights but mostly watched other boys scrabbling on the asphalt. I went to Burger King for Whoppers. Me and my friends cussed. Antonio admonished me when I said, “damn,” while strutting a sidewalk alongside the church. He said, “Jaime”—pronounced Hi-May, which was what all the Mexicans called me—“you’re crazy, eh. Don’t cuss at the church.” He meant while at church, as in, within its vicinity. I said, “We’re not in church.” Once we’d crossed the street, Tony said, “Damn dude, you’re fuckin crazy!” * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra raised the Eucharistic goblet to his lips, and candlelight danced on the blood’s tiny waves. Incense clouded the church so completely that some of the Pame natives grew nauseous. So, too, felt Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra later that night, as he bent over a ceramic bowl and vomited blood, not only the Lord’s, but his own, for poison had laced the sacred vessel into which he poured the sacrament. The physician tending to the sick prelate urged him to take the remedy he’d prepared. But Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra refused, said that he would pray, for he had never taken any medicine in his life, and he never would. * The Chumash of El Valle de Los Osos called themselves the Stishni, separating themselves from Chumash of other regions, those varying tribes of the central California coast that spoke mutually unintelligible dialects of their Hokan language. This made learning their languages impossible for the Spanish friars, to say nothing of translating the Doctrina. Thus the priests baptized few natives, despite the help that the tribes offered the fledgling settlements in the form of meat and acorn meal, which the Spaniards found repugnant. Some from these cultures, feeling threatened by the newcomers, shot flaming arrows into the thatched roofs of the mission structures. And why wouldn’t they feel threatened when priests chastised them for performing, for example, their Coyote Dance, wherein a man donning a coyote-skin-and-skull costume dances while a singer sings his tale, which laments the human feces strewn imaginatively about the Earth? Coyote, meantime, tries to get an onlooker to lick his genitals, and finally engages in public sexual intercourse with a female tribe member or two, then ends the dance by defecating. Though the Franciscans called such forbidden acts devilry , the Chumash maintained their Datura cult religion, along with the enforced Christianity. For the Chumash, the Earth was made of two enormous snakes that caused earthquakes when they slithered past one another—a vast reptilian tectonics. In the 20th century, long after Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra and his cohorts had died, when asked by an anthropologist about religious contradictions, conflating the Datura and Christian cults, a Chumash man replied, incredulous: “But these are two different religions.” * When Portolá ordered that if by March 19th, the feast day of St. Joseph, the San Antonio had not arrived in San Diego Bay to relieve them, the Sacred Expedition to Nueva California would be abandoned, Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra prayed a novena for San José’s intercession. And lo, a lookout sighted the San Antonio ’s sails—what seemed to the priest a miracle—that very Saint’s feast day. Europeans would stay in California, and Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra would continue to reap a great harvest of souls for the Lord. By the end of mission secularization in 1836—sixty-six years after the San Antonio rescued the Spaniards—Native American populations in California had declined by seventy-three percent. * When Peter the Aleut would not renounce his Eastern Orthodox faith the padre of San Francisco had a toe severed from each foot with each refusal, totaling ten. The native Ohlones employed in this gruesome task—their obsidian chiseled knives tearing through skin and grinding bone—continued as per their orders, and cut off also each of Peter’s fingers (equals a total of twenty refusals). They quartered the martyr, spilled his bowels, as if from bear attack, attack by a bear in the shape of a Catholic. * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra absolutely believed that the slow rate of conversion for the native people was due to the influence of the Devil, who had been outraged by the coming of the Catholics to California, this region that he had long held in his dominion. * In his reception speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, John Steinbeck said, “Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the Apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man—and the Word is with Men.” * In 1602, when Sebastián Vizcaíno and his friars sang mass on Catalina Island, as many as a hundred Pimungans witnessed the rite, asking by signs what it was about. According to Vizcaíno’s records, the Californians marveled not a little at the idea of Heaven and at the image of Jesus crucified. * Vizcaíno was brought to a prairie on Santa Catalina Island where the Pimungans worshipped their sun god. Upon the prairie they had placed an icon, a headless figure with horns protruding from the body, a figure that Vizcaíno predictably described as a demon. The Pimungans urged Vizcaíno not to approach the image of their deity, but he ignored them. He placed his crucifix against the wooden figurine and prayed the Our Father. Vizcaíno told the natives that his prayer was from Heaven, and that their god was the Devil. Vizcaíno held out his crucifix, encouraging the Pimungans to touch it and receive Jesus. He pointed at the sky and indicated Heaven. The Pimungans worshipped a sun deity, so they were impressed with this white man and his description of his god, for their gods seemed to be one and the same. It’s no wonder then that Vizcaíno’s diary reports the natives being pleased with this exchange. “Surely,” the diary says, “they will be converted to our Holy Faith.” * The Miwok women wailed and scratched at their faces when their men consorted with Sir Francis Drake and the other Englishmen who had landed on California’s coast in the summer of 1579. “The blood streaming downe along their brests, besides despoiling the upper parts of their bodies of those single coverings . . .they would with furie cast themselves upon the ground . . . on hard stones, knobby hillocks, stocks of wood, and pricking bushes.” Drake and his men fell themselves to their knees in prayer, their eyes Heavenward, so that the natives might see they prayed to God and they too might worship God then their eyes that had been so blinded by the deceiver might be opened. * Father Fray Antonio de la Ascención—Carmelite friar in Vizcaíno’s party—writes that the Indians of California can “easily and with very little labor be taught our Holy Catholic faith, and that they would receive it well and lovingly.” He calls for two hundred older and honorable soldiers to ensure brotherhood during the conquest, so that peace and love—the best tools to pacify pagans—should reign. The religious, the friar says, should likewise be wise and loving to easily quell animosities between Spaniards and the heathen, and therefore avoid war. The Spaniards should bring with them trinkets—beads, mirrors, knives—to distribute amongst the gentiles, so that they might come to love the Christians, and see “that they are coming to their lands to give them that of which they bring, and not to take away the Indians’ possessions, and may understand that they are seeking the good of their souls.” No women are to accompany the conquest, says Father Fray Antonio, “to avoid offenses to God.” * In 1955 Wallace Stevens admitted himself to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. There, it’s rumored he converted to Catholicism before dying of stomach cancer, exclaiming to his priest after the baptism, “Now I am in the fold.” Stevens’s late-career poems seem less cynical, more in awe of being and death (read “Metaphor as Degeneration” from The Auroras of Autumn ). He could have chosen from at least three secular hospitals in Hartford at the time. * I was reading Stevens’s Collected Poems when I joined eHarmony and listed that as my “currently reading” book among the “more than twelve” books a year that I would read. I fell in love with my wife when she said, “Are you sending your work out to literary journals?” Prior to this, the first girl I talked to on the phone, when I explained my doctoral exams, said, “So, you’re like, reading Stephen King and stuff?” When I said not exactly she responded defensively: “He must be doing something right, since he makes all that money.” * Mom walked me, my brother, and sister, through the Stations of the Cross. We did this on Ash Wednesdays, or whenever she thought we needed extra God after church. It might’ve happened before church, though that’s unlikely because we were always late. Anyway, it’s easiest to walk the Stations of the Cross when there’s no one else around. To walk the actual Stations means one goes to Jerusalem and walks the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So the Stations elsewhere—usually paintings, or low-relief sculptures upon church walls—serve as a kind of virtual Dolorosa. Mom held our hands and started from the rear of Our Lady of Refuge: the First Station. Mom said we should say a prayer at each Station and to think of all the pain Jesus went through so that we could go to Heaven. It was hard to keep thinking about that one thing for so long. My mind went to that Saturday’s little league game, to the donut and chocolate milk (our after-church reward from Castroville Bakery), and as I grew older I thought about girls. When you’re thirteen you can’t not think about the girl’s butt in the pew in front of yours as she kneels and stands to pray throughout mass. * It grew increasingly juvenile to lie awake at night daring myself to utter a simple sentence. Even if I said I didn’t believe in God, wouldn’t He know the truth? He was omniscient, like a narrator. Even the idea of Him as a him ceased making sense. Not only did this come with a budding realization of my paternalistic culture, but due to the simple question of why? If God was everything, everywhere, all knowing, then why would he be a man? There’s that question: If God is a man then God must have a penis, and if so, what for? * The Catholic Church incorporates some modern scientific research into its dogma concerning the formation of the Universe, Solar System, and Earth, as well as evolution. According to Catholic doctrine, in approximately the fifth millennia BCE, humans began to worship the one true God. Those humans were Adam and Eve, though the Church says humans had been around for thousands of years prior to Adam and Eve. The Church claims to be infallible. Every time the Church changes its doctrine it remains infallible. * One Catholic writer, Tom Meagher, writes that “Modernism[—]the idea that we come to our beliefs individually through emotional or personal experiences[—]has crept into our Catholic schools.” * Catholics believe that evil spirits, given power through Original Sin, can imbue ordinary inanimate objects of everyday use. Thus, such objects should be blessed in order to induce in them the desire to serve the good. Such objects are not limited to, but include, “new ships and boats, railways and trains, bridges, fountains, wells, cornmills, limekilns, smelting furnaces, telegrams, steam engines, and machines for providing electricity.” * In The Sound of Music Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer sing together: “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could...” * To explain competing theories on the very early universe, and pre-verse would be another book. What was the inflaton? Did (mem)branes collide, initiating the Big Bang, as opposed to Lemaître’s primordial atom, a singularity? Without a unified theory there’s gravity hanging out there, fucking everything up. We cannot make sense of the mechanics of the Planck Epoch—0-10-34 seconds into the Universe’s creation—named for Max Planck, who stumbled into the discovery of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century. * My students often ask if I believe in God, since I espouse evolution, the Big Bang, Science, reject a strictly biblical or creationist theory of the Universe. I tell them that yes, I believe in God, though not the God that they imagine one must believe in. * When questioned regarding the rumor that, before his death, founder of quantum mechanics Max Planck had converted to Catholicism, he replied that he did not believe “in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.” * Physicist and Catholic priest George Lemaître, who formulated the theory and wrote the 1946 book The Primeval Atom Hypothesis , was made a household name by then-detractor Fred Hoyle, who pejoratively referred to the idea as a “Big Bang.” * Suicide is a mortal sin. To end one’s own life one must have despair, which is to lose hope, which is to lose faith, and to disbelieve in God. * Archaeology has uncovered graffiti in all of California’s missions—Indian pictographs inscribed into the adobe, covered with layers of whitewash. Native deities and depictions of cultural practices show that tribespeople never fully gave up their native traditions even after baptism and coming to the missions. There was something inside Native Californians that would never die. (shrink)

That the central thesis of Donald Davidson’s classic article on metaphor “What Metaphor Means” (WMM) is ambiguous between a weak and a strong interpretation is the primary claim that I sought to establish in my article “Sentence Meaning, Speaker Meaning, and Davidson’s Denial of Metaphorical Meaning.” In addition to this, I argued that the weak claim is trivially true and the strong claim is obviously false. Therefore, I concluded that when the central thesis of WMM is disambiguated, (...) it is insignificant. Finally, I explained the ambiguity in that thesis in terms of Davidson’s neglect in WMM for the concept of speaker meaning and this, in turn, in terms of a certain theoretical orientation to language that Davidson held at the time of writing WMM. In his commentary on my article, “Speaker Meaning and Davidson on Metaphor: A Reply to McGuire,” Robert J. Stainton raises objections to several of the foregoing claims. In this article, I review and defend each of these claims against Stainton’s objections. (shrink)

That a distinction can be drawn between the literal meaning of a metaphorical expression and its metaphorical meaning is assumed by a number of philosophical theories of metaphor, such as so-called comparison theories. These views descend from Aristotle and typically regard the metaphorical meaning of a metaphorical expression to be the literal meaning of a corresponding simile.1 “Man is a lion” literally means something that is clearly false, while “Man is a lion” metaphorically means something that may be (...) class='Hi'>true—man is like a lion. Max Black’s (1962) “interaction” theory also affirms the distinction and remains popular, including among some Peirce scholars whom I will discuss. But Donald Davidson has been.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche, Biology and MetaphorBabette E. BabichGregory Moore. Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. viii + 228. Cloth, $55.00.Gregory Moore's Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor is a well-written book on a topic of growing importance in Nietzsche studies. Not only concerned with offering an interpretation of Nietzsche in terms of biology and metaphor, Moore's approach offers a literary contextualization of Darwinism in (...) the history of ideas but also in terms of an important reflection on the idea of decadence so important to Nietzsche and so influential in theorizing public health and law in the twentieth century, most perniciously in its deadly expressions in Nazi propaganda. Moore is thus able to bridge the fields of the more specifically linguistic study of metaphor and source-scholarship. To Moore's great credit, he seeks to emphasize the extent to which Nietzsche's thought was developed in active correspondence with the scientific literature and debates of his age. But this reviewer thinks it important to warn those with classical or traditional interest in metaphor that the text presupposes that the reader (and this is also to say that Moore) knows a Nietzschean metaphor when he sees one.Moore begins with the question of Nietzsche's Darwinism, focusing on the physiology of power to explore the relations between Darwin, Spencer, Lamarck, and Rolph, but also Nietzsche's favorites, Malthus and Lange, etc. The discussion of the history of the reception of Darwin's ideas is careful and extensive and offers an insightful clarification of Darwin (necessary to distinguish Darwin from Darwinism, "social" and otherwise). Some readers will find it even more Anglophone than seems justified by Darwin's heritage, despite Moore's passing references to Cuvier and (at rather greater length) Haeckel and Roux.This reviewer notes that the latter references have been well-discussed in the German literature and to some great part Moore is fair to this tradition even if it is also true that the discussion never enters the level of the history of science as this reader, for one, might have wished. In the case of Moore's interpretation of Nietzsche's texts, the readings sometimes suggest a reprise of what has come to be the consensus (and not just among Nietzsche scholars) of views on Nietzsche's thinking. Thus where certain secondary authors are in force in Moore's well-documented account (Pick, Moles, and Ruse), others are missing. Indeed, in the case of Nietzsche and Darwinism, Frederick Gregory's Nature Lost? Natural Science and the German Theological Traditions of the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1992) offers an important supplement. Another book that seems to have been overlooked is Timothy Lenoir, The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology (Dordrecht, 1982), and those interested in von Baer and other proponents of teleology in biology will find Lenoir's broader account useful.The second half of the book addresses degeneration and like most contemporary discussions, Moore's book is charged with the political history of the last century. Moore reviews the association of decadence with jazz music and—via physiognomy as its external signifier—to the ugly, the Jew, the Black, and, of course, to women who broke with the family role. As an instantiation, Moore uncovers the nineteenth century antipathy to "allegedly aberrant behavior such as masturbation and homosexuality" in Nietzsche's "restrictive" [End Page 348] (133) view of sexuality and precocious eroticism (134) as degeneration. However, the issue of masturbation is complicated. The nineteenth-century perspective on masturbation was less a matter of prudishness than a judgment backed with considerable social and medical force, which equated the practice with sickness or criminality, the counterpart to which today would be our judgment with regard to an addiction to cocaine or heroine. This censure drove Wagner's "exposure" of Nietzsche's personal dependence on this practice. Readers interested in this question can either take themselves to the easy-to-find because eponymous chapter in Marc Wiener's Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination (Lincoln, 1995) or to David B. Allison's account of this as the occasion for the break between Nietzsche and Wagner in Reading... (shrink)

This paper revisits the charges of fideism and irrationalism oftentimes leveled against Kierkegaard's consideration of the relation of ratio to fides. To this avail the author engages one of the key texts in this polemic, namely the first three chapters of Philosophical Fragments. His reading centers on the rather subtle suggestion that eroticlove, as a surrendering of oneself to another, plays the role of a metaphor or image for the downfall of the understanding characteristic of religious conversion. By considering (...) the possibilities and limitations of this metaphoric relation, he suggests that thedownfall of the understanding required in religious conversion occurs, surprisingly, not without an understanding, however limited, of the downfall. Because the experience oferotic love reveals where our true passion lies, we gain access to an alternative account of religious conversion according to Kierkegaard, one where ratio is not necessarilyput on the verge of disappearing by fides. Moreover, thanks to this metaphoric relation, not only does erotic love itself acquire a novel meaning—under the religious command of loving one's neighbor — but also one grasps in advance the risk of becoming dispassionate in a religious sense. (shrink)

Let me attempt a drastic summary, or symbolic reduction, of Mr. Foss's adeptly metaphorical exposition. The use of the copula is, implicit in the appositive series, will do some violence to the complexity of the argument, but since causes and parts are frowned on by the same argument, the simpler arrangement cannot be altogether out of keeping. In logical and grammatical terms, we have on two sides of a profound ledger: "symbolic reduction," the divisive subject and predicate,--and "metaphoric process," the (...) underlying and unifying energy of the proposition, the subjectum. The negations of dialectic operate to show the insufficiency of symbolic concepts and are the "door to philosophic truth." And in ontological terms, we have on the one hand number, time, space, cause and effect, coincidence and contingency; and on the other the different, the naught, the apeiron, the potential, the tension of process, freedom and necessity in metaphoric lawful unity. There are two closely similar extremes of reduction between which one locates the transcendent philosophy of metaphor: that of sensationalism, the philosophy of the brute and atomic, and that of rationalism, the philosophy of expedient action. And in more or less theological terms, we have on the one hand the environment and its complement the ego, purposive and possessive; on the other, World, the I and the Thou, prayer, sin and grace in the metaphorical unity of consciousness, the widening power of personality in intercession or metaphorical representation. On the one hand, birth and death, past and future, and a present extending ad libitum into either; on the other, the eternal present of the integrated process stretching over past and future, expressed in its purest form in art. And so in aesthetic terms: on the one hand catharsis, a rationalized mixture of the ego's pleasure and pain, asceticism and hedonism, play; on the other, drama--especially tragedy, which par excellence action--Eudaimonia, purification, artistic distance, stylization, imagination, conscience, love. On the one hand, comedy in the sense of farce, environment symbolically reduced, actions and persons according to type, the mechanism of means and ends, rules, rituals, tricks, chance, the caricature of symbolic fixation--producing laughter: on the other hand, true and great comedy, the attempt to understand life in all its contradictions, producing the smile. (shrink)

Contrairement aux idées reçues, Hegel n’est pas un précurseur de la pensée totalitaire, auquel on pourrait opposer un Bergson républicain et démocrate. Tous deux parlent de la communauté politique comme d’un organisme, doctrine affectionnée du totalitarisme. Ni chez l’un, ni chez l’autre, on ne peut atténuer la portée de l’affirmation en invoquant un usage métaphorique : il faut entendre, chez l’un comme chez l’autre, l’organisme au sens propre mais large. L’organicité du politique, loin de la menacer, est la seule forme (...) compatible avec la liberté des individus, grâce à la distinction que l’on peut faire entre organisation toute faite et organisation se faisant : si la première traite les individus en rouages d’un mécanisme, la seconde est l’expression immédiate de l’épanouissement de leurs libertés.Popper wrote that Hegel, as a thinker, is a forerunner of totalitarianism ; on the other hand, one cannot but regard Bergson as a true democrat. Both however considered the politic body as an organism, a doctrine supporters of the totalitarian state favoured. The assertion must not be underrated : neither thinker intended to use a metaphorical expression, hence a broad meaning of « organism ». As a matter of fact the organicity of a politic body, far from threatening individual freedom, is the only form that proves compatible with individuality. The important thing is to distinguish all-made « organized organisation » from selfmaking « organizing organisation » : the former treats individuals as mechanical entities, while the latter is the result of the self-development of their freedom. (shrink)

We humans are remarkably interested in and skilled at games of make believe, games whose rules make what we are called on to imagine depend on what’s actually perceivably true about things and people that have what it takes to assume various fictional roles and that thereby function in the games as props. For the most part we play these games on an improvised pickup basis, working out the rules we play by in the very act of playing by (...) them. Part of what makes this coordinative feat possible are signals to the effect that as the speaker sees things, the rules and available props are such that this or that role is assumed by this or that prop, or props of this or that kind. Metaphors are make believe signals put to ambitious prop-characterizing use outside the game they serve to initiate, sustain, or otherwise regulate. Metaphoric competence is one manifestation of make believe competence. (shrink)

Scientific method is presented not as a means for investigating a true and objective character of universal reality, but as a metaphorical tool applied for mutual co-ordination of experiences. By acknowledging the co-orientational and metaphoric roots of science, religion, arts, and ordinary linguistic communications alike, potential for their fruitful interdependent application becomes apparent. References to the paradigms of constructivism and objectivism are drawn in parallel in outlining the tracks along which the proposed concept of co-creation of experiential qualities is (...) arrived at. Systemic reasoning based on analogies between different levels of complexity of natural systems emanates as an imaginative aspect of creative thinking. (shrink)

We are living in a time of war on multiple fronts. This is as true metaphorically as it is geographically. In particular, we live in an age in which war has been declared against disease, and war has been declared against terror. This essay considers in tandem the costs of those wars—more precisely, the costs of those metaphors of war.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bernard Harrison THE TRUTH ABOUT METAPHOR GOTTLOB frece introduced into philosophy two doctrines whose subsequent influence, on analytic philosophers at least, has been momentous. One is the doctrine that to understand a sentence is to know how to set about establishing die trudi-value of an assertion couched in those words. The other is the doctrine that a word has meaning only in the context of a sentence. These (...) doctrines make it hard to understand metaphor. They create difficulties, especially, for any theory of metaphor which assumes the intelligibility of talk about two kinds of meaning, literal and metaphorical. Frege's doctrines allow only one kind of meaning: one connected essentially with the issue of truth and falsity. But it is only when we take them literally that metaphorical sentences acquire a truth value: usually false. Two obvious suggestions offer ways of getting around this. The first is the suggestion diat metaphors are condensed or disguised similes: true or (sometimes) false statements about similarity. The second is the suggestion that a term used in a metaphorical context just has a different literal meaning from the one it has in a sentence intended to be taken literally. Neither is very plausible. The first reduces a metaphorical comparison, "Man is a wolf," to a literal statement of similarity, "Men are like wolves." But what similarity, exactly, is the statement supposed to be asserting? Perhaps that men prey upon one anodier, as wolves are supposed to do. But dien "prey" can only be meant metaphorically, at which point die puzzle revives. As Goodman says of die attempt to find a simile in the metaphorical assertion diat a picture is sad, "What die simile says in effect is that person and picture are alike in being sad, die one literally and the odier metaphorically. Instead of metaphor reducing to simile, simile reduces to metaphor; or radier, the difference between simile and metaphor is negligible." ' 38 Bernard Harrison39 An equally fatal objection to the second suggestion is diat it is only ifwe take die terms which compose a metaphor in their plain everyday senses that they compose a metaphor. As R. M. J. Dammann puts it, "IfGod is a rock in a different sense from that in which Gibraltar is one, then both are really, literally, rocks, just as what one buys in a sweetshop is rock, though a dissatisfied customer might call it such metaphorically."2 It cannot, in odier words, be literally true diat die process of understanding a metaphor involves changing the sense ofits constituent expressions, odierwise metaphor would evaporate in die reader's grasp into literality. What this suggests is diat what makes a sentence metaphorical is not any change in the meaning of its constituent expressions, but the way in which those expressions, with dieir plain everyday meanings, are combined in the sentence. What we need, perhaps, ifwe are to begin to understand metaphor, is not a dieory ofmetaphorical meaning, but an account of what it is to assert metaphorically: an account, diat is, which would operate at the level of die sentence rather than at diat of die word. But this returns us to Frege's two doctrines. If the meaning of a word is to be wholly identified with die contribution it makes to die determination of a truth value for each sentence in which it occurs, dien it is difficult to see how the constituents of a sentence could determine anything odier than a plain, literal meaning for the sentence as a whole. What I shall try to show in this essay is that this difficulty can be overcome : that we can give a satisfactory account of the semantic mechanisms of metaphor without giving up either of Frege's doctrines. As Frege thought, understanding a sentence is knowing how to set about establishing the truth or falsity ofassertions couched in diose words. But to say what, exacdy, someone knows in knowing diat demands, I shall argue, a more complicated story than Fregeans have supposed. First, diough, I want to consider a more radical strategy dian mine for squaring Frege's doctrines with our experience of metaphor, proposed by Donald Davidson.3 Davidson holds widi Frege that the... (shrink)

In recent issues of this journal, Roger Scruton and Malcolm Budd have debated the question whether hearing a melody in a sequence of sounds necessarily involves an ‘unasserted thought’ about spatial movement. According to Scruton, the answer is ‘yes’; according to Budd, the answer is ‘no’. The conclusion of this paper is that, while Budd may have underestimated the viability of Scruton's thesis in one of its possible interpretations, there is no good reason to assume that the thesis is (...) class='Hi'>true. Very briefly, the argument for the second part of the conclusion is that we can account for all the data adduced by Scruton in favour of his hypothesis by means of hypotheses that are far less daring. (shrink)

Narrativism, as represented by Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit, can fruitfully be analyzed as an inversion of two brands of positivism. First, narrativist epistemology can be regarded as an inversion of empiricism. Its thesis that narratives function as metaphors which do not possess a cognitive content is built on an empiricist, "picture view" of knowledge. Moreover, all the non-cognitive aspects attributed to narrative as such are dependent on this picture theory of knowledge and a picture theory of representation. Most of (...) the epistemological characteristics that White and Ankersmit attribute to historical narratives therefore share the problems of this picture theory.The article's second thesis is that the theories of narrative explanation can also fruitfully be analyzed as inversions of positivist covering-law theory. Ankersmit's brand of narrativism is the most radical in this respect because it posits an opposition between narrative and causal modes of comprehension while simultaneously eliminating causality from narrativist historical understanding. White's brand of narrativism is more of a hybrid than is Ankersmit's as far as its theory of explanation is concerned; nevertheless, it can also be fruitfully interpreted as an inversion of covering-law theory, replacing it by an indefinite multitude of explanatory strategies.Most of the striking characteristics of both White's and Ankersmit's narrativism presuppose positivism in these two senses, especially their claim that historical narratives have a metaphorical structure and therefore no truth-value. These claims are hard to reconcile with the factual characteristics of debates by historians; this problem can be tracked down to the absence in "metaphorical" narrativism of a conceptual connection between historical narratives and historical research. (shrink)

Dreams are used figuratively throughout Greek literature to refer to something fleeting and/or unreal. In Plato, this metaphorical language is specifically used to describe an epistemological distinction: the one who has false knowledge or opinion is said to be dreaming while the one who has true knowledge is said to be awake. These figures are also central to Philo of Alexandria's philosophical language in De somniis 1-2 and De Iosepho. Although scholars have documented these epistemological metaphors in Plato and (...) related treatments of the concept of sleep in Heraclitus, it has not been discussed in any detail in relation to Philo's treatment of Joseph in these two treatises. In De somniis 1-2, Philo primarily emphasizes his role as a dreamer and thus one incapable of true knowledge. In De Iosepho, Joseph is a dream interpreter who is not only awake but also capable of interpreting the figurative dream of life to which most people are subject. Although some scholars have considered these treatises contradictory in terms of their treatments of Joseph, an analysis of Philo's figurative use of sleep and dreaming reveals that they are a part of a coherent exegetical framework. (shrink)

The language used to talk about computers is uniquely colorful and sometimes extraordinarily difficult. This paper examines ‘computer discourse’ and points out its highly metaphorical nature. While the use of metaphor is unavoidable, it often leads, especially in informal settings, to the mannered use of words we call jargon. Metaphor becomes jargon when it is used too literally in a self-conscious manner. Experts often use their metaphors as though they were literally true. Technical details fall away and (...) the metaphor is taken for the reality it represents. The less expert sometimes mimic the language they hear, in a self-conscious manner, without truly understanding it. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers have discovered that they have a lot to learn from, or at least to ponder about, fiction. Many metaphysicians are attracted to fiction as a model for our talk about purported objects and properties, such as numbers, morality, and possible worlds, without embracing a robust Platonist ontology. In addition, a growing group of philosophers of mind are interested in the implications of our engagement with fiction for our understanding of the mind and emotions: If I don’t believe that (...) Anna Karenina exists, can I really pity her, or hope or desire that she extricate herself from her tragic situation? And why is there no “morality fiction,” analogous to science fiction? I suspect that philosophers have been especially comfortable thinking about fiction because it seems, at least prima facie, to employ the imagination in a way that conforms to a standard model of the mind. Specifically, contemporary philosophers tend to think of imagination as a form of mental pretense. Mental pretense can take two main forms: a cognitive attitude of supposing a set of propositions to be true (make-believe) or else an experiential state of imaging a scenario as if it were before one (imaging). Much of our pretense intertwines the cognitive and experiential modalities, of course. But both share a crucial common feature: all of one’s imaginative effort is invested in pretending that certain contents obtain. In this sense, we can understand imagination as the “offline” simulation of actual beliefs and perceptions (and perhaps other attitudes as well), where we analyze these in the normal way, as states individuated by their attitude and representational content. While I share the burgeoning interest in fiction, I want to suggest that we also have a lot to learn from poetry, and in particular from poetic metaphor. I will argue.. (shrink)

Aristotle asserts in Met. Theta 4 that „if A, then B“ is a consequence of „if A is possible, then B is possible,“ for any sentences A and B. His assertion has often been questioned, or even been suspected to be a crude mistake. After a discussion of a typical objection, it is shown that a plausible reading of Aristotle’s claim is true: The twice occurring „if – then“ has to be understood in the sense of logical entailment, (...) and sentences suitable as substitutes for the variables „A“ and „B“ are required to contain no modal expressions. The claim in question is the converse of the assertion also advanced in Theta 4 that „if A is possible, then B is also possible“ is a consequence of „if A, then B.“ An application of this cognate of pertaining to the incommensurability of a square’s diagonal is expounded. In the final section, the argument advanced by Aristotle himself in defence of is evaluated. (shrink)

Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) has been little used by archaeologists. A key barrier is that current metaphor analysis relies on linguistic evidence, a resource that archaeologists rarely have. Methods for interpreting entirely “material metaphors” have yet to develop. This article explores CMT in a domain of long-standing archaeological interest: settlement structure. Anthropologists have long recognized that hunter-gatherers place their dwellings close to those they are close to socially, usually their kin. Archaeologists have assumed the same holds true (...) for prehistory—although without direct evidence. This article explains why people consistently associate with their kin this way, and how the metaphor, “SOCIAL DISTANCE IS PHYSICAL DISTANCE,” structures hunter-gatherer campsites worldwide. Archaeologists can infer the existence of this metaphor in the archaeological record without linguistic support. Furthermore, they can assume it exists in all human societies for as long as human brains have been wired up as they currently are. (shrink)

Natural selection in the sense of Darwin always means physical propagation (positive case) or disappearance (negative case) of living organisms due to differential reproduction. If one concentrates on this simple materialist principle, one arrives at a much better method of discerning true selection processes from largely nonrandom processes of internal rearrangement (somatic mutations) and reorganisation (operant learning).