Non-cognitivists about metaphor deny that metaphors like “No man is an island” are meaningful apart from their literal content. Cognitivists argue that metaphors do have additional meaning. One argument for this is evidence from cases where metaphors seem to interact with compositional semantics, such as being embedded under propositional attitudes. Recently, Ernie Lepore and Matt Stone have given a response to this argument in the form of non-cognitivist truth conditions for such cases. I argue that their response fails (...) to account for the variety of ways we use metaphors to report people’s thoughts. (shrink)

This paper examines the mechanisms involved in the interpretation of utterances that are both metaphorical and ironical. For example, when uttering 'He's a real number-cruncher' about a total illiterate in maths, the speaker uses a metaphor with an ironic intent. I argue that in such cases both logically and psychologically, the metaphor is prior to irony. I hold that the phenomenon is then one of ironic metaphor, which puts a metaphorical meaning to ironic use, rather than an (...) irony used metaphorically (§1). This result is then used to argue for the claim that in metaphor, it is metaphorical, not literal, meaning that determines the utterance‘s truth conditions. Gricean accounts, which exclude metaphorical meaning from truth conditional content and rely entirely on conversational implicature, are seen to be unsatisfactory. Five contextualist arguments are briefly discussed to the conclusion that metaphorical content is part of truth-conditional content, rather than implicated (§2). (shrink)

In metaphor we appropriate the literal meanings of words, and use them in ways that do not correspond to their functions. I develop this way of understanding metaphor and situate it within a general functional account of literal word meaning. I show how metaphor can be understood within this framework. I address disagreement with metaphors and the role of logically embedded metaphors, and I show how an appropriation understanding of metaphor yields an explanation of these (...) phenomena.Many artifacts have functions that derive in part from the intentions that result in their creation. For example, a coffeemaker has the function of making coffee, which it has partly because someone intended it to make coffee, and this .. (shrink)

This book deals with the complicated realm of metaphor, an enigma deeply embedded in language and cognition. There has been much discussion of metaphor in the past, but it was characterized by a certain fragmentation and lacked interdisciplinarity. In this field of study, the dominance of Cognitive Linguistics, epitomized by the Conceptual Metaphor Theory of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, has caused the marginalization of alternative perspectives. To fill this gap, this book embarks on an interdisciplinary (...) journey, inviting different theoretical frameworks to engage in a fruitful dialog. It navigates the labyrinth of theories and illuminates the nuanced facets of metaphor. At the center of this exploration are three central questions: whether metaphor belongs to the realm of style or thought, the intricate interplays between literal and metaphorical meanings and the integration of propositional and non-propositional elements in the construction of metaphorical meaning. Through a careful blend of historical analysis and contemporary hypotheses, the book unravels the complexities of metaphor, considering its evolution across the centuries and the myriad interpretations it evokes. By bringing together work from different fields, it ultimately shows that a definition of metaphor is theory-dependent and that metaphor is not a natural kind, but a complex and multifaceted philosophical concept whose study requires a multi-dimensional approach that transcends narrow theoretical boundaries. In this way, the book explores these considerations’ most important philosophical consequences and offers new insights into this fundamental aspect of human language. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s metaphor of seduction suggests that language catches philosophers in the trap of metaphysics. Nietzsche uses the poetic powers of language to fight against this metaphysical language. However, his use of the metaphor of truth as a woman seems to seduce him back in metaphysics. Metaphors become seductive because of their rhetorical and performative power. One must therefore be wary of the seduction of metaphors when attempting at revaluating the metaphysics of language. Hélène Cixous undertakes such a task, (...) using a poetic language in order to escape the metaphysical dualisms embedded in language without falling back into its traps. (shrink)

We introduce a hitherto overlooked phenomenon in the cognitive and psycholinguistic study of metaphors that we termed imposed metaphoricity. We propose that a metaphorical reading can be imposed on a given expression regardless of its semantic content. We suggest that there is a class of constructions that impose metaphorical interpretation. We present findings from three experiments and from corpus-based analyses that support our proposal. Experiments 1–2 compared interpretations of expressions that can have both a literal and a metaphorical meaning when (...) embedded in a standard metaphorical form and in a form that imposes metaphoricity. In Experiment 3 we examine reaction time to such forms in an attempt to identify interference of form with early metaphorical processing. Two corpus-based analyses characterize the use of these two metaphorical constructions in natural language. We discuss the independence of metaphoricity from semantics, as demonstrated by forms that impose metaphorical interpretations. (shrink)

The distinction between literal and figurative use is well-known and embedded in ‘folk linguistics’. According to folk linguistics, figurative uses deviate from literal ones. But recent work on lexical modulation and polysemy shows that meaning deviation is ubiquitous, even in cases of literal use. Hence, it has been argued, the literal/figurative distinction has no value for theorising about communication. In this paper, we focus on metaphor and argue that here the literal–figurative distinction has theoretical importance. The distinction between (...) literal and metaphorical needs to be captured by our account of communication because literal uses transmit information in a way that metaphorical ones do not. We argue that there is a way to explain the literal/metaphorical distinction that preserves the core of the folk-linguistic idea and gives the distinction theoretical relevance. We propose that literal uses of a word are made with the intention to conform to an established practice of use, while metaphorical uses do not so conform, but depend on this pre-existing practice. Our account can deal with data that are problematic for other theories. A further advantage is that it extends naturally to other non-literal uses of words, including metonymy. (shrink)

The conceptual metaphor “THOUGHT IS FOOD” is exemplified in many verbal expressions. Nevertheless, how food metaphors are realized through the actual dining experience remains unexplored. Based on a food design event called EATAIPEI that took place in the London Design Festival in 2015, one aimed at promoting Taipei as World Design Capital 2016, this article analyzes how the multimodal metaphors of food were creatively represented and elaborated within it. This study proposes an analytical framework that combines insights from cognitive (...) linguistics with an intercultural performative view of food presentation and food metaphor. More specifically, it treats complex metaphors as resulting from the interactions of primary metaphors, proposition schemas and intercultural performance. The multimodal metaphors of food are complex metaphors composed of combined sets of primary metaphors, enriched by schema propositions and embedded within food performance. The experience of eating in the event reactivates the sensorimotor experiences that underpin the complex metaphors. (shrink)

In summary, many extant definitions of the niche concept are based on the geometric metaphor which represents the niche as an object embedded in a geometric space. There are several difficulties with this approach; the activities of organisms are not fully described, certain attributes of the functional aspect of the niche are not represented, the life cycles of organisms are not described, and the heuristic value of the concept diminishes with increasing dimensionality.An alternative and complementary approach to the (...) niche is the linguistic metaphor. This approach is based on the explanatory objective to explain the assembly of the ecosystems of successional seres from species pools and abiotic environmental factors. The linguistic metaphor suggests that a theory of ecosystem assembly is a generative grammar that associates particular species with environmental features. The niche of a particular species is defined in terms of the rules of a generative-transformational grammar used to derive an hierarchically organized description of that species. This approach also has conceptual difficulties: (1) empirically testing competence theories and distinguishing possible and impossible objects (e.g. species and ecosystems) are difficult, (2) evolutionary processes are difficult to incorporate, (3) the mathematical tools associated with grammars do not have the range of applicability of the mathematical tools associated with the geometric metaphor, and (4) the productions (hierarchical trees) of a grammar are not easily visualized.The geometric and linguistic metaphors of the niche should be viewed as complementary pictures of the same object. The geometric representation is most adept at describing community dynamics and stability, niche overlap, and organism response to abiotic environments. The linguistic metaphor represents well organism activities, niche dynamics, and ecosystem assembly. (shrink)

Ecological-cognition approaches share the overall assumption that cognition is enacted, extended, embedded, and embodied. In this article, these basic assumptions are illustrated and critically evaluated from the point of view of gesture and film studies. In a theoretical introduction, the idea of metaphorizing as embodied interactivity is developed and connected with these basic assumptions of an ecological cognition approach to metaphor. Four case studies illustrate how metaphoricity in face-to-face contexts and in film viewing is enacted, extended, embedded, (...) and embodied. Examples from gesturing face-to-face and a case study of a television news report serve to illustrate how metaphors in these ecologies have important common characteristics: they emerge from metaphorizing as embodied interactivity. (shrink)

This article involves a qualitative research undertaken to elucidate how Ukraine’s European identity is constructed by Carl Bildt, Sweden’s Minister for Foreign Affairs. Specifically, the paper’s aim is to identify conceptual metaphors used by Carl Bildt in his political online discourse concerning Ukraine within the timeframe from 1 April 2013 until 1 April 2014. In addition to this objective, the article explores whether or not concepts SELF as the EU and OTHER as non-EU respectively are embedded in conceptual metaphors (...) identified in Bildt’s discoursal space involving Ukraine’s European identity. Results of the data analysis reveal several types of conceptual metaphors which are present in the corpus of Bildt’s online discourse involving Ukraine: “EU as a Path”, “EU as a Nurturant Parent”, “EU as a House”, “Ukraine’s Politics towards EU as a Stock Market Crash”, “Ukraine’s Path to EU as Poland’s EU Path” and “The EU Flag as a Symbol of the Better Future”, respectively. These conceptual metaphors seem to be exacerbated by the presence of the concept SELF. (shrink)

This study investigated the interconnected relationship between playful metaphors and sex jokes at the linguistic, conceptual, and discourse levels. Two ontological conceptual metaphors and two specific-level metaphors emerged. They demonstrated that variations in the form of empty metaphors and the creative invention of metaphors are still fundamentally iconic. The conceptual representation of sex acts is closely related to the cultural and ethnic specificity embedded in folk knowledge, such as food culture, the broader context of the physical environment and historical (...) traditions, and the conception of family relationships. Metaphors in sex stories showed that the shared values of Hakka people have pragmatic and socio-cultural implications. Seen as an in-between other by their blood family and their in-laws’ family, Hakka women are under dual strict cultural disciplines for their expected behaviors as women and for their expected roles as daughters-in-law. Metaphors in sex jokes serve as covert and humorous carriers to get around the uneasiness of socially tabooed and embarrassing topics regarding Hakka women and at the same time maintain relational and social harmony. (shrink)

Phantasmagoria explores ideas of spirit and soul since the Enlightenment; it traces metaphors that have traditionally conveyed the presence of immaterial forces, and reveals how such pagan and Christian imagery about ethereal beings are embedded in a logic of the imagination, clothing spirits in the languages of air, clouds, light and shadow, glass, and ether itself. Moving from Wax to Film, the book also discusses key questions of imagination and cognition, and probes the perceived distinctions between fantasy and deception; (...) it uncovers a host of spirit forms--angels, ghosts, fairies, revenants, and zombies--that are still actively present in contemporary culture. It reveals how their transformations over time illuminate changing ideas about the self. Phantasmagoria also tells the accompanying story about the means used to communicate such ideas, and relates how the new technologies of the Victorian era were applied to figuring the invisible and the impalpable, and how magic lanterns (the phantasmagoria shows themselves), radio, photography and then moving pictures spread ideas about spirit forces. As the story unfolds, the book features the many eminent men and women--scientists and philosophers--who in the Society of Psychical Research applied their considerable energies to the question of other worlds and other states of mind: they staged trance seances in which mediums produced spirit phenomena, including ectoplasm. The book shows how this often embarrassing story connects with some of the important scientific discoveries of a fertile age, in psychology and physics. Over a sequence of twenty-eight chapters, with over thirty illustrations in color and black and white, Phantasmagoria thus tells an unexpected and often uncomfortable story about shifts in thought about consciousness and the individual person, from the first public waxworks portraits at the end of the eighteenth century to stories of hauntings, possession, and loss of self as in the case of the zombie, a popular figure of soulessness, in modern times. (shrink)

Conceptual metaphor theory implies that ubiquitous metaphors become mere descriptions or concepts if they are not embedded in competing discursive communities. This paper demonstrates that weaponiz...

Background Metaphors are central to the human understanding of complex issues; through the immediate associations they evoke and frame problems and suggest solutions. Our suggestion of Music in the Park as a metaphor for health systems reform brings to the forefront the environmentally diverse but bounded spaces of health services that offer a variety of attractors within their confines, while pushing into the background organizational and economic concerns.Reflections Parks, like health services, are embedded in their local landscape, serving (...) their communities, but most importantly parks are public spaces, publically funded, ideally offering universal access and equity and to be shared by all who want to go there.Music, like health, is tangible, technical and scientific, yet ultimately experiential and based on meaning. While it encompasses a wide range of styles and approaches, music making requires as its most important skill active listening which brings with it to be ‘in the moment’, to take personal risks and to draw energy and inspiration from the participants. Hence ‘audiences’ are equally active participants because music only has meaning if it internally resonates with the listener and only can exist in what is a co-constructed experience.Conclusions Music in the Park is a metaphor for primary health care systems based on shared values of experts and unique local communities. Health professionals are players in this arena, who develop and practise the full range of their skills in response to individual and community needs and preferences. Their leadership works through inspiration and empowerment, making patients ‘co-producers’ of their own health and ‘co-shapers’ of their health services. (shrink)

Accepting the idea that the mental representations of concepts, diagrams, relations, plans, etc., are thought-shapers, I suggest going a bit further. Any kind of representation, be it mental or public, i.e., accessible to others, bears thought-shaping potential, albeit not in the same manner. Just as the idea of embodied cognition takes into consideration environmental facilities and obstacles, I suggest investigating thought processes in a broader context, i.e., placing thought-shapers in the context of their formation. I propose that the elements of (...) the above mentioned definition of thought-shapers are built upon a structure that consists of representational skills, means, and institutions. In accordance with the idea of embeddedness and enactment, the need for communication and the given cognitive and physical aptitudes result in different kinds of expression, i.e., different kinds of representations available to others. When an expressional mode solidifies, it opens up new possibilities and limitations. I propose that mundane, almost unnoticeable affordances and their accompanying limits do shape our thoughts thoroughly. In my argument for the thought-shaper potential of the generative technique of public representations, I will delineate a historical overview of representational means in tandem with the main characteristics of different eras’ crucial ideals and patterns of reasoning. I will close the historical overview with a terminological excursion exploring how publicly available representation and mental representation relate to each other and the kinds of ambiguities that accompany the latter term’s use. Accordingly, embedding thought-shapers, I will outline the evolution of different representational techniques and skills. Then, because language is a decisive representational means, I will investigate its orientating and distortive potential. I will rely on some of Bergson’s lesser-known remarks. I will illuminate how ocular-centrism was able to be a decisive metaphor in science and philosophy for long centuries, until recently even. In conclusion, as a case study, I will illuminate how the term “mental representation” as a highly abstract term facilitates and at the same time hinders philosophical and scientific inquiry. (shrink)

If educators presuppose that brain and mind are synonymous, perhaps it is out of necessity. Such an equivalency might be required in order for mind to be accessible, knowable and a ‘thing’ like the brain is. Such a presupposition, that mind is a thing which we can understand nonetheless rests on an insecure foundation. As suggested by philosopher John Searle in the opening quotation, this might explain the historical and present day interest in metaphors of mind, where comparisons to unlike (...) things are used to help philosophers, psychologists, and educators more securely understand how mind really ‘works.’ Educators have an enormous investment in explicating how mind works, as they are required to observe and measure what is going on in the minds of students. In practice, mind has to be a thing for how does one reasonably talk about accomplishing such requirements if mind is merely some philosophical abstraction? This article will explore two metaphors of mind suggesting that embedded within each are presuppositions of epistemological and pedagogical significance. (shrink)

Abstract:This article applies hermeneutics and conceptual metaphor theory to the cross-cultural encounter with China's philosophical metaphors. Philosophical hermeneutics draws attention to the fore-structures of understanding and the traditional horizons that condition interpretations of the world, and to a notion of truth as transformative experience. Conceptual metaphor theory draws attention to the ubiquity of cognitive metaphors as structures of anticipation and sources of meaning. Together they give us a notion of "fore-metaphors" that both condition and enable our encounters with (...) truth and meaning. Chinese philosophy's deeply embedded metaphors—such as water, family, and harmony—have profound implications. Thinking through the eff ects of our fore-metaphors can help overcome the cultural distance separating Western and Chinese philosophies. A hermeneutic attitude of openness and willingness to allow further truth to reform our fore-having could help us understand Chinese metaphors in a fusion of horizons that alters our way of being in the world. (shrink)

In a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, Cpt. Picard is captured and trapped on a planet with an alien captain who speaks a language incompatible with the universal translator, based on their societal historical metaphors. According to Shapiro (2004), the concept of a universal translator removes everything alien from alien languages, and since the Tamarian language refers only to their historical and cultural archetypes, Picard can only establish dialogue by invoking human analogues, such as Gilgamesh. The purpose of this (...) paper is threefold. First, we will tie such communication to standard cognitive models in cognitive linguistics, pioneered by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Lakoff (1987). Second, we will show that metaphorical imaging resembling the Tamarian language is already present in our culture, by analyzing Dawkins's (1982) notion of a meme, who presupposes that memes as cultural living structures physically reside in the brain, and comparing that to a common format of a meme in pop culture. We will also contrast this concept with living natural languages such as Wolaytta, using a great number of proverbs, which can be seen as desemanticized metaphors that are used to embody different domains of the social realm of life (Make et al. 2014). Third, we will compare the notion of such a language with the current state of machine-learning and deep-learning techniques for natural language processing of metaphorical phrases, pinpointing that even deep learning today is powerless without sufficient training datasets (cf. Perifanos et al. 2020) or specific known word contexts and embeddings (Rei et al. 2017), compared to the same situation the universal translator was faced with when dealing with the Tamarian language. (shrink)

On June 26, 2000, President Clinton, together with Francis Collins and Craig Venter, solemnly announced, from the East Room of the White House, that the grand effort to sequence the human genome, the Human Genome Project (HGP), was rapidly nearing its completion. Symbolism abounded. The event was framed as a crucial marker in the history of both humanity and knowledge by explicitly connecting the completion of the HGP with a number of already acknowledged and established scientific highlights. Tensions abounded as (...) well, however, notably between competing metaphors. In the course of the HGP, metaphors had become crucially important in framing and conveying what the HGP was really about. They had proved themselves to be of key importance when it came to defining and explaining the project’s significance for both science and society. Powerful images and metaphors had been deployed in order to secure unprecedented amounts of funding, on the one hand by comparing the HGP to other big technoscientific projects such as space travel, high energy physics, the atomic bomb and a territorial mapping exercise, and on the other hand through the suggestion that, once we have our “blueprint”, “code of codes”, “parts list”, etc. available, cancer genes will no longer have a place to hide. This article sets out to analyze this clash of metaphors, firmly embedded within the HGP but culminating at the press conference, arguing that the June 2000 event is even reminiscent of a somewhat similar event, depicted by a famous altarpiece, ‘The adoration of the Lamb’, on display in Ghent Cathedral and finished more than five centuries before. (shrink)

Arthur Danto’s analytic theory of art relies on a form of artistic interpretation that requires access to the art theoretical concepts of the artworld, ‘an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld’. Art, in what Danto refers to as post-history, has become theoretical, yet it is here contended that his explanation of the artist’s creative style lacks a theoretical dimension. This article examines Danto’s account of style in light of the role the artistic (...) class='Hi'>metaphor plays in the interpretation of the artwork, arguing that it is unable to account for the metaphorical power he claims is embedded within the work of art. An artist’s style issues from a unique perspective, the way an artist inhabits a specific spot in history. Though each person has such a perspective, when applied aesthetically, it is the key to the articulation of a unique historical meaning in the work of art. At the same time, artists’ knowledge of their contribution remains cut off from this perspective, for they are unaware of their self-manifestation of the historical concept of style. This article makes the case that Danto’s notion of style, based on Sartre’s notion of being-for-itself, cannot fulfil the role he allots it in his theory because, at some level, artists must apprehend their style to create a work of art capable of functioning critically as a countertext. It is only through the apprehension of their style, and dialogical activity that takes place between the artist and the beholders, that the unseen body of artworld theory is formed. Without this, when oriented to the aesthetic, style provides no concept or theory for the mind to behold. This article presents an alternative approach to style that recognizes the role of theory in the creation of metaphor, which would circumvent this problem. (shrink)

Parts of the body are often embedded in the structure of compound words, such as heartbreak and brainchild. We explored the relationships between the semantics of compounds and their constituent body parts, asking whether these relationships are largely arbitrary or instead reflect deeper metaphorical mappings shared across languages and cultures. In three studies, we found that U.S. English speakers associated the English translation equivalents of Chinese compounds with their constituent body parts at rates well above chance, even for compounds (...) with highly abstract meanings and even when accounting for the semantic relatedness of the compounds and body parts. English speakers in India and Chinese speakers in Hong Kong showed similar intuitions about these associations. Our results suggest that the structure of compound words can provide insight into cross‐culturally shared ways of connecting meaning to the body. (shrink)

When a word is used metaphorically (for example “walrus” in the sentence “The president is a walrus”), some features of that word's meaning (“very fat,” “slow-moving”) are carried across to the metaphoric interpretation while other features (“has large tusks,” “lives near the north pole”) are not. What happens to these features that relate only to the literal meaning during processing of novel metaphors? In four experiments, the present study examined the role of the feature of physical containment during processing of (...) verbs of physical containment. That feature is used metaphorically to signify difficulty, such as “fenced in” in the sentence “the journalist's opinion was fenced in after the change in regime.” Results of a lexical decision task showed that video clips displaying a ball being trapped by a box facilitated comprehension of verbs of physical containment when the words were presented in isolation. However, when the verbs were embedded in sentences that rendered their interpretation metaphorical in a novel way, no such facilitation was found, as evidenced by two eye-tracking reading studies. We interpret this as suggesting that features that are critical for understanding the encoded meaning of verbs but are not part of the novel metaphoric interpretation are ignored during the construction of metaphorical meaning. Results and limitations of the paradigm are discussed in relation to previous findings in the literature both on metaphor comprehension and on the interaction between language comprehension and the visual world. (shrink)

This article takes ‘measurement’ as a will to determine or fix space and time, which allows for a comparison of ontological models of space and time from Western and Māori traditions. The spirit of ‘measurement’ is concomitantly one of fixing meaning, which is suggested as the essence of the growth of the scientific genre of language that has taken place alongside the growth of science itself, since the European Enlightenment. ‘Measurement’ and ‘metaphor’ are posited as an original binary for (...) classifying thinking and language, updating classical educational models of thought by drawing on recent results in brain and cognitive science, and recognising that basic cognitive resources, such as logic and rationality, power all forms of thinking. The article suggests that the notion of ‘cultural worldview’ may involve different balances of left and right brain thinking, embedded in the discourses, lexicons and grammars of each language, and that Western domination of left brain thinking may be a useful viewpoint on the philosophical dead end of the West. (shrink)

Tackling grand challenges requires coordination and sustained effort among multiple organizations and stakeholders. Yet research on stakeholder theory has been conceptually constrained in capturing this complexity: existing accounts tend to focus either on dyadic level firm–stakeholder ties or on stakeholder networks within which the focal organization is embedded. We suggest that addressing grand challenges requires a more generative conceptualization of organizations and their constituents as stakeholder systems. Using the metaphor of ballet and insights from dance theory, we highlight (...) four defining dimensions of stakeholder systems (two structural and two dyadic); we proceed to offer a dynamic model of how those dimensions may interact and coevolve. Our metaphor and resulting theory of stakeholder systems are thereby well equipped to incorporate the complexity of tackling grand challenges, where many contemporary stakeholder arrangements are oriented around issues rather than firms. (shrink)

The dissertation seeks answers to several foundational questions whose resolution is a necessary prerequisite to the development of a computational theory of metaphor processing. Working within a naturalistic framework, I address three main issues. Does metaphor fall within the domain of semantic theory or pragmatic theory? Is the concept of metaphor embedded in a 'folk' understanding of language and thought, and, if so, will the notion of metaphor-processing figure in any mature scientific psychology? Does the (...) distinction between the metaphorical and the literal inherently involve claims about truth and reference, and, if so, how can this distinction be addressed by a psychology that presupposes methodological solipsism? ;I defend the traditional, Aristotelean view which seeks to analyze both metaphors and similes in terms of underlying statements of comparison. This view implies that metaphors have semantic content, that they can, like literal claims, but true or false. I argue that Donald Davidson's analysis of meaning can, contrary to Davidson's own position, support this Aristotelean comparativist thesis. ;I then conclude that a semantic theory of metaphor must quantify over extra-psychological facts about the world. This raises the problems mentioned above concerning the psychological status of metaphor in a very pressing way. I reject both of the standard responses to these problems, eliminativism and sentential realism, and argue that explanations involving an extra-psychologically individuated type--such as metaphor--can constrain explanations involving a solipsistically individuated type. This offers some hope that an extensional theory of metaphor may be psychologically relevant. ;In Chapter Five I develop such an extensional theory. Through philosophical interpretation of work by some psychologists--principally A. Tversky and A. Ortony--I arrive at a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the metaphoricity of an utterance. This definition constitutes the principal positive accomplishment of the dissertation. ;Chapter Six reviews some unsolved foundational problems for future attention, sets my project in the context of other philosophical work on metaphor, and then looks forward to a computational theory of metaphor processing. (shrink)

David Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics yields a quantum potential, Q. In his early work, the effects of Q are understood in causal terms as acting through a real (quantum) field which pushes particles around. In his later work (with Basil Hiley), the causal understanding of Q appears to have been abandoned. The purpose of this paper is to understand how the use of certain metaphors leads Bohm away from a causal treatment of Q, and to evaluate the use of (...) those metaphors. (shrink)

Compound figures are a rich, and under-explored area for tackling fundamental issues in philosophy of language. This paper explores new ideas about how to explain some features of such figures. We start with an observation from Stern that in ironic-metaphor, metaphor is logically prior to irony in the structure of what is communicated. Call this thesis Logical-MPT. We argue that a speech-act-based explanation of Logical-MPT is to be preferred to a content-based explanation. To create this explanation we draw (...) on Barker’s expressivist speech-act theory, in which speech-acts build on other speech-acts to achieve the desired communicative effects. In particular, we show how Barker’s general ideas explain metaphor as an assertive-act, and irony as a ridiculing-act. We use Barker’s notion of proto-illocutionary-acts to show how metaphorical-acts and ironic-acts can build one on the other. Finally, we show that while an ironic-act can build on a metaphorical-act, a metaphorical-act cannot build on an ironic-act. This restriction on how they can be composed establishes Logical-MPT via a different route. (shrink)

Body metaphors and body fables were frequently used in ancient discourse for social communities and politics. This article will examine a body fable by the Greek fabulist Babrius that has been overlooked in research so far. It shows a remarkable similarity to 1 Corinthians 12 through the use of central terms such as σῶμα and μέλος or personified speaking body parts such as an eye and head. Even if no literary direct dependence is claimed, the text, which was written at (...) about the same time as 1 Corinthians, sheds light on Paul's understanding of the body fable. It becomes apparent, however, that the rhetorical function is fundamentally different in the two texts. Whilst the body fable in Babrius reinforces hierarchical structures, Paul emphasises the equality of the various body parts. The discussion about the 'implicit ethics' of these two texts is hermeneutically embedded in the current Corona crisis and the management of the crisis in different forms of organisation and state. CONTRIBUTION: The contribution makes the overlooked Babrius Fable 134, a body fable in political context, known in New Testament scholarship. A comparison with 1 Corinthians 12 points out that despite close analogies in plot and vocabulary, the message regarding the social structure diverges radically: While Babrius propagates a reinforcement of hierarchical leadership, 1 Corinthians 12 pleads for a community based on equivalence. (shrink)

We think and speak in figures. This is key to our creativity. We re-imagine one thing as another, pretend ourself to be another, do one thing in order to achieve another, or say one thing to mean another. This comes easily because of our abilities both to work out meaning in context and re-purpose words. Figures of speech are tools for this re-purposing. Whether we use metaphor, simile, irony, hyperbole, and litotes individually, or as compound figures, the uses are (...) all rooted in literal meanings. These uses invite us to explore the context to find new meanings, new purposes, beyond the literal. -/- This special issue of Philosophical Studies brings together eight papers on various aspects and applications of figurative speech including: David Hills, Mitch Green, Liz Camp, Ofra Magidor, Larry Horn, Ken Walton, Stephen Barker, and Mihaela Popa-Wyatt. (shrink)

Metaphors are cognitive and linguistic tools that allow reasoning. They enable the understanding of abstract domains via elements borrowed from concrete ones. The underlying mechanism in metaphorical mapping is the manipulation of concepts. This article proposes another view on what concepts are and their role in metaphor and reasoning. That is, based on current neuroscientific and behavioural evidence, it is argued that concepts are grounded in perceptual and motor experience with physical and social environments. This definition of concepts is (...) then embedded in the Structure-Mapping Theory, a model for metaphorical processing and reasoning. The blended view of structure-mapping and embodied cognition offers an insight into the processes through which the target domain of a metaphor is embodied or realised in terms of its base domain. The implications of the proposed embodied SMT model are then discussed and future topics of investigation are outlined. (shrink)

The metaphor of parasites or parasitism has dominated literary critical discourse since the 1970s, prominent examples being Michel Serres in France and J. Hillis Miller in America. In their writings the relationship between text and paratext, literature and criticism, is often likened to that between host and parasite, and can be therefore deconstructed. Their writings, along with those by Derrida, Barthes, and Thom, seem to be suggesting the possibility of a semiotics of parasitism. Unfortunately, none of these writers has (...) drawn enough on the biological foundation of parasitism. Curiously, even in biology, parasitism is already a metaphor through which the signified of an ecological phenomenon involving two organisms is expressed by the signifier of “[eating] food at another’s [side] table”. This paper will make some preliminary remarks on semiotics of parasitism, based on the notions of Umwelt (Jakob von Uexküll) and structural coupling (Maturana and Varela). It will look into the phenomenon of co-evolutionary process in community ecology. With reference to empirical history, the project will briefly surveythe literary and medical praxis of the 17th century England where large number of creative writings referred to the phenomenon of parasitism, which was deeply embedded in religious practice (e.g., the Eucharist) and political life (e.g., the courtier ecology in monarchy) of the times. Finally, it will touch upon the possible ‘parasitic’ relationship between language and biology. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are two camps in narrative theology, "pure" (e.g., Hans Frei) and "impure" (e.g., Paul Ricoeur) narrative theologians. Narrative theology, reflection on religious claims embedded in stories, is one of the most significant currents of late twentieth century thought. H. Richard Niebuhr initiated the conversation when he wrote in 1941 of "The Story of Our Lives." If his theme lay undeveloped for several decades, it burst onto the theological scene in the early 1970s. Demurrers followed, (...) and we now recognize the limits of the metaphor" narrative." Still, scholarly interest has not waned. Books and articles keep coming: on narrative in the Bible, narrative and theology, narrative and morality, narrative tradition, narrative practice, even narrative truth. The conversation, it appears, is as lively as ever. And if it has produced lasting contributions, it is because of the quality of the minds it has managed to attract: Paul Ricoeur, Hans Frei, David Tracy, George Lindbeck, Stanley Hauerwas, Julian Hartt, Sallie McFague, Johann Baptist Metz. (shrink)

This study investigated how Paul’s Jewish background, including some elements of pre-rabbinical Jewish literature, influenced the letter to the Galatians with regard to the concept of adoption (υἱοθεσία) (Gl 4:1–7). As Paul was writing to a Gentile audience, wanting to persuade them to return to the true gospel, metaphors of adoption, embedded in the understanding of the Graeco-Roman household, became effective communication bridges to reach his audience. Within this framework, Israel’s God was depicted as the caring father of the (...) household, who through his son Jesus Christ redeems all human beings from the status of slaves to that of children with full rights of inheritance. Contribution: God’s redemption is not merely a forensic sense of justification but also the imagery of relationship in the household by which God does not merely set one free from sin by securing us through Jesus Christ into the society of the righteous, but also adopts us into his family. (shrink)

This book re-imagines law as ecolaw. The key insight of ecological thinking, that everything is connected to everything else - at least on the earth, and possibly in the cosmos - has become a truism of contemporary theory. Taking this insight as a starting point for understanding law involves suspending theoretical certainties and boundaries. It involves suspending theory itself as a conceptual project and practicing it as an embodied and material project. Although an ecological imagining of law can be metaphorical, (...) and can be highly imaginative and suggestive, this book shows that it is also literal. Law is part of the material 'everything' that is connected to everything else. This means that once the previous certainties of legal thinking have been dismantled, it is after all possible to think of law as 'natural' - as embedded in and emergent from a normative biophysical nature. The book proposes that there exists a natural nomos: animals, plants, and Earth systems that produce their own values and norms from which human norms and laws emerge. This book, then, proposes a new way to understand law, and pursues specific arguments to demonstrate the feasibility of law as ecolaw. Drawing inspiration from current trends in the posthumanities, socio-ecological thought, and developments across the natural sciences in their specific intersections with humanities and social science disciplines, this book will appeal both to legal theorists and to others with interests in these areas. (shrink)

History of philosophy is embedded into the theory of history. Two different philosophies, but we still have similar basic connections between different parts of each philosophy and a closer similarity of these two relativist thinkers. Gadamer, as a disciple of Heidegger, worked out the philosophical hermeneutics (Truth and Method, 1960) established by Heidegger in the early 20s. He embedded his approach of the history of philosophy in his hermeneutics, particularly in his description of history grasped as a chain (...) of historically effected events. Rorty, as a neopragmatist thinker, classified first the philosophers as systematic and edifying in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), but later, in his Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (1989), he already speeks about history of philosophy as the history of metaphors. Despite their differences, it may be proved, on the one hand, that some part of their philosophies is primus inter pares; on the other hand, they both are relativists in some sense, and claim that we can have only narratives about the history of philosophy. (shrink)

How do metaphors and symbols embedded in sacred texts and narratives refigure meaning in the worlds of texts and readers? This is one of the problems that drives Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic theory, where symbolic language moves beyond the constraints of denotation to enable us to interpret human experience in a plurivocal, rather than univocal ways. In my essay I examine Ricoeur's adherence to a disclosive theory of language, borrowed from Heidegger, and argue that it does not provide an adequate (...) theory of linguistic reference. Ricoeur does not give a structural explanation for how it is that the new meaning provided by metaphors actually impacts upon the cognitive dimensions of the interpretive process. I argue that Hegel's analysis of language is stronger in that it includes a discussion of the perceptual and cognitive stages of understanding, which include moments of hermeneutic "reversal"; here we see how it is that language simultaneously refers to and mediates experience. This might become the basis for developing a stronger explanatory model of the refiguring process which Ricoeur describes. (shrink)

Organizational storytelling has been taught for many years in many different places as part of organizational development, organizational change, organizational learning, and business ethics. There has not been any comprehensive framework that addresses sustainability in organizations and so this book develops a new ethics of sustainability for management and organizations. A terrestrial ethics of storymaking is proposed, which responds to Latour's claim that the Terrestrial has become a new decisive political actor in politics. The Terrestrial is born from Gaia, a (...) metaphor for a new look on life on Earth. Gaia situates life in the thin layer of matter that is the surface of the Earth. It entails the view that nature is a process that humans are part of. Storymaking is constructed from Arendt's political philosophy, which is rooted ontologically in the principle of natality: rebirth of life. The term 'storymaking' is developed from Arendt's understanding of storytelling as political action to emphasize not only that stories are spatial, embodied and material practices that are tied to a specific time and space but also that technology is an important dimension in making stories. Stories are thus human practices that apart from meaning making and politics involve the use and manipulation of material and objects, and which are crucial for how a human world is shaped. This human world is furthermore shaped by the rhythms of life embedded in the complex landscapes that humans move through. Storymaking is developed through rethinking the links between the central categories of labor, work, action, and thinking in Arendt's writings. Implications for business ethics are drawn out and a comprehensive ethics framework is constructed that connects the biological and physical with the social, economic, and political regarding how organizations work. Finally, a storymaking philosophy of management is constructed, making this book especially relevant to researchers, academics, managers, and students in the fields of business ethics, management studies, leadership, organizational studies, and international business. (shrink)

On the Origin of Objects is the culmination of Brian Cantwell Smith's decade-long investigation into the philosophical and metaphysical foundations of computation, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. Based on a sustained critique of the formal tradition that underlies the reigning views, he presents an argument for an embedded, participatory, "irreductionist," metaphysical alternative. Smith seeks nothing less than to revise our understanding not only of the machines we build but also of the world with which they interact. Smith's ambitious project (...) begins as a search for a comprehensive theory of computation, able to do empirical justice to practice and conceptual justice to the computational theory of mind. A rigorous commitment to these two criteria ultimately leads him to recommend a radical overhaul of our traditional conception of metaphysics. Everything that exists - objects, properties, life, practice - lies Smith claims in the "middle distance," an intermediate realm of partial engagement with and partial separation from, the enveloping world. Patterns of separation and engagement are taken to underlie a single notion unifying representation and ontology: that of subjects' "registration" of the world around them. Along the way, Smith offers many fascinating ideas: the distinction between particularity and individuality, the methodological notion of an "inscription error," an argument that there are no individualswithin physics, various deconstructions of the type-instance distinction, an analysis of formality as overly disconnected ("discreteness run amok"), a conception of the boundaries of objects as properties of unruly interactions between objects and subjects, an argument for the theoretical centrality of reference preservation, and a theatrical, acrobatic metaphor for the contortions involved in the preservation of reference and resultant stabilization of objects. Sidebars and diagrams throughout the book help clarify and guide Smith's highly original and compelling argument. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

According to the Value-Neutrality Thesis, technology is morally and politically neutral, neither good nor bad. A knife may be put to bad use to murder an innocent person or to good use to peel an apple for a starving person, but the knife itself is a mere instrument, not a proper subject for moral or political evaluation. While contemporary philosophers of technology widely reject the VNT, it remains unclear whether claims about values in technology are just a figure of speech (...) or nontrivial empirical claims with genuine factual content and real-world implications. This paper provides the missing argument. I argue that by virtue of their material properties, technological artifacts are part of the normative order rather than external to it. I illustrate how values can be empirically identified in technology. The reason why value-talk is not trivial or metaphorical is that due to the endurance and longevity of technological artifacts, values embedded in them have long-term implications that surpass their designers and builders. I further argue that taking sides in this debate has real-world implications in the form of moral constraints on the development of technology. (shrink)

Category mistakes are sentences such as ‘Colourless green ideas sleep furiously’ or ‘The theory of relativity is eating breakfast’. Such sentences are highly anomalous, and this has led a large number of linguists and philosophers to conclude that they are meaningless (call this ‘the meaninglessness view’). In this paper I argue that the meaninglessness view is incorrect and category mistakes are meaningful. I provide four arguments against the meaninglessness view: in Sect. 2, an argument concerning compositionality with respect to category (...) mistakes; in Sect. 3 an argument concerning synonymy facts of category mistakes; in Sect. 4 concerning embeddings of category mistakes in propositional attitude ascriptions; and in Sect. 5 concerning the uses of category mistakes in metaphors. Having presented these arguments, in Sect. 6 I briefly discuss some of the positive motivations for accepting the meaninglessness view and argue that they are unconvincing. I conclude that the meaninglessness view ought to be rejected. (shrink)

Joel Katzav’s article describes and explains the realist perspectivist views of Grace de Laguna, showing the distinctiveness of her positions in a number of fields. My focus will be on her views of the self and persons, and how they are embedded in their communities, experience emotions, and develop morality. As Katzav outlines, de Laguna’s position can be characterized as a form of speculative philosophy that develops an ontology of modes of being. Katzav sees speculative philosophy and naturalism intertwining (...) in her work as de Laguna extends and criticizes science (the speculative aspect) as well as drawing on it (the naturalistic aspect). De Laguna’s project is to create a philosophical system that can be communicated to others. This system, according to Katzav, uses imagination, metaphor, and paradoxical formulations, such as ‘qualitative uniqueness’ to describe individuality, in a way that is common in continental philosophy. My commentary examines de Laguna’s views as they are set out by Katzav and suggests how his article opens up lines of philosophical inquiry concerning the self, community and morality. De Laguna’s views on these issues can also usefully be compared to those of Hannah Arendt to see how her articulation of these themes intersects with and differs from Arendt’s ideas. (shrink)