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Metaphor

jdrw
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Posted 11/12/07 - 09:56 AM:	#26
Dunamis wrote: The point is that there is something resistant to literalization in metaphors (not utterly impervious to it), and that this integral to metaphors working as metaphors, something Davidson calls their "eternal youth" (he is being metaphorical, and perhaps even a little humourous, here). What�s �resistant to literalization in metaphors� is very simply the listener/reader�s immediate recognition that the language doesn�t make sense as a literal expression, and therefore is probably intended to be interpreted as a figurative expression. And specifically what doesn�t make sense is that the predicate cluster normally associated with one term (wolves) is not ascribable in its entirety to the other term (men.) Davidson claims that therefore the expression is false. But because of the patent falsity of a literal interpretation of the claim, most people infer that ascription in its entirely of the predicate cluster normally associated with wolves to men must not what the author had in mind. And instead of just dismissing the language as false, they attempt to construct meaning by inferring which wolf predicates the author might have had in mind as being applicable to men. Cheers. jd
_____________________ OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.

Dunamis
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Posted 11/12/07 - 10:16 AM:	#27
jdrw wrote: What's "resistant to literalization in metaphors" is very simply the listener/reader's immediate recognition that the language doesn't make sense as a literal expression, and therefore is probably intended to be interpreted as a figurative expression. Yes. And hence Davidson's stress that the meaning of metaphors is most often literally false. And specifically what doesn't make sense is that the predicate cluster normally associated with one term (wolves) is not ascribable in its entirety to the other term (men.) I don't know what purpose a "predicate cluster" serves. The purposes of your "predicate cluster" seems to be simply the possibility of later making literal connections between two things. One does not compare the "predicate cluster" of "men" to the "predicate cluster" of wolves, weigh the entirety of each, and then say "ah ha! This must be a metaphor!" This seems like a very unwieldy, and not an illuminating description. (In otherwords I have no idea what it adds.) Davidson claims that therefore the expression is false. But because of the patent falsity of a literal interpretation of the claim, most people infer that ascription in its entirely of the predicate cluster normally associated with wolves to men must not what the author had in mind. And instead of just dismissing the language as false, they attempt to construct meaning by inferring which wolf predicates the author might have had in mind as being applicable to men. The falseness of the statement certainly seems to have a heavy role in how metaphors work, but I really don't think that "predicate clusters" is a sufficient description of the process. Instead I think it better to say that one is invited to see something as a something else (this is contrasted by Wittgenstein to "seeing that"). This "seeing as" is I think a much more affective kind of transposition, much less analytical than "predicate cluster" attribution (though analytics can follow from it). If I say "see men as wolves" I think primarily I am asking you to feel about them as you feel about wolves, to put yourself in affective states that you might have towards wolves. But much of this occurs far below linguistic attribution. If I tell you to think of a picture of a wolf there is an affective response, a shifting of the affective states which the image triggers. Now think of a man as a wolf. These affective states are in a way grafted onto a man. You can then from this make up predicates of description, but this process of seeing as is not really a predicative process. I think the power of metaphors is that they operate actually far below the predicative level. They invite a bodily perception of a thing that creates tides far more powerful than "oh, wolves travel in packs," "oh, men make friends among themselves". They are building affective sympathies which then ground attributions. For this reason I think it a mistake to imagine that there are specific predicate attributions that the author has in mind, specific predicates which would constitute the "getting it right" of understanding a metaphor. There may be, but there may not be. Yeats may have had cloth-like properties in mind as to the sea, or he may not have. It is actually the non-predicative process of affinity perception that makes metphors so resistant to literalization. And this I think is why so much of ideological speech is metaphorical. It grounds the qualities of persons or behaviours in an affective "seeing as" which although can give rise to predicate attribution, is not predicate attribution. It is not controvertable. Edited by Dunamis on 11/12/07 - 10:51 AM
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

jdrw
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Posted 11/12/07 - 12:25 PM:	#28
Dunamis wrote: Yes. And hence Davidson's stress that the meaning of metaphors is most often literally false. To call non-literal language �literally false� strikes me as pointless. One cannot meaningfully judge a proposition to be false unless one understands what predicates are being ascribed to the referent. If we do not know what predicates are being ascribed to the referent, then what is it that we are judging to be false? I don't know what purpose a "predicate cluster" serves. The purposes of your "predicate cluster" seems to be simply the possibility of later making literal connections between two things. One does not compare the "predicate cluster" of "men" to the "predicate cluster" of wolves, weigh the entirety of each, and then say "ah ha! This must be a metaphor!" This seems like a very unwieldy, and not an illuminating description. (In otherwords I have no idea what it adds.) The situation is not that we run through the entire possible predicate cluster for wolves, exhaustively comparing it with the entire predicate cluster for men. Our brains are evolved to perform instant comparisons of predicates, usually sensory input, most of which processing goes on at non-conscious levels. This is how we navigate our way through the world. The common remembered predicates that most people have for wolves very quickly are understood not to match up well with the common remembered predicates for men. This mismatch realization is immediate, and we realize then that the language we are processing is probably not meant to be processed as literal language, but rather as figurative language. The falseness of the statement certainly seems to have a heavy role in how metaphors work, but I really don't think that "predicate clusters" is a sufficient description of the process. Instead I think it better to say that one is invited to see something as a something else. This "seeing as" is I think a much more affective kind of transposition, much less analytical than "predicate cluster" attribution (though analytics can follow from it). If I say "see men as wolves" I think primarily I am asking you to feel about them as you feel about wolves, to put yourself in affective states that you might have towards wolves. But much of this occurs far below linguistic attribution. If I tell you to think of a picture of a wolf there is an affective response, a shifting of the affective states which the image triggers. The primary intention of a speaker of any statement might be to elicit an affective response in the listener. And surely affective and evaluative responses are going to be part of the response of anyone. But these affective and evaluative responses are based on the particular predicates that come to mind in the reader/listener as he processes the language. The mental �picture� you speak of essentially is the indeterminate cluster of predicates that I've been talking about. The particular affective state elicited by the mental picture of a wolf doesn�t come out of nowhere randomly, it is whatever it is because of the.predicates a person has learned to associate with the word �wolf.� The affective state that a particular person will experience will be a function of which particular wolf predicates fire up in his brain/mind upon processing the expression. Predicates such as �wild, predator, threatening, voracious, �� surely will spontaneously elicit different affective states than predicates such as �awesome, intelligent, domesticable, demonized ..." . Now think of a man as a wolf. These affective states are in a way grafted onto a man. I agree that the affective states likely will be grafted onto the man. But this is because the wolf predicates on which those affective states are based are understood to apply to the man. You can then from this make up predicates of description, but this process of seeing as is not really a predicative process. I think the power of metaphors is that they operate actually far below the predicative level. They invite a bodily perception of a thing that creates tides far more powerful than "oh, wolves travel in packs," "oh, men make friends among themselves". They are building affective sympathies which then ground attributions. For this reason I think it a mistake to imagine that there are specific predicate attributions that the author has in mind, specific predicates which would constitute the "getting it right" of understanding a metaphor. There may be, but there may not be. Yeats may have had cloth-like properties in mind as to the sea, or he may not have. It is actually the non-predicative process of affinity perception that makes metphors so resistant to literalization. And this I think is why so much of ideological speech is metaphorical. It grounds the qualities of persons or behaviours in an affective "seeing as" which although can give rise to predicate attribution, is not predicate attribution. It is not controvertable. �Seeing as� means firing up certain predicates in one�s brain/mind. One can see men as wolves, or see men as children of God, or see men as scum, depending on which predicates are fired up and emphasized, and which predicates are suppressed or ignored. And the particular affective state that one will experience will be a function of which particular predicates are activated. Cheers. jd
_____________________ OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.

Tsunami
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Posted 11/12/07 - 01:04 PM:	#29
jdrw, Your comments against Davidson are mostly ungrounded. When I speak of fuzziness, I speak of fuzzy logic. Do you mean the same? Even when there is a common ground, your model should show how some people are able to 'understand' a certain metaphor, whereas others do not. Clearly, there is some sort of different valuation of fuzzy criteria going on, if the fuzzy model is going to hold. In your argument this seems to be the 'being interesting in some way' : you have not yet shown how something is made to be interesting. As I said, a fuzzy rule base model will have many problems, ones you haven't yet started to solve. I'm very confident that you will run into issues which complicate your position, and that you will have to take a more nuanciated view compared to Davidson in the process. jdrw wrote: Whether a given expression is meant as literal or as metaphorical is a matter of the intent of the speaker Certainly not. When I hear someone say: "I'm in love with the sun", it's not a matter of the speaker's intent that I interpret it as literal or figurative. jdrw wrote: And of course the listener can interpret/misinterpret the speaker's intent either way, too. So what you mean is that the literal/figurative switch is both in the speaker as in the listener. I think choosing "intent" as your agent is a bad bad choice for that. Do I intend to interpret a metaphor in a certain way? Is this a conscious affair? If it is not, why speak of intent? jdrw wrote: We can revive an understanding of the metaphorical use of an expression at any time, of course, but once we are accustomed to the expression being used literally with an unambiguous referent, this revival of understanding the metaphorical heritage is interesting, and perhaps elicits an aesthetic appreciation—but it is not very relevant to the meaning in the current usage of the expression. .. duh. You are evading the issue if you talk about "what's relevant to the meaning". Of course, when given a fixed list of predicates that describe a supposed expression's meaning, only those predicates count, and the entire idea of use and deviating interpretations becomes irrelevant. But what we are talking about, is whether metaphors, when dead, are so because of repeated use, or because of their being established as a meaning. The latter is not so hard to do: define the 'meaning' of the metaphor, and falsify all deviations from this. All your examples of dead metaphors can easily be explained as such. Again, none of your proposals has 'added' to the meaning-use model in my view.
_____________________ "it's when a philosopher has no more problems that the next philosopher is about to arrive." Gilles Deleuze "information is endlessly available to us. Where shall wisdom be found?" Harold Bloom "The feeling of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions. Doubt never has such an effect." -- Charles Sanders Peirce

Dunamis
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Posted 11/12/07 - 01:11 PM:	#30
jdrw wrote: To call non-literal language "literally false" strikes me as pointless. Not if one is attempting to define "meaning" under an auspice of "true", which is what Davidson is after. The situation is not that we run through the entire possible predicate cluster for wolves, exhaustively comparing it with the entire predicate cluster for men. Our brains are evolved to perform instant comparisons of predicates, usually sensory input, most of which processing goes on at non-conscious levels. These are not "predicates" unless they are predications. Now you want to say that there are all kinds of unconscious uses of language, attributions of predicates? The next thing that you are going to tell me is that when my dog barks at the man at the door he is "unconsciously" predicating "There is a man at the door". The fact is, "predication" is a description, not an mental process that defines perception. The primary intention of a speaker of any statement might be to elicit an affective response in the listener. And surely affective and evaluative responses are going to be part of the response of anyone. But these affective and evaluative responses are based on the particular predicates that come to mind in the reader/listener as he processes the language.. When a wolf comes to my mind, I am not "predicating" a wolf. I might picture the color of his fur, but I am not "predicating" his fur. This is a huge stretch, one that I don't think is helpful. "I feel the same way about my love as I do about the sea" does not mean "I predicate my love much in the same way that I predicate the sea". The particular affective state elicited by the mental picture of a wolf doesn't come out of nowhere randomly, it is whatever it is because of the.predicates a person has learned to associate with the word "wolf." The choice is not between "nowhere randomly" and "whatever predicate a person has learned". False dichotomy. Have I "learned" to predicate the sea in a particular way? How silly. What happens if I come to [randomly, creatively] predicate the sea in another way? Did I learn this? How about I just imagine the sea, and imagining it affects me. End of story. I am not predicating the sea when I imagine it. I agree that the affective states likely will be grafted onto the man. But this is because the wolf predicates on which those affective states are based are understood to apply to the man. Your use of "predicate" makes no sense to me, other than the desire of yours to insist upon it. "Seeing as" means firing up certain predicates in one's brain/mind. Sorry, this sentence seems ridiculous to me. Really sorry. "Firing up predicates"??? When a dog sees a person as a threat is it "firing up predicates"? Like a dog, we can see things as in a sublinguistic manner. We may use predicates to describe what we experience to others (or ourselves), but we don't have to "fire up predicates" any more than my dog does. I do appreciate your thoughts. I like the way you think. But I sense it really is going to come down to this: you insisting that certain mental acts have to be described without fail as "predication" or "firing up predicates" and me saying that the perceptions themselves, the experience of affects don't have to be describe this way at all, in fact to do so is misleading. Because this is a bit like arguing what is happening in the black box, it is a bit fruitless. Because predication is a more abstract, higher level linguistic process, it seems to me that we really have to refrain from such except in cases when it is plain that such a thing is happening, such as when we are actively using language to describe things in a literal manner. In fact, even though we are language users, I think that like animals who do not have language, we organize our worlds in many sublinguistic ways. Now metaphors seem to operate in both domains, the linguistic and the affective. But I think it wrong, in fact inappropriately wrong, to ground metaphorical use within an active mental event of predication (conscious or even more problematically, unconsciously). Instead, what metaphors seem to do is prior to, or beneath predication, though it can lead to it. I am sure that you will read this and insist that the human mind is a predication machine which in all its perceptions of the world has to "fire up" its predications. This simply makes no sense to me. Again sorry. Edited by Dunamis on 11/12/07 - 01:33 PM
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

jdrw
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Posted 11/12/07 - 01:35 PM:	#31
Dunamis, By "predicate" all I have meant is a quality, attribute, property, feature, characteristic, trait � that would serve as a predicate in a proposition. The sort of things that you talk about �picturing.�
_____________________ OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.

Dunamis
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Posted 11/12/07 - 01:48 PM:	#32
jdrw wrote: Dunamis, By "predicate" all I have meant is a quality, attribute, property, feature, characteristic, trait … that would serve as a predicate in a proposition. The sort of things that you talk about "picturing." These are descriptions, the breaking down of an experience into linguistically identifable parts. But it makes little sense that organizational experience is reducible to those parts. It isn't for animals, who possess no language, so I don't really think that it is for us as well. Animals may very well respond to, organize their behaviour around certain features, or qualities of the world (by our description), but I think it to be a huge mistake to say that they "predicating" these distinctions. Perhaps I am making too much of your use of this term, but it is a very grammatical, very linguistic term, and thus I find it misleading. It calls to mind the very problematic idea that perception is a kind of hypothetical compilation of "x is y" sentences, which is to my ear an absurd way to describe perceptual experiences. A "trait" might shimmer before my mind when I make a metaphor, (but again it might not). I don't think though, if it does, I am predicating this trait. I could be utterly failing to understand what you mean by the term though. In addition to this, (and I'm not sure if you are suggesting this), finding whatever trait or traits that may be in the mind (or may not be, in the case of unconscious effects) of the author of a metaphor I don't think we can say is the way that "getting" a metaphor is defined. I may have in my mind all kinds of traits and effects Yeats never consciously thought of, and still "get" his metaphor. He might even say that I got it better than he did.
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

jdrw
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Posted 11/12/07 - 03:02 PM:	#33
Tsunami wrote: When I speak of fuzziness, I speak of fuzzy logic. Do you mean the same? Even when there is a common ground, your model should show how some people are able to 'understand' a certain metaphor, whereas others do not. Clearly, there is some sort of different valuation of fuzzy criteria going on, if the fuzzy model is going to hold. In your argument this seems to be the 'being interesting in some way' : you have not yet shown how something is made to be interesting. As I said, a fuzzy rule base model will have many problems, ones you haven't yet started to solve. I'm very confident that you will run into issues which complicate your position, and that you will have to take a more nuanciated view compared to Davidson in the process. I have deliberately avoided using the concept of set because of the formal implications. What do you find so confusing about construing the situation as one in which different individuals associate unique clusters of predicates with a word/concept, but a core group of the predicates in each individual�s cluster appear also as the core group of predicates in the clusters of virtually all speakers of the language? That is, speakers of a language associate roughly the same core group of predicates with a word, but each individual also associates other predicates not necessarily widely shared. Any number of research studies have shown that when people are given a word and asked to quickly list attributes associated with that word, regular patterns of shared groups of these associated attributes emerge. These groups of words do not constitute a rigorously defined set. There are attributes that appear in virtually everyone�s list, and there are attributes that appear in only single lists. And there are attributes that appear, for example, in 60% of the lists, and others that appear in 20% of the lists, and others that appear in 10% of the lists, and others that appear in just a few of the lists. And sometimes there are no words that appear in 100% of the lists. This is the sort of thing that I meant by �fuzzy-bounded.� Tsunami wrote: jdrw wrote: Whether a given expression is meant as literal or as metaphorical is a matter of the intent of the speaker Certainly not. When I hear someone say: "I'm in love with the sun", it's not a matter of the speaker's intent that I interpret it as literal or figurative. I said: Whether a given expression is MEANT as literal or metaphorical is a matter of the intent of the speaker. The point being emphasized is that meaning is in people, not in words. The person who constructs the language expression at issue has some meaning in mind when he constructs that expression. The speaker means the expression literally or he means it figuratively. As I clearly went on to say, whether or not that expression is INTERPRETED as literal or metaphorical is a matter for the INTERPRETER to decide. So what you mean is that the literal/figurative switch is both in the speaker as in the listener. I think choosing "intent" as your agent is a bad bad choice for that. Do I intend to interpret a metaphor in a certain way? Is this a conscious affair? If it is not, why speak of intent? It�s not a �switch��it�s two different possible ways of constructing and of interpreting meaning. The meaning of an expression can be intended by the speaker to be literal or figurative, and the meaning can be interpreted literally or figuratively by the listener. Once a language expression has been uttered or written, all listeners/readers have to decide for themselves whether to interpret it literally or figuratively. .. duh. This kind of smug discourteousness reveals far more about yourself than it does about what I�d written. I was doing my best to intelligently respond to your claim about dead metaphors being �brought to life.� But what we are talking about, is whether metaphors, when dead, are so because of repeated use, or because of their being established as a meaning. Repeated use results in established meaning. Established meaning comes about by repeated use. Metaphors die when the language is repeatedly used to unambiguously refer to something. The established meaning of �mouth of a river� became established by repeated use of the expression. Repeated use of the expression resulted in the established meaning. And the established meaning now is no longer metaphorical, it is the literal name of a place. Cheers. jd
_____________________ OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.

jdrw
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Posted 11/12/07 - 04:43 PM:	#34
Dunamis wrote: These are descriptions, the breaking down of an experience into linguistically identifable parts. But it makes little sense that organizational experience is reducible to those parts. It isn't for animals, who possess no language, so I don't really think that it is for us as well. Animals may very well respond to, organize their behaviour around certain features, or qualities of the world (by our description), but I think it to be a huge mistake to say that they "predicating" these distinctions. Perhaps I am making too much of your use of this term, but it is a very grammatical, very linguistic term, and thus I find it misleading. It calls to mind the very problematic idea that perception is a kind of hypothetical compilation of "x is y" sentences, which is to my ear an absurd way to describe perceptual experiences. A "trait" might shimmer before my mind when I make a metaphor, (but again it might not). I don't think though, if it does, I am predicating this trait. I could be utterly failing to understand what you mean by the term though. In addition to this, (and I'm not sure if you are suggesting this), finding whatever trait or traits that may be in the mind (or may not be, in the case of unconscious effects) of the author of a metaphor I don't think we can say is the way that "getting" a metaphor is defined. I may have in my mind all kinds of traits and effects Yeats never consciously thought of, and still "get" his metaphor. He might even say that I got it better than he did. For your benefit I�m using �attributes� rather than �predicates.� And I think nearly every time I�ve written �predicate� in this thread I could live happily with �attribute.� Although we have language for many attributes, I think that there�s an experiential sense in which they precede language. As I said, discriminating similarities and differences, the heart of metaphorical thinking, is an ability found in neuro systems far more primitive than ours. Language is based on rudimentary brain processes. Language reflects the way our brains work, and is based on the way our brains work. We have language for discreet objects and physical properties and attributes not because language creates discreet objects and physical properties and attributes, but because our brains process our interaction with the environment in such a way that we discriminate discrete objects and physical properties and attributes. Then we assign language to these things. These abilities can readily be demonstrated to precede language by study of infants and other primates and animals. Just to short circuit an objection, it also happens to some degree that our language, once we�ve acquired one, can have a large influence on shaping our experiences and on cognitive constructions and on how we use language itself. Our experiences are largely a function of what we attend to in the environment, and language and concepts constructed from language can influence what we attend to and what we ignore and how we construct our experiences. But the basics, the primitives from which concepts and language arise are prelingual brain processes and patterns. If we were to ask thousands of people to quickly list as many attributes that come to mind when they think of wolves as they can think of, we would find some distinct patterns. One would be that few if any of the lists would be exactly identical. Another would be that many of the attributes would appear on virtually all of the lists. Another would be that these attributes that appear on virtually all of the lists would be found mostly among the earliest ones listed on most people�s lists. (These attribute lists correspond to what I�ve called predicate clusters. They are indeterminate, unique, but nonetheless reveal many attributes that appear on virtually everyone�s list. This core group is what allows us to communicate meaning form the mind of the speaker to the minds of listeners. We not only have this core group roughly in common, we all realize that we have it in common when we are talking/writing.) If we told thousands of people that we were analyzing the claim that �Men are wolves� and we wanted them to quickly list the ways in which they thought this could be understood, a very similar thing would happen. In this listing what I think would happen is that people would do roughly the same thing that the people in the first group did, (By and large they�d think first of those attributes I�ve called the �core� attributes of wolves), but as they thought of these attributes one by one they�d judge whether or not each attribute also applied to men. Furthermore, most people would intuitively focus on behaviors rather than on physical descriptions, because they would interpret �men are wolves� to mean that men behave the way wolves behave. A virtually identical exercise is carried out regularly in classrooms in which literature, especially poetry, is being analyzed. Cheers. jd
_____________________ OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.

Tsunami
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Posted 11/13/07 - 04:06 AM:	#35
Wow, I'm discourteous. Let's talk about getting ahead in discussions, not the way I handle my arguments. Unless of course, you wish to function as a moderator in a discussion you are yourself involved in. Again briefly: 1. fuzzy boundaries can be taken over a group of persons, as you seem to do: in that case, you are not saying anything much. After all, I can take fuzzy boundaries over any statistical distribution. Fuzzy boundaries can also be taken over the different functions a word can have for a user in varying contexts. This is what I was hoping you were saying: that different users have different fuzzy boundaries, hence they will have different interpretations of a metaphor because of these different valuations. The statement in itself is easy to make, but the implementation of this idea leads to certain uses, which I hoped you were trying to solve. Anyway. 2. I can imagine that repeatedly using something in a certain way solidifies in meaning (and this probably is one of the main causes of it). Though I'm not sure if you're claiming this as the only way. As I believe that when a use solidifies in meaning, it's not like this meaning is set in stone. That's what happens with the metaphor revival: someone comes in with a new way of handling the dead metaphor, and instantly you have a new use, and the open-endedness of the expression starts all over again. This is in fact very easy: as soon as I am unsure about the exact meaning of the expression, I cannot use it in a 'literal' fashion. (It's very difficult to quantify something as 'exact meaning', knowing that you believe in speaker meaning, and I work with intersubjectivist ideas.) There's a very evident way of 'establishing meaning' that does not come by repeated use : you establish meaning by naming it. "..blablabla... mouth of a river." "Daddy, can the mouth of a river eat you?" "No dear, the mouth of a river is the place where the river becomes the sea." (+additional post-corrections, making sure the kid understands the expression, independent of every context) jdrw wrote: I have deliberately avoided using the concept of set because of the formal implications. What do you find so confusing about construing the situation as one in which different individuals associate unique clusters of predicates with a word/concept, but a core group of the predicates in each individual's cluster appear also as the core group of predicates in the clusters of virtually all speakers of the language? That is, speakers of a language associate roughly the same core group of predicates with a word, but each individual also associates other predicates not necessarily widely shared. Any number of research studies have shown that when people are given a word and asked to quickly list attributes associated with that word, regular patterns of shared groups of these associated attributes emerge. These groups of words do not constitute a rigorously defined set. There are attributes that appear in virtually everyone's list, and there are attributes that appear in only single lists. And there are attributes that appear, for example, in 60% of the lists, and others that appear in 20% of the lists, and others that appear in 10% of the lists, and others that appear in just a few of the lists. And sometimes there are no words that appear in 100% of the lists. This is the sort of thing that I meant by "fuzzy-bounded." I said: Whether a given expression is MEANT as literal or metaphorical is a matter of the intent of the speaker. The point being emphasized is that meaning is in people, not in words. The person who constructs the language expression at issue has some meaning in mind when he constructs that expression. The speaker means the expression literally or he means it figuratively. As I clearly went on to say, whether or not that expression is INTERPRETED as literal or metaphorical is a matter for the INTERPRETER to decide. It's not a "switch"—it's two different possible ways of constructing and of interpreting meaning. The meaning of an expression can be intended by the speaker to be literal or figurative, and the meaning can be interpreted literally or figuratively by the listener. Once a language expression has been uttered or written, all listeners/readers have to decide for themselves whether to interpret it literally or figuratively. This kind of smug discourteousness reveals far more about yourself than it does about what I'd written. I was doing my best to intelligently respond to your claim about dead metaphors being "brought to life." Repeated use results in established meaning. Established meaning comes about by repeated use. Metaphors die when the language is repeatedly used to unambiguously refer to something. The established meaning of "mouth of a river" became established by repeated use of the expression. Repeated use of the expression resulted in the established meaning. And the established meaning now is no longer metaphorical, it is the literal name of a place. Cheers. jd
_____________________ "it's when a philosopher has no more problems that the next philosopher is about to arrive." Gilles Deleuze "information is endlessly available to us. Where shall wisdom be found?" Harold Bloom "The feeling of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions. Doubt never has such an effect." -- Charles Sanders Peirce

jdrw
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Posted 11/13/07 - 06:32 AM:	#36
Tsunami wrote: 2. I can imagine that repeatedly using something in a certain way solidifies in meaning (and this probably is one of the main causes of it). Though I'm not sure if you're claiming this as the only way. I neither said nor meant that repeated use is the only way metaphors lose their metaphorical meaning. In fact, linguists do claim that widespread repeated use is a very typical pattern in which metaphors lose their metaphorical meaning and become conceived of and used literally. The computer metaphors I gave are well-known examples of this. What exactly are you disputing here? As I believe that when a use solidifies in meaning, it's not like this meaning is set in stone. I have not disputed this. No language is set in stone, not even language that was once literally set in stone, as the ancient Hebrews quickly noticed. There's a very evident way of 'establishing meaning' that does not come by repeated use : you establish meaning by naming it. "..blablabla... mouth of a river." "Daddy, can the mouth of a river eat you?" "No dear, the mouth of a river is the place where the river becomes the sea." (+additional post-corrections, making sure the kid understands the expression, independent of every context) Yes, we can teach someone the literal use of an expression that once was a vibrant metaphor. What's your point? I don�t know what �independent of every context� means. Note that what is going on in the �additional post-correction� feedback to the child is a shaping of the meaning and use of language via teaching which predicates are included in the meaning and which predicates are excluded. Understanding the meaning and shared use of an expression involves understanding which predicates people commonly associate with that word. If the child pursued the issue and wanted to know why the place where the river comes to the sea is specifically called the �mouth� of the river, how else besides explaining the ways that that place is like a literal mouth of a person or animal would you explain this? My claim is simply that among all the possible predicates ascribable to a literal human or animal mouth there is a (fuzzy-bounded) subgroup of these that most people would agree can be applied also to the place where the river comes to the ocean. What exactly are you disputing here? Cheers. jd
_____________________ OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.

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Posted 11/13/07 - 07:22 AM:	#37
I'm simply trying to get my hands on your position. Something you obviously assert to is speaker meaning. The speaker judges what applies to a certain expression. The listener does the same. This gives you the problem of figuring out how some sort of meaning can be transferred. You give two arguments: (1) a lot of this interpretation is common between people anyway, (2) We can do this by negotiating theories, ie. teaching. You also assert there is a difference between 'literal interpretation' and 'figural interpretation'. Whereas 'literal interpretation' seems obvious to you, you specify 'figural interpretation' as something where a subset of predicates of the used 'terms' is judged to be relevant. You are not entirely clear about how this difference effectively works: how the choosing of the subset works is 'intuitive' (which I, in Davidsonian terms, term 'context-based'). You also seem to imply that 'literal interpretation' means that 'the whole set of predicates' is used. Relying on (1), you seem to claim that this set of predicates is equal for a lot of terms for a lot of people. You have issues with Davidson calling metaphors false, but I'm letting this pass, because I don't think you understand or care what truth or falsity means within Davidson's model. I believe you would have no issues with it once you understand what he means. Also, I think it solves a problem you have not solved: namely, when something is said to be a 'literal interpretation' (when do we take the whole set of predicates into account). I also have the idea that you think 'predicates' as being something said of expressions can be mapped one-to-one to certain mind states. That's one of your more dangerous points in my view. Another of your more dangerous points is that you keep claiming meaning resides in people, yet you also claim that metaphorical language is highly ambiguous language. What makes it ambiguous is not so clear in your viewpoint, and also not why it keeps being so. You can hardly blame 'a lack of repeated use' alone, as I don't see (for instance) quarks becoming any more metaphorical than they are now. You can't also solve it by pointing to the 'realm of (physical?) associations the speaker connects to the expression' because I can connect far more associations to the word 'sea' than the expanded 'dolphin-torn sea'. There are probably other ways, but they certainly don't go without saying. A problem with a speaker meaning view is where the influence of the world comes in. Apparently, it comes in nowhere. But then one must ask how associations work. I think of different images when I'm on a vacation at the coast then when I'm at work behind my computer; even when in both instances someone utters the words 'dolphin-torn sea'. Dunamis is very right to mention the limits of imagination in this discussion, and I believe you should reread those comments and give them more attention. Mainly for this reason, I think your experiment of metaphor analysis will suffer problems. Conduct the test in red rooms or in blue rooms and different results will appear. Conduct the test twice in the same room, but with a month time interval, and different results will appear. The only 'significant' results that you will get regardless of these contextual influences will be the uninteresting ones: namely that wolves have fur, are (wrongly) considered to be savage beasts, etc etc. Nothing innovative will come out of it. What's more interesting in good literary class analysis is when new interpretations arise, or when interpretations are linked to a personal (and unanalysed) experience. To examine this is hopeless in your model (at least, as long as you stick to your context-free approach). Is it possible to examine the non-metaphorical set of predicates/attributes associated with a metaphor? Yes, but it's doubtlessly true that this set does not describe the metaphor to its full extent. One can hope that it describes the 'majority' of the metaphor: this is making the assumption that common properties of a metaphor are more prominent than small details. It also implies that the influence of the environment is negligible... I think this can be true, in more or less a similar fashion that genetics is true (what I mean is that it is false). The study of and reliance on genetics has had helpful results, and one can hope that the same can be said for the cognitive approach you're suggesting here. But on a philosophical basis I reject it as a model.
_____________________ "it's when a philosopher has no more problems that the next philosopher is about to arrive." Gilles Deleuze "information is endlessly available to us. Where shall wisdom be found?" Harold Bloom "The feeling of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions. Doubt never has such an effect." -- Charles Sanders Peirce

jdrw
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Posted 11/13/07 - 03:52 PM:	#38
Tsunami wrote: Something you obviously assert to is speaker meaning. The speaker judges what applies to a certain expression. The listener does the same. This gives you the problem of figuring out how some sort of meaning can be transferred. You give two arguments: (1) a lot of this interpretation is common between people anyway, (2) We can do this by negotiating theories, ie. teaching. Actually, what I have argued is that meaning of terms is communicated primarily via clusters of predicates that are shared in common among speakers of the language. To understand what others mean by a word is to understand at least a sort of core group of the predicates that are commonly agreed to apply to that word. You also assert there is a difference between 'literal interpretation' and 'figural interpretation'. Whereas 'literal interpretation' seems obvious to you, you specify 'figural interpretation' as something where a subset of predicates of the used 'terms' is judged to be relevant. You are not entirely clear about how this difference effectively works: how the choosing of the subset works is 'intuitive' (which I, in Davidsonian terms, term 'context-based'). What I have clearly said several times is that the relevant predicates in a metaphorical expression are not specified. When someone says �Men are wolves� the expression is highly ambiguous precisely because the relevant wolf predicates that the speaker has in mind are not explicitly specified, and listeners have to infer which wolf predicates the speaker is claiming also to be applicable to men. You also seem to imply that 'literal interpretation' means that 'the whole set of predicates' is used. What I have said several times is that in a literal interpretation speakers of a language already associate a sort of core group of predicates with the term, and it is these that allow for communication that is intended to be interpreted literally. We all know what somebody literally means by �The cat is on the mat� because we all know what a cat is, and what a mat is, and that the preposition �on� indicates a certain spatial relationship of the subject and the object. We know what a �cat� and a �mat� are because through much experience we have learned at least a core set of predicates that people apply to those terms. To know what a word means is to know at least the relevant core (fuzzy) set of predicates that is understood by other speakers of the language to be associated with that word. Relying on (1), you seem to claim that this set of predicates is equal for a lot of terms for a lot of people. Roughly, approximately, more or less held in common among the speakers of a language. I also have the idea that you think 'predicates' as being something said of expressions can be mapped one-to-one to certain mind states. That's one of your more dangerous points in my view. Would you explain what you mean by predicates being �mapped one-to-one to certain mind states� and what you mean by this being �dangerous�? Another of your more dangerous points is that you keep claiming meaning resides in people, yet you also claim that metaphorical language is highly ambiguous language. What makes it ambiguous is not so clear in your viewpoint, and also not why it keeps being so. I have said more times than I can count that what makes metaphorical language ambiguous is that it does not clearly communicate exactly which predicates are being ascribed to the referent. This has been my main point, clearly stated several times. I have also said more than once that since metaphorical thinking can be pre-lingual and largely intuitive, even the author of a metaphorical expression may not himself be explicitly aware of the predicates on which he is basing his metaphor, and this adds to the ambiguity. The ambiguity lies in the fact that the author does not specify exactly which wolf predicates he thinks also are applicable to men. You can hardly blame 'a lack of repeated use' alone, as I don't see (for instance) quarks becoming any more metaphorical than they are now. You can't also solve it by pointing to the 'realm of (physical?) associations the speaker connects to the expression' because I can connect far more associations to the word 'sea' than the expanded 'dolphin-torn sea'. I have no idea what this means. A problem with a speaker meaning view is where the influence of the world comes in. Apparently, it comes in nowhere. I have repeatedly said that one of the fundamental abilities of our brains, and of even far more primitive brains, is to detect similarities and differences in the environment, and that awareness of similarities and differences is exactly what language, including metaphors, is based on. I distinctly said: Linguists and cognitive scientists have claimed that metaphor is not just a mode of language, it is a mode of thinking, and involves patterns of cognitive processing that precede language, patterns that are evident even in far more primitive brains. Metaphors are based on noting similarities and differences, and even the most rudimentary brains function to detect similarities and differences in the environment. But then one must ask how associations work. I think of different images when I'm on a vacation at the coast then when I'm at work behind my computer; even when in both instances someone utters the words 'dolphin-torn sea'. Dunamis is very right to mention the limits of imagination in this discussion, and I believe you should reread those comments and give them more attention. Mainly for this reason, I think your experiment of metaphor analysis will suffer problems. Conduct the test in red rooms or in blue rooms and different results will appear. Conduct the test twice in the same room, but with a month time interval, and different results will appear. The only 'significant' results that you will get regardless of these contextual influences will be the uninteresting ones: namely that wolves have fur, are (wrongly) considered to be savage beasts, etc etc. Nothing innovative will come out of it. Recall that I explicitly addressed these issues when I said that any two people will have entirely unique understandings of any given expression �depending on their individual knowledge, experience, goals, reactivated memories, degree of mental alertness at the moment, situational environmental factors prevailing at the moment, associated emotional aspects, etc. More than one linguist has asserted that no word means the same thing twice.� What allows for communication, however, is that even though everyone�s understanding is unique in the details and exact predicates included, there is a (fuzzy-bounded) core group of predicates that are more or less part of everyone�s understanding of a given term. What's more interesting in good literary class analysis is when new interpretations arise, or when interpretations are linked to a personal (and unanalysed) experience. To examine this is hopeless in your model (at least, as long as you stick to your context-free approach). Of course some interpretations are new or are more interesting than others. My analysis of metaphorical language is not a prescription, it is a description of what I believe goes on in the ordinary construction and in the interpretation of metaphorical expressions. My analysis prohibits nothing. People can and do come up with all sorts of constructions and interpretations of language, whether literal or metaphorical. However, I would claim that the most pertinently interesting interpretations of a given metaphorical expression in a good lit class are interpretations that explicate the many ways that the two terms of the metaphor are alike, which is to say an explication of the many salient predicates shared between them. What else would you claim that interpretation of metaphor could be about if not an analysis and explication of the ways in which the two terms are alike? And how else would they be alike except by sharing certain predicates? Is it possible to examine the non-metaphorical set of predicates/attributes associated with a metaphor? Yes, but it's doubtlessly true that this set does not describe the metaphor to its full extent. One can hope that it describes the 'majority' of the metaphor: this is making the assumption that common properties of a metaphor are more prominent than small details. It also implies that the influence of the environment is negligible... I think this can be true, in more or less a similar fashion that genetics is true (what I mean is that it is false). The study of and reliance on genetics has had helpful results, and one can hope that the same can be said for the cognitive approach you're suggesting here. Sorry, I have no idea what this means. But on a philosophical basis I reject it as a model. Fine. Not a problem. Your rejection would have somewhat more import, however, if your discourse actually revealed that you understood what it is that you are rejecting. Cheers. jd
_____________________ OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.

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Posted 11/18/07 - 01:05 PM:	#39
jdrw wrote: For your benefit I'm using "attributes" rather than "predicates." And I think nearly every time I've written "predicate" in this thread I could live happily with "attribute." I'm sorry I've been away from this thread, but this make no difference to your argument, or to my criticism.
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

moreno
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Posted 11/24/07 - 02:24 PM:	#40
jdrw wrote: What's "resistant to literalization in metaphors" is very simply the listener/reader's immediate recognition that the language doesn't make sense as a literal expression, and therefore is probably intended to be interpreted as a figurative expression. And specifically what doesn't make sense is that the predicate cluster normally associated with one term (wolves) is not ascribable in its entirety to the other term (men.) Davidson claims that therefore the expression is false. But because of the patent falsity of a literal interpretation of the claim, most people infer that ascription in its entirely of the predicate cluster normally associated with wolves to men must not what the author had in mind. And instead of just dismissing the language as false, they attempt to construct meaning by inferring which wolf predicates the author might have had in mind as being applicable to men. My experience with metaphors is literally that images and feelings connected to the subject and the predicate mingle in a complex and very rapid way in my mind. I do not generally try to decide which qualities I am supposed to connect to the term being metaphorically described. This is generally handled unconscously. Which is a good thing. If I immediately go at the process consciously I am more likely to restrict the field, not to speak of the loss of aesthetic pleasure. I think part of the strength of metaphor use is that the brain does take it literally and must creatively mesh two seemingly exclusive things. Conceptions already in place and seemingly true about these things may not have been true and the metaphor works on the brains cliches I think sometimes slowly over time.

moreno
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Posted 11/24/07 - 02:28 PM:	#41
jdrw wrote: I have said more times than I can count that what makes metaphorical language ambiguous is that it does not clearly communicate exactly which predicates are being ascribed to the referent. Does this hold with dead metaphors?

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Posted 11/24/07 - 03:44 PM:	#42
moreno wrote: My experience with metaphors is literally that images and feelings connected to the subject and the predicate mingle in a complex and very rapid way in my mind. I do not generally try to decide which qualities I am supposed to connect to the term being metaphorically described. This is generally handled unconscously. Yes, I agree. I think I said almost exactly this. Conscious analysis is something we do. if at all, only subsequently. When we don�t understand the metaphor, we commonly ask the speaker for clarification. And the clarification typically consists in the speaker explaining how the two things are alike in a couple of ways, that is, he tells us about a couple of properties that they share. Conscious analysis and explication of metaphor also is a commom activity in literary analysis. Which is a good thing. If I immediately go at the process consciously I am more likely to restrict the field, not to speak of the loss of aesthetic pleasure. I think there is indeed an aesthetic pleasure in �getting� the metaphor, but this aesthetic experience can be increased by coming to understand additional ways in which the metaphor works, that is, additional ways in which the two things are alike that were not apprehended at first. Many people experience this additional appreciation in lit analyses. I think part of the strength of metaphor use is that the brain does take it literally and must creatively mesh two seemingly exclusive things. Conceptions already in place and seemingly true about these things may not have been true and the metaphor works on the brains cliches I think sometimes slowly over time. Indeed understanding of a metaphor can reveal new truths not apprehended before, but my claim is that the process by which these truths are revealed requires apprehension of how the two things are alike. We can arrive at this apprehension either intuitively or through conscious analysis or explication. Once we apprehend a cluster of properties shared by the two things, then we also have a new way of conceiving of the target thing as described by that particular cluster of properties. Thus, if we understood the �Men are Wolves� metaphor such that some of the salient shared properties are �fierce, rapacious, wild, unpredictable, opportunistic, threatening, voracious �� we construct what might well be a very different concept of �men� than we might have had before hearing the metaphor. And this reconstructed conception and emphasis of attributes often is the very point of the metaphor. moreno wrote: jdrw wrote: I have said more times than I can count that what makes metaphorical language ambiguous is that it does not clearly communicate exactly which predicates are being ascribed to the referent. Does this hold with dead metaphors? I think that a dead metaphor for the most part is just a literal language expression. And what I think happens in such cases is that the speakers share a roughly similar cluster of salient properties that are associated with that particular thing. Thus �computer mouse� as a dead metaphor is simply the name of the thing that we use to move the cursor around on the screen. No two speakers share exactly the same cluster of predicates about it, but by and large everybody shares a roughly similar cluster of predicates about it. Cheers. jd
_____________________ OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.

Fido
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Posted 11/30/07 - 02:41 PM:	#43
Why should anyone mind if a metaphor is literally false? All fiction is false, so what is the point of saying it is false with one level of meaning? On what level of meaning is it true? Let me give you two of my favorite example of metaphorical works. One is the song: All Along the Watch Tower. And the Wizard of OZ. Now, these are typical of social commentary in drawing the characature of society rather than the facsimily. Whether it is true is unimportant. The message is got or not on an emotional level. The most true form of metaphore is History. It is not literally true either, and the more it claims truth the sooner it is revised.

moreno
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Posted 12/05/07 - 01:26 AM:	#44
[quote=jdrw] Yes, I agree. I think I said almost exactly this. Conscious analysis is something we do. if at all, only subsequently. When we don't understand the metaphor, we commonly ask the speaker for clarification. And the clarification typically consists in the speaker explaining how the two things are alike in a couple of ways, that is, he tells us about a couple of properties that they share. Conscious analysis and explication of metaphor also is a commom activity in literary analysis. To me this analysis, this post mortem is a second and different reaction to and understanding of the metaphor. This secondary process comes up with paraphrases, but these are different from the mixtures of realms, images and feelings that we get when reading a metaphor. I think there is indeed an aesthetic pleasure in "getting" the metaphor, but this aesthetic experience can be increased by coming to understand additional ways in which the metaphor works, that is, additional ways in which the two things are alike that were not apprehended at first. Many people experience this additional appreciation in lit analyses. And many people find it sucks the life out of it also, especially when this analysis is seen as superceding the original experience or being what the original experience (which can be repeated though it will not be the same each time) really is. Indeed understanding of a metaphor can reveal new truths not apprehended before, but my claim is that the process by which these truths are revealed requires apprehension of how the two things are alike. I disagree for a couple of reasons: 1) metaphors may be creative rather than only descriptive. They can even instigate change, in the culture for example. 2) there are tensions in metaphors that add to their power that are not simply based on similarities. even differences are a part of this. Metaphors cannot simply be reduced to similies and paraphrases. There are irreducible qualities and resonance that are not caught in aftermath prose. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from dusk till dawn to the last syllable of recorded time. (this is from memory and probably off a bit.) We don't have the metaphor form we usually think of (as in men are wolves) but here a verb metaphor with future days - no less - creeping - moving slowly, animal-like probably threatening in some way ALSO along with heavy and perhaps boring then fairly quickly followed by another kind of metaphor where time is implicitly broken down in linguistic units or speech units - syllables. This is partially self-reflexive since it is part of a speech. a speech mocking a speech, mocking its own rhythms and the futility of speeches. Time moves animalike. The units of time are syllables. These metaphors can move in many directions at once. Each one resonant and to some degree confusing and contraditing the other AND OR complementing. [experience] (while reading) ---------} later analysis. This later analysis - which would also take into account the speaker, who feels guilty and is in the middle of series of events - which are fated in the prediction of the witches - cannot replace or serve as substitute for the bracketed experience. In fact we can keep going back as readers or playgoers to these couple of lines and get new meanings out of them. They are a little breeding area of meanings. They are an experience. It is not simply that the play macbeth, here, is aesthetically better than any paraphrase, but also richer, more pregnant with experienced meaning, feeling, images and sensation. We can arrive at this apprehension either intuitively or through conscious analysis or explication. Once we apprehend a cluster of properties shared by the two things, then we also have a new way of conceiving of the target thing as described by that particular cluster of properties. Thus, if we understood the "Men are Wolves" metaphor such that some of the salient shared properties are "fierce, rapacious, wild, unpredictable, opportunistic, threatening, voracious …" we construct what might well be a very different concept of "men" than we might have had before hearing the metaphor. And this reconstructed conception and emphasis of attributes often is the very point of the metaphor. It is certainly part of the point. Or with some people all of the point. But metaphors are not limited to this. And a reading of many of Shakespeare's better passages reveals something much more complex going on. Contradictory qualities can be deduced in single sentences where several metaphors interact. I think the point is often not what you are 'getting out of it' - note the dead container or conduit metaphor - in terms of similarities - certainly not only this - but the resonant structure in all its complexity and contradicitons and possiblities and how this is mirrored in the mind. Does this hold with dead metaphors? [ I think that a dead metaphor for the most part is just a literal language expression. And what I think happens in such cases is that the speakers share a roughly similar cluster of salient properties that are associated with that particular thing. Thus "computer mouse" as a dead metaphor is simply the name of the thing that we use to move the cursor around on the screen. No two speakers share exactly the same cluster of predicates about it, but by and large everybody shares a roughly similar cluster of predicates about it. It does not become literal simply because we agree on it and are so used to it it seems literal. It is as much a cultural or psychological filter as a living metaphor, but we don't notice it anymore UNLESS we are confronted by its specificity and oddness by encountering people from other cultures or through meditation or when science shows the limits of that metaphor or when we have experiences that do not fit it. The amount of metaphors stemming from the body and what we do with our hands, for example, many of them used in relation to language itself, for example, should make us leery of thinking that these metaphors are literal. Even if 'everybody' as you put it thought you could 'put something in words', for example, that is not literally occuring. I am stressing our differences to be polemical. It's not that I don't see the importance of your way of writing about metaphor, but I want to stress what I feel is missing, so I am pushing it. (and what is it I am pushing? to point out - here again - another dead metaphor related to body actions that is not literal.) Edited by moreno on 12/06/07 - 05:05 AM

Fido
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Posted 12/05/07 - 08:24 AM:	#45
People use metaphore to illustrate or exagerate a relationship. Metaphor works the way all mentally comprehended relationships do, through imagination. Imagination perceives a relationship, and by communicating the relationship communicates the meaning of it. It is like George Bush as a chimp. It is just a series of pictures, and no where does it say Bush is stupid, or Bush is a Chimp. It just present it as evidence, and lets it go. Some people never grasp analogy. For some people life is never what it is and is always what it is like. Kids say it constantly, like I said this, and then, like he said this back, and that is like how I ended up, like, suspended. Perhaps they, more than us, live their lives as dreamscape. Perhaps the essential reality is missing. The fact is that the more dangers reality presents the sooner we must resort to symbol to talk about it. If it is true as I believe that we do not commuicate reality any more than we perceive reality then what we perceive and relate is meaning, and that can be communicated on many levels. We really don't wish to communicate reality, because, what a thing is, is, without reference, meaningless. Analogy and metaphor give life scale, and reference, and meaning, and can be accepted whole for the very reason that it is presented as unreal, where as, if presented as reality it would bring up every guard. To be understood, ideas must first be accepted. There has to be a corespondence. A is to B in reality and AM (metaphor) is to BM. One day at work an old hand said to Mongo, our football player, that he was so stupid, that if his brain was cut out and laid on a razor blade it would look like a beebee sitting on an eight lane highway. Naturally Mongo ended up going to work as a goon, I suppose, for the International. They have a real appreciation of minuscule mentality there.

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Posted 01/25/08 - 03:26 PM:	#46
Before we can agree on what metaphors are, we first need to agree on what reality is. If reality is basically paradoxical, infinite, and unimaginable (in short - deeply weird - as modern physics and superb artists usually assert) then the meaning of descriptions of it is going to be very different to if reality is basically discrete, finite and imaginable (as, from what I understand, Davidson, Vico and many many others assert). In the former case, not just all language, but all formal experience is in some way a metaphor, and use and meaning are, like waves and particles, context-dependent conventions; the closer the context one is, the more brilliantly apt one's metaphors are. In the latter case, there is object A and description B and describer C and the awful process of trying to draw them all together. Have you ever noticed the similarity between a great song, a great dish, a great painting, a great conversation, a great dance, a great chair and a great mountain range?
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Posted 04/27/08 - 10:06 AM:	#47
For those interested parties, in the course of his research theoretical biologist Robert Rosen was forced to examine what a metaphor is and he outlines his view in the book Life Itself. In essence he seems to argue that metaphor is a fraction of the modeling relationship. And he says therein that metaphors offer the promise that they can eventually be turned into models. Here is a link that delves a bit more deeply into this… http://www.panmere.com/?p=39

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