enkidu wrote:
...my feeling about the article is that it provides an interesting and elegant agreement between Davidson and Lakoff/Johnson's theory of metaphor, or even it shows a manner to extend Davidson to a more radical theory such as Ricoeur's, opening the way to interesting epistemological considerations on the status of language and of knowledge.

Some metaphor may be said to be good and some other bad, isn't it a way to assert the truth value of it, even though this truth value may not be actualised yet ?

Basically the question is about the existence of an aesthetic value: Can't we a priori judge of it ?

And does it mean that aesthetic value is one instance of a virtual value that merely wait for actualisation ?

If so, what does it mean with regards to the human ability to judge of such a value ?

jdrw wrote:

If so, then is he denying that the word/concept “metaphorical” is meaningful/useful and denying that we are able to distinguish such usage from from “literal” usage?

literal meaning is simply a forgotten metaphor that has entered a domain that is no more explicitly questioned, that would be in direct opposition with Davidson's stress that "unlike new literal uses of an old word, the novelty of a metaphor does not wear off." (p.4 of the article).

So as one comes to grapple with what “use” means in the world, and how metaphors may come to eventually “die” after long periods of a “figurative” life--"in the way that bottles and rivers have come literally to have “mouths”--"one might see how falsity can have a productive effect on the future use of words, and thus how something literally false may be taken as the causative basis of future literal truths. In this way the prospects of understanding language itself as an institutionalized limit of social capabilities, a formal grounds or horizon whose very broken formality, of which metaphor is a primary example, constitutes the possibility of its growth and capability through repair and inclusion. Between the formal truth of propositions, and the richness of linguistic performances, lies, one might claim: invention.

"Davidson's Razor, Vico's Magnet"

Davidson: "I have been making the point by contrasting learning a new use for an old word with using a word already understood; In one case, I said, our attention is directed to language, in the other what language is about. Metaphor, I suggested, belongs to the second category. This can also be seen by considering dead metaphors. Once upon a time, I suppose, rivers and bottles did not, as they do now, literally have mouths. Thinking of present usage, it doesn't matter whether we take the word 'mouth' to be ambiguous because it applies to entrances to rivers and openings of bottles as well as to animal appertures, or we think that there is a single wide field of application that embraces both. What does matter is that when 'mouth' applied only metaphorically to bottles, the application made the hearer notice a likeness between animal and bottle openings. (Consider Homer's reference to wounds as mouths.) Once one has the present use of the word, with literal application to bottles, there is nothing left to notice. There is no similarity to seek because it consists simply in being referred to by the same word."

Novelty is not the issue. In its context a word once taken for a metaphor remains a metaphor on the hundredth hearing, while a word may easily be appreciated in a new literal role on a first encounter."

"What Metaphors Mean"

Rorty: “Davidson lets us see metaphors on the model of unfamiliar events in the natural world--"causes of changing beliefs and desires--"rather than on the model or representations of unfamiliar worlds, worlds which are ‘symbolic’ rather than ‘natural’. He lets us see the metaphors which make possible novel scientific theories as causes of our ability to know more about the world, rather than expressions of such knowledge.”

"Davidson on Metaphor"

I prefer this extended understanding of truth as I find it more useful to assert of whether a metaphor is interesting; on the contrary, Davidson seem to exclude all such measure of the value of the metaphor, and we end up being at pain to explain why "man is a wolf" is better than "man is a chair", after all, they both are literally false, so are we to rely exclusively on an affection we may say nothing about ?

This dismissal of the relevance of rational study in the field of Aesthetics is a bit too strong for me, as it actually freezes the metaphor is a realm of its own with no possible contribution to literal language (a point that agree with his view of metaphor as being eternally new). This article however seems to pull Davidson's view in a more dynamic system of understanding language as an evolving system, and therefore build a bridge between him and Lakoff/Johnson.

Actually jokes are a priori judged when we laugh at it without knowing why.

But that's another problem I have with the article, I don't think humor is a very good analogy for metaphor

My question was then about the possibility of investigating what makes a metaphor better than another, before such a metaphor comes to be accepted in the literal language out of the jungle of the unutterable. Basically is there a way to "pseudo-actualise" (to simulate the actualisation of) the virtual truth that is contained in a metaphor (truth being understood at least virtually beyond the literal realm).

Surely, while I often play chess like cooking. However, the question becomes then what is it that governs aesthetics ? If we come to say with Heidegger or Ricoeur that it is truth then surely, a metaphor ought to be deemed true...

dimka wrote:

Don't forget that the same joke can be both funny and fall flat when told by two different people using different verbal & non-verbal techniques. That should factor in too.

enkidu wrote:
For Lakoff and Johnson, the whole language is pervaded by metaphors, they are at the origins of it, literal meaning is simply a forgotten metaphor that has entered a domain that is no more explicitly questioned, that would be in direct opposition with Davidson's stress that "unlike new literal uses of an old word, the novelty of a metaphor does not wear off." (p.4 of the article). This last position of Davidson is very problematic for me, and that's where I wonder whether the article is fully respecting Davidson's point when for instance "the true is the made" (p.22).

Tauber wrote:
I have adopted the more expansive orientation; i.e., concepts are not defined solely in terms of inherent properties or an implicit comparison, but rather emerge from their interactional properties, arising from experience in an open-ended fashion, with the important caveat that they may be based on similarities derived from cultural values. Thus, metaphor may create new meaning and serves as a means of structuring our conceptual system.

"jdrw" wrote:
To insist as Davidson does that “all metaphors are false” because they must be interpreted literally is to insist that the author of a metaphor has proposed that the entire cluster of possible predicates of one term (wolves) applies to the referent (all men.)

Dunamis wrote:

� you seem to work with a very ambiguous notion of "rules"--a notion I sense is not worth arguing about at length.

I for one am still constantly startled at the phrase "dolphin-torn" and "gong-tormented" even though I have thought long and hard about what properties about the sea and dolphins, gongs and cloths might share. And I am hardly surprised at all by the word "motherboard" (though in considering it as a metaphor it does suddenly attain a certain floating aura, just as mouths of rivers do).

DJPavel wrote:


I'm surprised that you don't mention the techinque of priming when talking about metaphors. I believe that might be the key means to manipulate how the metaphor should be interpreted on the receiving end, whether the receiving end realizes it consciously or not. When an ambiguous term like "foot" is preceeded by an unambiguous one like "arm", the "higher" cognitive system expects a body part and interprets the "foot" as such. If "foot" is preceded by "inches", the system suggests a "ruler".

I also wish you took it a little further with explaining the "hard-wired" rules for interpretation, or as I would call it, "Unweaving Kant's rainbow". I don't know if you're aware of it or not, but there's been a research that linked the FOXP2 gene to the speech defects manifesting themselves as broken "hard-wired" rules. ANother credibility point for Chomsky's Universal Grammar.


DJP

Caldwell wrote:
Ah! I think I'm beginning to understand the (grave) consequence you and Davidson, and Rorty are saying about what metaphors do. Metaphors become a source (cause) of our beliefs in the natural world. So, on the one hand, literal language is our expression of what we know about the world, not the cause. If metaphors play the role of literal language, they aren't really expressing knowledge about the world, rather they have become the cause of what we believe is knowledge about the world. Tell me this is clear, Dee.

regarding reason

Suppose I pointed to a piece of paper and said to someone: "this colour I call 'red'". Afterwards I gave him the order: "now paint me a red patch". I then ask him: "why, in carrying out my order, did you paint just his colour?" His answer could then be: "This colour (pointing to the sample) which I have given him was called red; and the patch I have painted has, as you see, the colour of the sample." He has now given me a reason for carrying out the order in the way he did. Giving the reason for something one did or said means showing a way which leads to this action... (11)

regarding cause

[if you ask] "Why did you paint just this colour when I told you to paint a red patch?" you may give the answer: "I have been shown a sample of this colour and the word "red" was pronounced to me at the same time; and therefore this colour now always comes to my mind when I hear the word 'red'", then you have given a cause for your action and not a reason (15)