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Metaphor in philosophy


Metaphor, the description of one thing as something else, has become of interest in recent decades to both analytic philosophy and continental philosophy, but for different reasons.

In the Anglo-American tradition of analytic philosophy, in particular, the philosophy of language, metaphor has attracted interest because it does not conform to accepted truth-conditional semantics, the conditions which determine whether or not a statement is true. Taken literally, the statement 'Juliet is the sun' (from Romeo and Juliet) is false, if not nonsensical, yet, taken metaphorically, it is meaningful and may be true, but in a sense which is far from clear. The comparison theory of metaphor asserts that the truth value of a metaphor can be expressed by listing all the respects in which the two terms are alike or similar, for example, Juliet is like the sun because she shares with it qualities such as radiance, brilliance, the fact that she makes the day and that she gets up every morning. However, this results in metaphor being recast as simile. Because it can only explain the truth of metaphor by in effect losing metaphor, the comparison theory is rarely defended.

In contrast, two leading theorists emphasize the fact that truth conditions cannot be specified for a metaphor. Max Black maintains that metaphors are too open-ended to be able to function as referring expressions, and so cannot be expressions which have truth conditions (Black 1962). If metaphors are used in contexts where precise terminology is expected, for example, in a scientific theory, then their role, Black argues, is purely heuristic, that is, they are means to an end or ways of assisting understanding, rather than being terms which can be tested for truth or falsity (Black 1962, p. 37). Donald Davidson also thinks it is a mistake to look for the truth conditions of a metaphor, since, in his words, "much of what we are caused to notice [in a metaphor] is not propositional in character", that is to say, metaphor is a prompt to thought which cannot be reduced to or contained by a series of truth conditions (Davidson 1984, p. 263). What metaphor does, Davidson maintains, is make us see one thing as something else by "making [a] literal statement that inspires or prompts the insight" (Davidson 1984, p. 263). Seeing one thing as something else is not the recognition of some truth or fact, and so "the attempt to give literal expression to the content of the metaphor is simply misguided."(Davidson 1984, p. 263)


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