In this book, Daniel Cohen explores the connections between arguments and metaphors, most pronounced in philosophy because philosophical discourse is both thoroughly metaphorical and replete with argumentation. Cohen covers the nature of arguments, their modes and structures, and the principles of their evaluation, and addresses the nature of metaphors, their place in language and thought, and their connections to arguments, identifying and reconciling arguments' and metaphors' respective roles in philosophy.

This paper critically examines the metaphorical use of medical terms in philosophy. Three examples selected from distinct philosophical contexts demonstrate that such terms have been employed as metaphors both to describe the practice of philosophising and historically to diagnose philosophical positions. The selected examples are (i) the title of Avicenna’s main philosophical work, The Book of Healing, (ii) the criticism of medical metaphors in Enlightenment philosophy, and (iii) recent historical diagnoses in philosophy. The underlying epistemological assumptions of (...) all three contexts are reconstructed to critically analyse the medical metaphors. Through this tripartite synopsis, I arrive at a normative conclusions medical metaphors, such as the “healing of the soul” or “pathology of reason”, do not stand up to the critique of Enlightenment and are obsolete against the theoretical background of my reference texts. (shrink)

This paper investigates the issue whether metaphors have a metaphorical or secondary meaning and how this question is related to the borderline between philosophy and linguistics. On examples by V. Woolf and H. W. Auden, it will be shown that metaphor accomplishes something more than its literal meaning expresses and this “more” cannot be captured by any secondary meaning. What is essential in the metaphor is not a secondary meaning but an internal relation between a metaphorical proposition (...) and a description of its effects. In order to understand metaphors, we have to share an ability to construe metaphorical meanings at once. The aim of this ability is to uncover an internal relation, which lies behind a particular metaphor. (shrink)

This article surveys theories of metaphor in analytic philosophy and cognitive science. In particular, it focuses on contemporary semantic, pragmatic and non-cognitivist theories of linguistic metaphor and on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory advanced by George Lakoff and his school. Special attention is given to the mechanisms that are shared by nearly all these approaches, i.e. mechanisms of interaction and mapping between conceptual domains. Finally, the article discusses several recent attempts to combine these theories of linguistic and (...) conceptual metaphor into a unitary account. (shrink)

A metaphor is an effective way to show how something is to be conceived. In this article, I look at two Neo-Confucian Korean philosophical contexts—the Four-Seven debate and Book of the Imperial Pivot—and suggest that metaphors are philosophically expedient in two further contexts: when both intellect and emotion must be addressed; and when the aim of philosophizing is to produce behavioral change. Because Neo-Confucians had a conception of the mind that closely connected it to the heart (心 xin), (...) class='Hi'>metaphor’s empathy-inducing and perspective-giving capacities made it an especially helpful mode of philosophizing in the history of Korean philosophy. (shrink)

The mirror metaphor has been an essential asset especially during the pre-modern history of philosophy. The present article is concerned with its use in the philosophy of the German thinker Nicolas of Cusa (1401-1464). Being rooted in the intellectual traditions of Greek antiquity and Medieval Christian philosophy, Nicolas of Cusa has also been hailed as one of the first modern European philosophers. Long before other occidental thinkers, Nicolas of Cusa used the mirror metaphor to describe (...) the foundational logic of self-consciousness on his own terms and in the context of his time and his cultural environment. This article presents the most important passages where Nicolas of Cusa uses the images of the mirror and of mirroring to explain the creative self-relation of consciousness as well as to hint at a way of a transformation of the common forms of reflexivity of the epistemological functions of the mind into its complete form of existence as absolute self-consciousness. In this context, Nicolas of Cusa’s use of the mirror metaphor is also concerned with the question of an all-encompassing humanistic self-perfection, practice as well as with basic anthropological considerations. (shrink)

The book is divided into four parts. An introduction is supplied for the book as a whole and for each of its parts. The heart of the book is its analysis of argument, the burden of parts one and two. The third part is concerned with the nature of metaphor, its place in argument, and the final section with the interrelation of the two.

This article explores a German philosophy of metaphor, which proposed a close link between the body and the mind as the basis for metaphor, debunked the view that metaphor is just a decorative rhetorical device and questioned the distinction between the literal and the figurative. This philosophy of metaphor developed at the intersection between a reflection on language and thought and a reflection on the nature of beauty in aesthetics. Thinkers such as Giambattista Vico, (...) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Jean Paul and others laid the foundations for this philosophy and it was successively refined by Gustav Gerber, Alfred Biese and Friedrich Nietzsche. It influenced in its turn in various ways the linguistic study of metaphor and the psychology of metaphor as elaborated, for instance, by a lesser-known American scholar, Gertrude Buck. All these thinkers contributed to a philosophy and psychology of the metaphoric according to which metaphors are not only nice, but necessary for the structure and growth of human thought and language. Obvious parallels between this 19th-century philosophy of metaphor and the 20th-century theory of metaphor developed by Lakoff and his followers are examined throughout. (shrink)

이 연구의 목적은 『방법서설』 1부에 나오는 책 은유를 르네상스 이래 등장했던 책 은유와의 연속성에서 설명하고 데카르트 철학의 생각하는 나를 한 권의 책으로 해석하는 것이다. 나는 먼저 고대 그리스 철학에서는 불가능했던 세계를 한 권의 책으로 간주하는 태도가 어떻게 중세 신비주의를 거쳐 르네상스 시기에 이르러 가능하게 되었는지를 설명한다. 이 시기에 인식은 사물의 본질을 구성하는 형상을 받아들이는 것을 의미하지 않게 되었으며 의미로 충만하던 세계가 물러나고 기계론적 법칙이 지배하는 중성화된 우주가 그것을 대체했다. 그리고 세계 내 사물들은 자연법칙들을 따라 구성, 해체, 그리고 재구성될 수 있는 (...) 동질적 질료들이 구성하는 기술적 현상이 되었다. 이와 함께 인식은 사물들을 단순한 요소들로 분석하고 구성하는 것을 의미하게 되었다. 이것으로부터 세계를 철자들의 결합으로 이루어진 한 권의 책으로 고려할 가능성이 생겨났으며 생각하는 나를 자기 안에서 인식의 알파벳과 문법을 통해 세계-책을 읽고 옮겨 적는 한 권의 책으로 고려할 수 있게 되었다. 『방법서설』 1부에 등장하는 책 은유는 이 같은 철학적 상황을 배경으로 갖는다. (shrink)

A basic thesis of Neokantian epistemology and philosophy of science contends that the knowing subject and the object to be known are only abstractions. What really exists, is the relation between both. For the elucidation of this “knowledge relation ("Erkenntnisrelation") the Neokantians of the Marburg school used a variety of mathematical metaphors. In this con-tribution I reconsider some of these metaphors proposed by Paul Natorp, who was one of the leading members of the Marburg school. It is shown that (...) Natorp's metaphors are not unrelated to those used in some currents of contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science. (shrink)

This paper tracks the development of Boyle’s conception of the natural world in terms of the popular “book of nature” trope. Boyle initially spoke of the creatures and phenomena of nature in a spiritual and moral register, as emblems of divine purpose, but gradually shifted from this ideographic view to an alphabetical account, which at times became posed in explicitly cryptographic terms. I explain this transition toward cryptographic metaphors in terms of Boyle’s social and intellectual milieu and their concordance with (...) the reductive and conjectural character of the mechanical philosophical program. (shrink)

This research aims at investigating some specific metaphorical applications of the concept of causality in Suhrawardi's philosophy, basically referring to the theory of conceptual metaphor. Hitherto, two traditional and contemporary theories have been discussed in this regard. Regarding the traditional theory represented by Aristotle Metaphor, it can be regarded as the use of the name of something for something else. According to this view, the reason why one word is used instead of another is a pre-existing and (...) objective similarity between the two phenomena. Contemporary metaphor theory holds that, in addition to objective similarity, non-objective similarities, the creation of similarities by the mind and the correlation in experience are bases for the formation of metaphors. In Suhrawardi's philosophy, causality has been conceptualized as a key philosophical concept with the help of various metaphors. (shrink)

Metaphors abound in both the arts and in science. Due to the traditional division between these enterprises as one concerned with aesthetic values and the other with epistemic values there has unfortunately been very little work on the relation between metaphors in the arts and sciences. In this paper, we aim to remedy this omission by defending a continuity thesis regarding the function of metaphor across both domains, that is, metaphors fulfill any of the same functions in science as (...) they do in the arts. Importantly, this involves the claim that metaphors in arts as well as science have both epistemic and aesthetic functions. (shrink)

Recent philosophical analyses of the epistemic dimension of images in the sciences show a certain trend in acknowledging potential roles of these images beyond their merely decorative or pedagogical functions. We argue, however, that this new debate has yet paid little attention to a special type of pictures, we call ‘visual metaphor’, and its versatile heuristic potential in organizing data, supporting communication, and guiding research, modeling, and theory formation. Based on a case study of Conrad Hal Waddington’s epigenetic landscape (...) images in biology, we develop a descriptive framework applicable to heuristic roles of various visual metaphors in the sciences. (shrink)

Theoretical work on media, which brings together certain lines of development from both the modern exact sciences and the human sciences, has elevated the pressing global question of the place of t...

Poster presented at the conference "Toward a Science of Consciousness" , Tucson, Arizona, April 10-15, 2000.

According to conceptual metaphor theory, there are two basic metaphorical models for conceptualising time in terms of space: the ego-moving model maps our movement through space onto our imagined movement through time, while the time-moving model represents time as an entity moving through spatial locations, the ego being just a passive observer. The aim of this article is to investigate how time is conceptualized in film where ego, movement, time and space also play basic roles. I compare the two (...) linguistic models to Gilles Deleuze’s conceptualization of filmic time: the movement-image and the time-image. While the movement-image and the moving-ego metaphor directly map spatial structures onto the domain of time, the time-image and the moving-time metaphor correlate only in their basic structures and involve different levels of conceptual integrations and conversions. Due to film techniques such as a mobile camera, montage and image manipulation, the time-image seems to transcend the constraints of natural perception and maps onto mental rather than external space, thus giving rise to a new reverse metaphor where space acquires characteristics of the time domain. (shrink)

This article undertakes a deconstructive reading of astrobiology’s search for extraterrestrial life. Taking its lead from Derrida’s ‘White Mythology’, it explores ‘metaphor in the text of astrobiology’—and includes within the astrobiological ‘text’ not only scientific publications and work on astrobiology in the philosophy of science, but also ‘life detection technologies’. I situate astrobiology in the tradition of a metaphysical analogy that goes back through the enlightenment and early modern astronomy to the ancient Atomists’ notion of the ‘plurality of (...) worlds’. This analogy, which constitutes an identification of life with being and therefore serves as the conceptual basis for the notion that life must exist on other worlds, experiences a mutation in the middle of the twentieth century when molecular biology refigures life in terms of a scriptural metaphor as text. The result is an aporia whose logic Derrida formalised in ‘White Mythology’. (shrink)

This work takes a fresh look at legal language as one of the Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) that has been traditionally characterized as obscure and impenetrable for those outside the profession. I will show how metaphors in legal language provide referential meaning that is sometimes misconstrued by observers who may be unfamiliar with the procedural aspects of the US system of justice, and how those identified as conceptual metaphors in legal language are either _linguistic metaphors_ or some other rhetorical (...) device, such as metonymies. I will then discuss the special challenges of transferring meaning from English into a foreign language during legal proceedings for the benefit of Limited English Proficient (LEP) participants in the process, such as litigants, witnesses, and criminal defendants. Taking into account the translation and interpreting studies that have had a bearing on the practice of judiciary interpreting in United States, and the results of a survey and virtual discussion with federally certified interpreters, I will describe some of the strategies used by these language professionals to convey metaphorical meaning to LEP court participants. (shrink)

This paper offers a review of the argumentation-theoretical literature on metaphor in argumentative discourse. Two methodologies are combined: the pragma-dialectical theory is used to study the argumentative functions attributed to metaphor, and distinctions made in metaphor theory and the three-dimensional model of metaphor are used to compare the conceptions of metaphor taken as starting point in the reviewed literature. An overview is provided of all types of metaphors distinguished and their possible argumentative functions. The study (...) reveals that not all possible argumentative functions of metaphor have been taken into account, such as the role of conventional direct metaphors in standpoint and starting point. Novel direct metaphor as part of an analogy argument has received most attention, while indirect metaphor can constitute argumentative moves as well, such as the introduction of a standpoint, starting point or connection premise. The overview also shows that certain combinations of variables seem to be impossible of unlikely to occur. These results have a bearing on the analysis of metaphors in argumentative discourse and show the omission in current studies of metaphor. Being aware of these dimensions of metaphor ánd of its potential in argumentation would enrich argumentation studies and metaphor studies alike. (shrink)

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, EarlyView.

Volume 11, Issue 1-2, January–December 2024.

Teilhard de Chardin's use of metaphor in "The Phenomenon of Man" is the perfect linguistic counterpart to his lifelong attempt to vision the unity of being.

The function of metaphor in science has been labeled as decorative, persuasive, heuristic, instrumental, facilitating or obstructing. It has sometimes been regarded as inspiring, provoking, perverting or destroying rational thought. Metaphor’s positive role has been noted by philosophers, historians of chemistry, and science education researchers. It has been hailed as a descriptive and explanatory device that stimulates and shapes concept development. I discuss how metaphor functions in science generally, then refine this idea through an examination metaphor’s (...) role in chemical thinking in three contexts: the history and philosophy of chemistry, laboratory research practice, and chemical education. I aim to show how metaphor is already operative in the chemist’s use of the concept of chemical element and that this understanding characterizes chemical thinking in general. The chapter concludes with a discussion of a specifically chemical understanding of metaphor. (shrink)

There is the tension between, on the one hand, Wittgenstein’s not giving theoretical weight to metaphor, and on the other, his exuberant use of it. On a more fundamental level, there is a straightforward contradiction between Wittgenstein’s claim of the primordial literalness of everyday language, and his stress on the multiplicity and flexibility of language-games. Wittgenstein’s problem was that he did not succeed in making his ideas on metaphor, and indeed his ideas on metaphor and images, converge (...) with the main drift of TS 227 (the so-called ‘Part I’ of the so-called ‘Philosophical Investigations’). It was this divergence, I believe, that prevented him from rounding out his later philosophy. (shrink)

Metaphor influences the construction of biological models and theories and the analysis of its use can reveal important tools of thought. Some aspects of biological organisation are investigated through the analysis of metaphors associated with treating biosystems as a kind of text. In particular, the use of glue and verbs is considered. Some of the reasons why glue is important in the construction of hierarchies are pursued in the light of specific examples, and some of the conceptual links between (...) glue in biology and other domains is discussed. Verbs are shown to be important in the construction of networks. Some of the relations between glue, verb and text are considered and the text metaphor is placed within a much broader context of ideas associated with form, relation and system. The paper concludes with comments on the nature of biological information and the need for extending or better understanding the verbal vocabulary. (shrink)

I offered the title for this paper before family separations were on the news, before the president had brought attention to the exodus of migrants, and before the government shutdown in response to the request of billions of dollars to build a border wall.1 I had no idea how common immigration would be in everyday conversation. By the time you read this, I am sure there will be other worrisome news. Perhaps we will still be thinking about immigration, or we (...) might have moved on.I have been intrigued, however, as to what this intensified public discussion of the threats of immigration reveals about the self-image of the United States, and the racial and religious ideas that undergird that... (shrink)

Metaphors have been inserted by philosophers in philosophical discourses to simplify abstract and intricate concepts. The practice of using metaphor denotes its rhetorical, aesthetic, linguistic and cognitive function. In basic formulation, metaphor has also been used by philosophers as a device, strategy, method, stylist ornament and a medium of expression. In this background, the following paper intends to vindicate the intimate interaction between philosophy and metaphor, with marked emphasis on the domain of feminist philosophy. Categorically, (...) by considering the context of feminist philosophical discourses, in this work, I explore the contributions of two influential feminist thinkers, namely, Young and Irigaray to elucidate the proposed metaphorical narrative. I suggest that these feminist philosophers ‘talk metaphorically’ beyond its ornamental or aesthetic value; beyond objectivism. To the contrary, I propose and argue that their employment of metaphor appeals to an epistemological thematic. Furthermore, I shall exhibit the close affinity between the metaphors they insert in their respective pursuits. Questions that shall be considered here are: Why metaphor matters in philosophical contexts? What does it mean to talk metaphorically in feminist philosophical scholarship? What and how do these feminist thinkers contribute to this endeavor? What is the implication of their respective contributions? Thus, I aim at uncovering and deepening the appearance, connotation and influence of metaphor in feminist scholarship. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Eve W. Stoddard REASON ON TRIAL: LEGAL METAPHORS IN THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 6 6 r I 1WO things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admi_I_ ration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me." ' These are perhaps Kant's most well-known and oft-repeated words. They reflect not only the profound feeling (...) that underlies his technical and abstruse treatises, but also his characteristic preoccupation with law. The "starry heavens" are a synecdoche both for the wonder of nature as we perceive it in all its multiplicity, and for the marvel of science's ability to reduce, order, and subdue that infinite multiplicity into a few elegant laws. These two types of law, natural and moral, define the focus of Kant's critical philosophy, and metaphors drawn from jurisprudence pervade all three critiques. In the context of controversial statements on the role of metaphor in philosophical texts by Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, and Richard Rorty, I will analyze the legal metaphors in the prefaces and Transcendental Deductions of the Critique ofPure Reason. My goal in engaging Kant's texts in this controversy over metaphor is twofold: on the one hand to assess experimentally the value of these positions on metaphor in the history of philosophy, and, on the other hand, to examine the relations between critical conceptualization and insurgent metaphoricity in Kant's carefully elaborated and systematized text. In a textwhose key words are "universal and necessary for all possible experience," contingentand ambiguous metaphors might be expected to cause problematic unravelings. Richard Rorty has argued recently that "the history ofscience, culture and politics" should be viewed "as a history of metaphor rather than of discovery." 2 He compares the creations of new vocabularies to the 245 246Philosophy and Literature invention of "new tools" ("CL," p. 5), alluding to "Nietzsche's definition of truth as a mobile army of metaphors" (p. 6). From Plato's figures of the world as cave and the mind as charioteer with unruly horses, we shift to Locke's view of mind as tahda rasa and Descartes's description of the world as a machine. Rorty's paradigm of cultural history as a history of metaphor enters into an earlier, unresolved debate between Jacques Derrida and Paul Ricoeur over the relationship between metaphor and philosophical discourse. Like Derrida, Rorty follows Nietzsche's claims about metaphor in the history of philosophy, a view Ricoeur wants to disprove so that he can recover the privileged univocity of speculative discourse. However Rorty has nothing in common with die complexity and "invaginated" ambiguities, the dazzling multivocity of Derrida's writing on the economics of metaphor. Although Rorty appears at first to agree with Derrida that there is no truth or reality apart from the linguistic tropes which dominate different epochs and cultures, he retains a metaphysical distinction between literal reference and figurative play. Rorty adopts Donald Davidson's theory that metaphors do not have "meaning" precisely because diey have no place in the language game into which they are inserted. They produce an effect, but it is not meaning: "One can only savour it or spit it out"; it is not a " 'truth-value candidate' " ("CL," p. 6). However, through repeated use, the metaphor will find a role in the language game; dying as a metaphor, it will live as a literal statement. Therefore Rorty agrees with Ricoeur that a moribund metaphor is no longer a metaphor, but a literally functioning segment of discourse. Thus despite his initial move toward a Derridean, or atleast Nietzschean, position, Rorty ultimately takes a stand consonant with Ricoeur's desire to rescue speculative discourse from the unruliness of metaphor. Considering Rorty's celebration of Freud in an article on "The Contingency of Selfhood," 3 his failure to consider the role of unconscious associations and overdetermination in the writing and reading of texts is surprising. Dead or alive, a metaphor brings with it a host ofpersonal and public, conscious and unconscious, new and traditional associations that become juxtaposed against a similar number of associations connected with the signifying chain into which the metaphor has been inserted. In... (shrink)

Philosophers have often adopted a dismissive attitude toward metaphor. Hobbes (1651, ch. 8) advocated excluding metaphors from rational discourse because they “openly profess deceit,” while Locke (1690, Bk. 3, ch. 10) claimed that figurative uses of language serve only “to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment; and so indeed are perfect cheats.” Later, logical positivists like Ayer and Carnap assumed that because metaphors like..

argues that ancient Greek medicine had a significant effect on the way in which Plato conceived of ethics, and (2) explores some ways in which Plato integrated medical concepts such as "health" into his ethics. Specific parallels between ancient medicine and such concepts as eudaimonia , soul, nature and convention, etc., are discussed, as is the relation between conceptions of health and medical treatment. Keywords: ancient medicine, ethics, health, Plato CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

Engaging contemporary notions of metaphor and drawing on his past work on the subject, Josef Stern presents a theory of metaphor which is based both on context and semantics. Over the past two decades philosophers of language, linguists, and cognitive scientists have generally believed that metaphor is external to the general conceptions of semantics and grammar. Moreover, metaphor is understood in its pragmatic sense, that is, as having its nature defined by its employment and various uses (...) in language as opposed to the content and character present in the meaning of metaphor. Stern sets as his goal a challenge of such readings of metaphor. Dialoguing with and challenging eminent thinkers on the subject of metaphor, including Donald Davidson and David Kaplan, Stern competently sketches his vision of metaphorical meaning which underlies a speaker-hearer’s capacity to interpret a metaphor by “drawing on a deep analogy between demonstratives, indexicals and metaphors.” His engaging views raise interesting questions and give much food for thought. Issues addressed include: the literal paraphrasability of metaphors vis-à-vis cognition, the roles of exemplification and similarity in metaphorical interpretation, dead metaphors, the pictorial character of metaphors, and the relation between metaphors and the literal. (shrink)