Mixing our metaphors

Metaphor enters contemporary philosophical discussion from a variety of directions. Aside from its obvious importance in poetics, rhetoric, and aesthetics, it also figures in such fields as philosophy of mind (e.g., the question of the metaphorical status of ordinary mental concepts), philosophy of science (e.g, the comparison of metaphors and explanatory models), in epistemology (e.g., analogical reasoning), and in cognitive studies (in, e.g., the theory of concept-formation). This article will concentrate on issues metaphor raises for the philosophy of language, with the understanding that the issues in these various fields cannot be wholly isolated from each other. Metaphor is an issue for the philosophy of language not only for its own sake, as a linguistic phenomenon deserving of analysis and interpretation, but also for the light it sheds on non-figurative language, the domain of the literal which is the normal preoccupation of the philosopher of language. A poor reason for this preoccupation would be the assumption that purely literal language is what most language-use consists in, with metaphor and the like sharing the relative infrequency and marginal status of songs or riddles. This would not be a good reason not only because mere frequency is not a good guide to theoretical importance, but also because it is doubtful that the assumption is even true. In recent years, writers with very different concerns have pointed out that figurative language of one sort or another is a staple of the most common as well as the most specialized speech, as the brief list of directions of interest leading to metaphor would suggest. A better reason for the philosopher's concentration on the case of literal language would be the idea that the literal does occupy some privileged theoretical place in the understanding of language generally because the comprehension of figurative language is itself dependent in specific ways on the literal understanding of the words used. This is at least a defensible claim, and if true, we might then hope for an understanding of figurative language from a theory of literal meaning combined with an account of the ways in which the figurative both depends on and deviates from it. The light such an investigation may shed on non-figurative language will derive from the issues which even this mere sketch of their relation raises for the philosophy of language. We will want to know, for instance, about the specific nature of the dependence of …