Minds, materials and metaphors

Toon, Adam

doi:10.1017/s0031819120000406

Cited by 17 publications

References 27 publications

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Metaphor and ambiguity

Lane

2024

Philos Stud

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What is the status of metaphorical meaning? Is it an input to semantic composition or is it derived post-semantically? This question has divided theorists for decades. Griceans argue that metaphorical meaning/content is a kind of implicature that is generated through post-semantic processing. Others, such as the contextualists, argue that metaphorical meaning is an input to semantic composition and thus part of “what is said” by an utterance. I think both sides are right: metaphorical meaning is an input to semantic composition and it is also derived post-semantically. I explain how this is possible by positing that successful metaphor involves coining a new word on the spot; this new metaphorical word is ambiguous with its literal counterpart. I show that an ambiguity theory of metaphor, far from being the obvious non-starter that it has long been treated as, actually offers elegant predictions of a whole suite of otherwise recalcitrant linguistic data.

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Metaphor and ambiguity

Lane

2024

Philos Stud

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Distinguishing two kinds of fictionalism: metaphor, autism, and the imagination

Lane

2024

Synthese

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Fictionalist theories of metaphor hold that metaphorical utterances aim at fictionality. Fictionalism successfully explains speaker judgments about the truth and aptness of metaphorical utterances, and it also accurately predicts the data around metaphor and autistic individuals (who have deficits in both imaginative play and metaphor comprehension). But fictionalism is not a viable theory of metaphor, despite these merits, because of (what I call) the problem of semantic entailment: semantic entailments that are normally valid fail under metaphorical interpretation, but fictionalism predicts otherwise. I argue this to ultimately show that theorists of metaphor should reject the linguistic side of the fictionalist story; but this leaves open the possibility of accepting psychological fictionalism, i.e., the hypothesis that fiction/make-believe is central to the cognitive processing of metaphor. Coupling psychological fictionalism with a different theory of metaphorical meaning and content (such as contextualism) promises to keep the explanatory upsides of traditional fictionalism while avoiding the problem of semantic entailment.

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Acting for Reasons

Borg

2024

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This is a book about why we do what we do. It’s also about how we arrive at an understanding of other people’s actions. A traditional view in philosophy—‘common-sense psychology’ (CP)—holds that representational mental states (paradigmatically, beliefs and desires) lie at the heart of intentional action and social cognition. According to this view, intentional actions are responses to mental states which capture a person’s reasons for action: I open the cookie jar because I’d like a cookie and believe there is one in there. As a corollary, understanding someone else’s action is often held to depend on attributing them plausible mental states and reasoning: I think you opened the cookie jar because you wanted a cookie and believed there was one in there. However, this approach has been thrown into doubt by experimental findings which apparently show that CP’s appeal to reasons and reasoning is overly demanding and overly intellectualizing, painting an idealized picture of decision-making which is rarely borne out by the evidence. If we get out of our armchairs and examine how people actually make decisions, the claim is, what we find is that people don’t do what they do, typically, based on the reasons they have, nor do people understand one another’s actions via attributing them beliefs and desires and rational processing involving those kinds of states. In short, what we find is that CP is wrong. This book is an attempt to reject that line of argument and to defend the common-sense perspective.

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Minds, materials and metaphors

Cited by 17 publications

References 27 publications

Metaphor and ambiguity

Metaphor and ambiguity

Distinguishing two kinds of fictionalism: metaphor, autism, and the imagination

Acting for Reasons

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