True Metaphors (LFPA)

Citation: Timothy Binkley, "On the Truth and Probity of Metaphor," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Winter 1974, 171-180.

Summary: In this paper, Binkley takes on a set of assumptions about the nature of metaphor, namely, that metaphors taken at face value are either false or meaningless, and that the linguistic norm is literal. More specifically, he argues "(a) that metaphors need not involve false or nonsensical uses of language, (b) that metaphors can be true, i.e., that they can be used to state true propositions, and (c) that the truth-value of a metaphorical claim can be discerned in fundamentally the same way we discern the truth-value of a literal one" (171).

Why would someone suggest that "Richard is a fox" is false? The reason is apparently the fact that Richard is not a fox, but a man. But as Binkley notes, "Groups of words which can be used as contradictories will be contradictory only if they are used with the same sense (but for the negation) and in the same context" (172). Given that "Richard is a fox" is metaphorical and "Richard is not a fox" is literal, they do not contradict. The view that the two contradict can only occur if we confuse "Richard is a fox" taken metaphorically with "Richard is a fox" taken literally; but although they use the same words, they do not express the same proposition. Although these literal and metaphorical uses of the word "fox" are related, they are different uses.

To claim that "Richard is a fox" taken metaphorically is false might be taken to contradict the fact that Richard is not literally a fox; but again, the falsity of "Richard is a fox" does not follow from that fact. Then Brinkley notes:

One of the most widespread myths about metaphors is the idea that at the literal level they harbor an impropriety of language....The notion that the literal reading of a metaphor is false or nonsensical is too familiar to need thorough documentation. Yet there appear to be simple counter-examples to this almost universally held belief. Consider the trite "He lives in a glass house." This statement may, but need not, involve a strain in language, even at the literal level....We know that the statement is metaphorical not because we know the person in question lives in a brick house (we may have no information about where he lives), but because the conversation has been about his behavior and not about his residence. (173)

There is, in fact, no good reason to think that metaphors involve any sort of linguistic impropriety.

So we haven't found a contradictory to "Richard is a fox" yet. How about "Richard is not a fox" taken metaphorically? In a conversation, if you said Richard is a fox, I might protest, saying Richard is not a fox (his apparent cunning might really just be a lucky blunder). In such a case, Richard either is or is not a fox; we are disputing over the truth of what is said, in much the same way we might dispute over whether Richard is a good husband or a buffoon. "In all these cases, a claim can be made which is amenable to argument, which has more or less determinate criteria of evaluation, which can be supported and weakened with evidence, and so on" (174). There's some vagueness in each of these cases, but in all of them we all know more or less what is meant. To this Binkley adds another argument:

Furthermore, whether a metaphor can be true does not depend upon its age. A dead metaphor will act almost as though it were literal, and will consequently raise no special problems about truth. But a fresh metaphor is no less capable of stating truths if its author wants to make claims with it. (174)

Someone might argue, however, that metaphorical claims are true in a less direct way than literal claims, i.e., that they have truth only insofar as they are connected with literal claims, i.e., insofar as they are just literal statements embellished. It is true that metaphor depends on the literal in that we need to know the literal use of the words to recognize the metaphor; but this in itself is a limited sort of dependence, and doesn't require us to say that metaphorical language is parasitic on literal language simply speaking. We need to understand the literal use of the words to grasp the metaphor, "But once metaphorical meaning is secured, the words and the meaning are not mediated by a third term, the literal translation of the metaphor" (175). The dependence of metaphorical claims on literal claims has nothing to do with their truth or falsehood. Likewise, there doesn't seem to be any reason to demand a mediation by a literal paraphrase of the metaphor (e.g., "Richard is sly"). He notes as well that sometimes to clarify literal claims we have to resort to metaphorical paraphrases.

It is commonly thought that literal language is more precise than metaphorical language. It is true that literal language is very helpful for clarification; "however this is no reason to presume that it is any more precise in expressing meaning or any closer to 'true' meaning than the metaphorical" (174). As he notes, sometimes we mean precisely something that is vague. The literal may be more precise with respect to certain endeavors, e.g., clarification; but this does not make it a more exact expression of meaning.

Someone might hold, however, that the literal is still a more exact way of expressing reality; i.e., that "Richard is cunning" gives a more accurate picture than "Richard is a fox." This, however, need not affect their truth or falsehood at all: "Descriptive power may be affected by the precision of an expression, but truth-value is not" (177). This is true even of literal statements, which may be imprecise but still true or false. There are, likewise, criteria for the metaphorical use of statements just as there are criteria for the literal use of statements.

Binkley then goes on to identify one of the reasons why philosophers of language have so easily misled themselves on the subject.

When someone wants to put forth an example of a use of language he exhibits an expression out of context....

Because of the nature of linguistic example-giving, it will appear as though those expressions whose meanings are (on the average) less context-dependent or less in need of explication will be the most perspicuous conveyors of meaning. The examples of language which are most readily exhibited and most easily understood in the context of example-giving will be those which are least context-dependent for their meanings. Accordingly, those expressions which will appear to embody their meanings most limpidly when they are exhibited in philosophical discourse will be explicit literal sentences whose meanings are not highly sensitive to changes in context and do not rest heavily upon circumstances of their use. (178)

(Another way to put this, to use a phrase Binkley does not use, is that philosophers of language have been led by the observer-selection bias of their choice of examples.) Sentences that convey their meanings more clearly and directly as examples will not necessarily do so in actual use (and vice versa).

Three distinctions, if used appropriately, clarify how metaphors can be true or false.

a)Establishing the truth of an expression and establishing the meaning of an expression are two different activities.

b) Metaphor as a resource of language should be distinguished from the various uses to which metaphor can be put. Metaphors can be used as poetic devices; this does not mean they are exclusively so, since they can be used to state facts. "A 'literal claim' is nothing other than a claim made with literal language. Literal truth is not a kind of truth, but a truth expressed in literal language" (179) (I consider this the most important statement in the paper.)

c) We should avoid confusing the meaning of a metaphor (or any other expression) with its explication.

Evaluation: What can I say? I agree with every point Binkley makes; and most of them I had come to on my own through similar arguments before I came across this paper. (I came across it just half an hour ago when I was taking a break; and was so excited on finding this generally unread, wonderfully correct paper in a (relatively) obscure journal that I had to put it up on my weblog as LFPA.) As I've told someone before, it's a scary thing when the people who claim to be able to do philosophy of language can't even figure out that the phrase "the literal truth" involves a figurative use of the word "literal."

Lament of Alcestis Draft

Here is the current draft of an opening of a verse-tragedy I've been writing (off and on) on the myth of Alcestis and Admetus.

Lament of Alcestis

Alas! The day is here so long in dread;
Time, ever-traitor, has betrayed.
I feel it in my bones; death is near,
Perhaps today, perhaps when morning comes,
But soon - alas! the day we know will come,
The day that always is a day too soon.
O Love, yours is the hardest rule,
The sharpest pain, the never-ending grief
That is to know, before the day, of parting
(For every love must end, this wicked truth
Is harshest of all sorrows, the purest ache).
Alas! The day is near; I feel it close,
Close as friendship's kiss, and yet no friend;
Today may be the day, or mayhap the morrow's dawn
Will bring to me the ending and the night.
But can I weep, who brought this on myself?
I, who set my fate by choice - such rare choice -
Can such as I show grief and bitter pain
Without guilt of vain - absurd! - impudence?
Apollo knew my husband, tended kine
Upon the plains of Thessaly at Zeus' behest
As punishment divine for deed misdone.
Admetus, ever kind to all he knew,
Respecter of no person, impartial in good will,
Was good master to his servant-god;
The Healer in his thanks sought out the Fates,
They who spin the fates of gods and men,
To counteract Admetus' greatest fear,
The fear that chilled his heart with terror's ice,
Which was the fear of death; to die
Brought to his heart a flight of desperation.
Fate's decree was clear: all men must die,
But one exception can be made for this,
One even they must allow or fall aside.
True substitution is the highest law
In all this cosmic order, which it makes;
It alone is deeper yet than death, and more strong -
Thus sacrifice vicarious is our holy rite -
It is the heart of pure piety and love,
The core of faith, the key of hope and health,
Justice in its nature manifesting act.
One may stand for one; and even death itself
Has no defense against the sacred high exchange;
Death must bow to law, this law beyond all other law.
Admetus, fearful, begged the aid of friend and kin;
In desperation's voice he made appeal.
I, I alone responded to his plea.
I gave myself vicarious for his life;
Now soon death's hawk will swoop upon my wings.
Although I brought it on myself and chose myself,
I cannot but in heart cry out, Alas!
The day draws near, the day of death is nigh,
And woe is come, for now I, face to face,
Will meet with death who rapts us all away.

No Problem Here

I just got back from dinner; on the way there was a 'book blowout', so I stopped in to see what was offered. I came across a copy of Owen Flanagan's The Problem of the Soul. I've liked some of Flanagan's other works, and hadn't read this one, so I considered buying it. I flipped through it as I deliberated. I was a bit surprised to find him quoting a camera commercial to make a point about human nature, but I'm not a snob about such things in philosophy books; whatever works. Then a few flips later, I came across a discussion in which he talks about what 'professional philosophers' think about the mind, and in which he says that professional philosophers do not defend the immateriality of the mind. Which is, in a fashion, true. Professional philosophers don't defend the immateriality of the mind; except, of course, for the ones who do.

I put it down and bought a hardcover copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's Unfinished Tales instead.

Diligent Baroque Master of Pretty Much Everything

I am...

Take the Dead German Composer Test!

"Johann Sebastian Bach was the king of the Baroque period, master of the oratorio, the fugue, the mass, the cantata, and pretty much everything else he chose to write. He worked for the church, which fortunately was a good enough position to allow him to raise his 20 children. For all his current staggering fame, though, he was unknown in his lifetime. His rediscovery can be attributed to Felix Mendelssohn, who wasn't mentioned on this quiz until now.
A few key works: B-Minor Mass, The Well-Tempered Clavier, The Art of the Fugue, Brandenburg Concerti"

And as it happens, I think Bach the coolest composer. So I am consistent....

Ordinary Language (LFPA)

Citation: Gilbert Ryle, "Ordinary Language," The Philosophical Review, LXII (1953), 167-186. This was reprinted in Charles E. Caton, ed., Philosophy and Ordinary Language, University of Illinois Press (1963), 108-127, whence I take it.

Summary: Gilbert Ryle is always a bit difficult to summarize, but here's my attempt at it (with lots of block-quoting - sorry). The article is an examination of arguments that turn on "references to what we can and cannot say" (108), and in particular, with the dispute over whether these sorts of arguments are legitimate. He does this by examining the phrase "the use of ordinary language."

1. "Ordinary Language." Ryle carefully distinguishes "the use of ordinary language" from "ordinary linguistic usage" and "the ordinary use of the expression '...' ". In "the use of ordinary language" the word 'ordinary' is in contrast with things like 'esoteric', 'technical', 'poetical', 'archaic', etc. It indicates the vernacular or common language. In "the ordinary use of the expression," however, 'ordinary' is contrasted with 'non-stock' or 'non-standard'. If a term is very technical, laypeople will not know its 'ordinary' use; if it is a conversational term, most people will know its 'ordinary' uses (and many of its non-standard uses, too, if it has any). This sort of 'ordinary' is "philosophically colourless" (110); when we use it, all we are doing is making it easier for others to get the reference, and disputes about which uses are the standard uses are not philosophically interesting. When a specialist of any sort is looking at the ordinary use of a given expression, he is not looking at its colloquial use, but at its special use.

2. "Use." (This is a good section, so I'll blockquote quite a bit.) Ryle notes that the operative word in the phrase "the ordianry use of the expression" is 'use', not 'expression':

Hume's question was not about the word 'cause'; it was about the use of 'cause'. It was just as much about the use of 'Ursache'. For the use of 'cause' is the same as the use of 'Ursache', though 'cause' is not the same word as 'Ursache'. Hume's question was not a question about a bit of the English language in any way in which it was not a question about a bit of the German language. (112)

He then goes on to note,

Putting the stress on the word 'use' helps to bring out the important fact that the enquiry is an enquiry not into the other features or properties of the word or coin or pair of boots, but only into what is done with it, or with anything else with which we do the same thing. That is why it is so misleading to classify philosophical questions as linguistic questions--or as non-linguistic ones.

It is, I think, only in fairly recent years that philosophers have picked up the trick of talking about the use of expressions, and even made a virtue of so talking. Our forefathers, at one time, talked instead of the concepts or ideas corresponding to expressions. This was in many ways a very convenient idiom, and one which in most situations we do well to retain. It had the drawback, though, that it encouraged people to start Platonic or Lockean hares aboutthe status and provenance of these concepts or ideas. (112-113)

He continues this brief historical discussion a bit more to suggest why philosophers started talking about uses of expressions, then notes that one of the great merits fof this idiom is that it allows us to talk about misuse.

3. "Use" and "Utility." There are problems with the idiom, however; one of which is that people can read 'use' as 'utility' or 'usefulness', and conclude that the use of an expression is what it is useful for. This can sometimes be profitable, but there is a fundamental difference between 'use' (vs. uselessness) and 'use' (vs. misuse). "Questions about the use of an expression are often, though not always, questions about the way to operate with it; not questions about what the employer of it needs it for" (115). The What-for question can be asked; but usually the answer is obvious.

4. "Use" and "Usage." "Much more insidious than this confusion," Ryle says, "is the confusion between a 'use', i.e., a way of operating with something, and a 'usage'" (115). This confusion, which Ryle attributes to "lots of philosophers," is a howler, since a usage is "a custom, practice, fashion or vogue"; there is no such thing as a misusage. Investigation of usage is philological; learning a usage is learning about historical or "sociological generalities." Learning a use, however, is learning how to do something. To avoid confusions like these, Ryle suggests using the cognates of 'employ' instead.

Ryle finishes his discussion of "the use of the expression" by pointing out that we can ask whether a person knows how to use a certain word, but not whether a person knows how to use a certain sentence. We can, of course, talk about the use or misuse of sentences when those sentences have "congealed" into a single phrase, but this is something different. (Ryle doesn't go into the issue; I presume it is due to the fact that we can in certain situations treat phrases or even sentences as words; but this is different from the ordinary way sentences are involved in our language.) In a typically Rylean analogy, he suggests that words are to ingredients of a pie somewhat like sentences are to pies; a cook can misuse ingredients of a pie, but cannot in this way misuse the pie itself. We can have dictionaries of words, but not dictionaries of sentences; this is not merely because of the size a sentence-dictionary would have to be, but because sentences, uncongealed into word-like phrases, are just not the sort of thing of which one could have a dictionary. The 'meaning or use of a word', therefore, is radically different from the 'meaning or use of a sentence'.

Having looked at these issues, Ryle then returns to the subject of philosophy and ordinary language:

The vogue of the phrase 'the use of ordinary language' seems to suggest to some people the idea that there exists a philosophical doctrine according to which (a) all philosophical enquiries are concerned with vernacular; and (b) in consequence, all philosophical discussions ought to be couched entierly in vernacular dictions. The inference is fallacious, though its conclusion has some truth in it. (121)

Merely from the fact that someone is writing about wit it does not follow that they should be writing wittily; just as it does not follow from the fact that someone is writing about words of Celtic origin that their point will be better expressed if it is phrased entirely in words of Celtic origin. It is true that slavery to jargon is bad writing in any case, although jargon has its uses; but "there is no a priori or peculiar obligation laid upon philosophers from talking esoterically," despite there being "a general obligation upon all thinkers and writers to try to think and writeboth as powerfully and as plainly as possible" (122).

He then goes on to say "two philosophically contentious things":
(a) There is a special reason for philosophers to jettison regularly the technical terms of their predecessors, beyond the reasons it can be helpful for any specialist to do so: "There is no peculiar field of knowledge or adeptness in which philosophers ex officio make themselves the experts--except of course the business of philosophising itself" (124).
(b) This is best put in Ryle's own words:

The appeal to what we do and do not say, or can and cannot say, is often stoutly resisted by the protagonists of one special doctrien, and stoutly pressed by tis antagonists. This doctrine is the doctrine that philosophical disputes can and should be settled by formalising the warring theses....

Of those to whom this, the formaliser's dream, appears a mere dream (I am one of them), some maintain that the logic of everyday statements and even the logic of teh statemetns of scientists, lawyers, historians and bridge-players cannot in principle be adequately represented by the formulae of formal logic. The so-called logical constants do indeed have, partly by deliberate prescription, their scheduled logical powers; but the non-formal expressions both of everyday discourse and of technical discourse have their own unscheduled logical powers, and these are not reducible without remainder to those of the carefully wired marionettes of formal logic. (124-125)

Ryle then delivers his verdict on the dispute opening the paper:

Well, then, has philosophy got something to do with the use of expressions or hasn't it? To ask this is simply to ask whether conceptual discussions, i.e., discussions about the concept of, say, voluntariness, infinitesimals, number or cause, come under the heading of philosophical discussions. Of course they do. They always have done, and they have not stopped doing so now.

He does note that formulating the discussion in these terms is only helpful in certain contexts; it's a long-winded description of what's being done, and more importantly, "preoccupation with questions about methods tends to distract us from prosecuting the methods themselves" (126). There are, however, compensating advantages, since it helps us distinguish what we're doing from what other people are doing, e.g., it helps remind us, when looking at what it means to perceive something, that we are not engaging in the psychology of perception.

I'll give my rough evaluation of this a bit later (prob. in the comments).

Supreme Court Sarcasm; and Don't You Dare Call Me a "Pack Rat"!

This is the full text of Justice Scalia's concurring opinion in Intel Corp vs. Advanced Micro Devices:

JUSTICE SCALIA, concurring in the judgment. As today’s opinion shows, the Court’s disposition is required by the text of the statute. None of the limitations urged by petitioner finds support in the categorical language of 28 U. S. C. §1782(a). That being so, it is not only (as I think) improper but also quite unnecessary to seek repeated support in the words of a Senate Committee Report—which, as far as we know, not even the full committee, much less the full Senate, much much less the House, and much much much less the President who signed the bill, agreed with. Since, moreover, I have not read the entire so-called legislative history, and have no need or desire to do so, so far as I know the statements of the Senate Report may be contradicted elsewhere. Accordingly, because the statute—the only sure expression of the will of Congress—says what the Court says it says, I join in the judgment.

(From the U. S. Supreme Court website)

It's always enjoyable to see people involved with the application of law expressing impatience with lawyers. (This brief opinion was called to my attention by browsing NRO's The Corner.)

I have sometimes thought that some of the principles that go into making a good legal brief go into making any good objection-type argument, however philosophical the topic. I recently came across this interesting discussion of how to write a legal brief, and was struck by how the "Six Enemies of the Well-Written Brief" have counterparts in the writing of philosophical responses:

1) "Attila the Hun," i.e., the person whose response is geared mostly to insult;
2) "William Faulkner and the Bronte Sisters," i.e., the person whose response is more literary flair than response;
3) "Albert Einstein," i.e., the person whose response gets bogged down in technicality and jargon;
4) "Tricky Dicky," i.e., the person whose response is more slippery salesmanship than sound reasoning;
5) "The Pack Rat," i.e., the person whose response is overloaded with irrelevant issues;
6) "The Great Ground Sloth," i.e., the person whose response is more lazy whine than reason.

Of course, in the actual rough-and-tumble of philosophical response, things are less clear-cut than in writing a legal brief. But I think it fair to say that just about every thinker, however brilliant, has a tendency to slide, if self-discipline is not exercised, into one of these characters.

No Wonder I Find My Progress So Slow

You are Xuan Wu!

Mythological background: Because the turtle has a
thick, solid shell that serves as protection -
this animal is associated with stability. You
enjoy intellectual pursuits.
Also, in Feng Shui (the Chinese myths behind
choosing a house), the black turtle's solidity
is used to protect from cold northern winds.


Which Chinese Mythological Being Are You?
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