In this paper, I take a critical look at the Davidsonian argument that metaphorical sentences do not express propositions because of the phenomenological experience—seeing one thing as another thing—involved in understanding them as metaphors. According to Davidson, seeing-as is not seeing-that. This verdict is aimed at dislodging metaphor from the position of being assessed with the semantic notions of propositions, meaning, and truth. I will argue that the phenomenological or perceptual experience associated with metaphors does not determine the propositional contentfulness (...) or truth-evaluability of metaphors. Truth-evaluability is not inconsistent but compatible with a perceptual model for metaphors. I argue for this partly by showing that seeing-as does not constitute understanding of metaphors when understanding is appropriately construed in terms of being able to use an expression. (shrink)

In this paper, I take a critical look at the Davidsonian argument that metaphorical sentences do not express propositions because of the phenomenological experience—seeing one thing as another thing—involved in understanding them as metaphors. According to Davidson, seeing-as is not seeing-that. This verdict is aimed at dislodging metaphor from the position of being assessed with the semantic notions of propositions, meaning, and truth. I will argue that the phenomenological or perceptual experience associated with metaphors does not determine the propositional contentfulness (...) or truth-evaluability of metaphors. Truth-evaluability is not inconsistent but compatible with a perceptual model for metaphors. I argue for this partly by showing that seeing-as does not constitute understanding of metaphors when understanding is appropriately construed in terms of being able to use an expression. (shrink)

Semiotics constitutes an untapped and interdisciplinary source of enrichment for the discipline of International Relations theory. We propose two visual metaphors to that effect to interpret the figure depicting the central claim of structural realism offered by late Kenneth Waltz who is one of the most disputed, read, and inspiring IR theorists. The figure is the tenor of both metaphors. The vehicles are two paintings by Mark Rothko, namely, “Green and Tangerine on Red” and the “Number 14.” The metaphors generate (...) innumerable meanings for the tenor and eliminate the criticism that SR is a static and an ahistorical theory. Thus, they benefit the Discipline characterised by academic cleavages on the meaning of theory, science, and production of knowledge. (shrink)

This article focuses on two largely ignored aspects of the understanding of strong metaphors: the visual dimension and the emotional factors. Particularly, I intend to offer answers to the following questions: 1) What does it mean to understand a visual metaphor? 2) Can Wittgenstein’s ideas about the vision of aspects help to better understand this understanding? 3) In what sense does his notion of secondary sense enrich the philosophical reflection on the understanding of metaphors? 4) In what sense may emotions (...) be an important factor in the understanding of certain metaphors? The article is framed in a methodological proposal: I defend a phenomenology of the metaphor, that is, an accurate description of our experiences with metaphors, and in this case, its understanding. (shrink)

Efforts in recent Anglo-American philosophy to explain the work of linguistic metaphor can be reduced to four basic types of position: first, metaphor as an ornament of style, produced by a transfer of terms related according to some relevant similarity among their referents, for aesthetic, rhetorical or didactic ends; second, metaphor as an instrument of cognition, identified when features normally associated with disparate subjects are brought together in a unique and original synthesis, giving expression to a distinctive metaphorical content, and (...) revealing the associative procedures that structure all language, thought and experience; third, metaphor as a type of indirect speech, occurring when a speaker implies, suggests or means by an utterance something distinct from what a hearer unaware of the circumstances of that utterance would be able to determine simply on the basis of the conventional meanings of the words employed; and finally, metaphor as well-formed non-sense, used to prompt a hearer or reader to imagine familiar things in unfamiliar ways, by evoking new ideas or images without expressing them either directly or indirectly. I argue that each of these four positions is inadequate as a general theory of metaphor, and moreover, that recognition of the failings of each supports a pluralistic approach to understanding the work of metaphor, one that enables us to take account of various distinct types of metaphor, corresponding to the various distinct types of function that metaphors serve. (shrink)