Abstract

Metaphors raise several problems for semantic theory and the philosophy of language. How, for example, is metaphorical language distinguished from literal language? Do metaphors have a linguistic or semantic meaning beyond the literal meaning of the words? Are metaphors either true or false? An adequate semantic theory of natural language must address these questions. ;As its title indicates, my dissertation is a critical examination of several recent philosophical theories of metaphor. I examine six such theories, distinguishing semantic from nonsemantic approaches. In semantic theories of metaphor, metaphorical meaning is treated as a form of sentence or linguistic meaning. L. J. Cohen, Joseph Stern, and Israel Scheffler and Catherine Elgin offer semantic theories of metaphor. A critical examination of these three theories is presented in Chapters 1-3. Nonsemantic theories of metaphor reject the notion of metaphorical sentence or word meaning. Donald Davidson, John Searle, and Robert Fogelin take a nonsemantic approach to metaphor. Donald Davidson argues that metaphorical meaning is neither sentence nor speaker's meaning, while John Searle and Robert Fogelin argue that metaphorical meaning is a form of speaker's meaning. I present and criticize these three theories in Chapters 4 and 5. In Chapter 5, I defend Fogelin's theory against several recent objections, and argue that though it is not a complete theory of metaphor, his version of the elliptical-simile theory is the most promising of recent theories of metaphor