David Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics yields a quantum potential, Q. In his early work, the effects of Q are understood in causal terms as acting through a real (quantum) field which pushes particles around. In his later work (with Basil Hiley), the causal understanding of Q appears to have been abandoned. The purpose of this paper is to understand how the use of certain metaphors leads Bohm away from a causal treatment of Q, and to evaluate the use (...) of those metaphors. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that causation, when described and treated as a metaphor, increases in explanatory power, while diminishing the problems associated with standard analysis of it. I first present a description of the uses of metaphor in scientific and literary language. This is drawn primarily from Max Black's interaction view of metaphor, as well as the view forwarded by Donald Davidson in his What Metaphors Mean. I then outline some of the standard analyses in the field (...) of causation, followed by some of the standard replies to those analyses. Finally, I show how describing causation in terms of a metaphor will bypass many of these objections, while maintaining or increasing its explanatory power. (shrink)

Oncofertility is one of the 9 NIH Roadmap Initiatives, federal grants intended to explore previously intractable questions, and it describes a new field that exists in the liminal space between cancer treatment and its sequelae, IVF clinics and their yearning, and basic research in cell growth, biomaterials, and reproductive science and its tempting promises. Cancer diagnoses, which were once thought universally fatal, now often entail management of a chronic disease. Yet the therapies are rigorous, must start immediately, and in (...) many cases result in premature failure of the body's reproductive ability. In women, this loss is especially poignant; unlike the routine storage of sperm, which is done in men and boys facing similar treatment decisions, freezing oocytes in anticipation of fertility loss is not possible in most cases, and creating an embryo within days of diagnosis raises significant moral, social and medical challenges. Oncofertility is the study of how to harvest ovarian tissue in women facing cancer to preserve their gametes for future use with IVF, thus allowing the decisions about childbearing to be deferred and reproductive choices to be preserved. The research endeavor uses the capacity of the ovarian follicle to produce eggs in vitro. Developing the human follicle to ovulate successfully outside the body is scientifically difficult and ethically challenging. Infertility is linked to long-standing religious and moral traditions, and is intertwined with deeply contentious social narratives about women, families, illness and birth. Is the research morally permissible? Perhaps imperative if understood as a repair from iatrogenic harms? How are considerations of justice central to the work? How will vulnerable subjects be protected? What are the moral implications of the work for women, children and families? What are the implications for society if women could store ovarian tissue as a way of stopping the biological clock? What are the moral possibilities and challenges if eggs can be produced in large quantities from a stored ovarian tissue? (shrink)

A growing, interdisciplinary field of cognitive linguistics has developed in recent decades, bringing together research from many fields to explore the ways that metaphors provide structure and semantic content to thought and language. In this article, the American public school disability emotional/behavioral disorder (E/BD) is examined in regard to the primary metaphors that frame the basic concepts of the disorder. The metaphors of 2 versions of E/BD, psychodynamic and behavioral, are investigated. A series of critical questions about the E/BD (...) construct are posed, and possibilities for new metaphors are proposed. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the downsides of using the language of professionalism in educational discourse. It suggests that the language of professionalization can be a powerful rhetorical device for promoting welcome and necessary changes in the field of teaching but that, in doing so, it can unintentionally misrepresent the work that teachers do. Taking as a theoretical framework Lakoff and Johnson's metaphor theory, the article argues that ‘teacher as professional’ should be seen as a metaphor of teaching on (...) par with other metaphors familiar from the history of educational thought. What metaphors of teaching have in common, the article advances, is that they systematically highlight certain aspects of teaching while hiding others. The significance of this conclusion is twofold. Appreciating the limits of the ‘teacher as professional’ metaphor provides guidance about how to use more effectively ‘professionalism’ as a normative standard for promoting change in teaching and teacher education. Second, appreciating the metaphorical character of ‘teacher as professional’ has heuristic value in that it offers a novel explanation for the controversial trend towards conceptualising teaching in narrowly instructional terms. (shrink)

What is the relation between the three following elements: words, pictures, and conceptual representations? And how do these three elements work, in defining and explaining metaphors? These are the questions that we tackle in our interdisciplinary contribution, which moves across cognitive linguistics, cognitive sciences, philosophy and semiotics. Within the cognitive linguistic tradition, scholars have assumed that there are equivalent and comparable structures characterizing the way in which metaphor works in language and in pictures. In this paper we analyze contextual visual (...) metaphors, which are considered to be the most complex ones, and we compare them to those that in language are called indirect metaphors. Our proposal is that a syllogistic mechanism of comprehension permeates both metaphors expressed in the verbal modality as well as metaphors expressed in the pictorial modality. While in the verbal modality the metaphoric syllogism is solved by inference, we argue that in the pictorial modality the role of inference is performed through mental imagery. (shrink)

A variant of the compatrison theory of metaphor is put forward. The main points are a theory of metaphor belongs to semantics, not pragmatics, a metaphorical statement is a similarity statement, usually comparing descriptions of objects, a metaphor is a constellation of words connected by a certain kind of relation - the metaphorical link, metaphors are not necessarily asymmetric, what expressions copunt as metaphors in a certain language has to do with the semantic fields of the language in (...) question. (shrink)

Sheridan Hough provides a careful examination of Friedrich Nietzsche’s ample use of metaphor throughout his corpus, and concludes that the active, muscular thought associated with Nietzsche is evenly countered by receptive imagery which imbues his work with an elevated balance. The duplicity of Nietzsche’s images, fecund with layers of significance, culminates most evidently in the two most scrutinized themes in Nietzsche scholarship, the eternal return and the Ubermensch. Hough offers a unique interpretation of these tropes, proffering the concept of the (...) Ubermensch as a unique moment of the free spirit, contrasted with a destined, elevated, or evolved ideal of man. The Ubermensch and eternal return converge in an artistic moment, replete with the perpetual process of self-overcoming and value transformation. (shrink)

In health communication, metaphor can be considered as a reasoning device to let people understand an abstract concept in terms of a concrete one (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Bowdle and Gentner 2005). Both the positive and negative communicative effects of metaphors have been largely pointed out in a variety of medical fields, from oncology (Semino et al. 2016, 2018) to mental health (Frezza and Zoccolotti 2019). The use of metaphors in vaccine communication has been less considered, though it might be (...) crucial to let people understand vaccination as an important collective health phenomenon. A previous study (Scherer et al. 2015) focused on the communicative effects of conventional metaphors for vaccination, but not specifically on novel metaphors deliberately used to explain the concept of population immunity in vaccination. We hypothesized that metaphors used to explain vaccination as a collective phenomenon could improve the communicative aims of pro-vaccination texts in many respects, ranging from understandability to trust in expertise. We designed a study to test the hypothesis: two groups of participants were presented with a text about vaccination as a collective phenomenon, described in either literal or metaphorical terms. They were asked to evaluate the text on different communicative aspects from both an individual and a collective point of view. The results confirmed the hypothesis that metaphor is an effective reasoning device and that it also enhances the overall communicative effects of the message, in terms of understandability, persuasion, feeling of control over the health situation, trust in expertise, and uptake of experts’ advice. However, the results show that this effect is significantly nuanced in the individual vs. collective response type. (shrink)

his article will focus on the mechanistic origins of the computer metaphor, which forms the conceptual framework for the methodology of the cognitive sciences, some areas of artificial intelligence and the philosophy of mind. The connection between the history of computing technology, epistemology and the philosophy of mind is expressed through the metaphorical dictionaries of the philosophical discourse of a particular era. The conceptual clarification of this connection and the substantiation of the mechanistic components of the computer metaphor is (...) the main goal of this article. The statement is substantiated that the invention of mechanical computing devices, having a long history in the European engineering tradition, formed the prerequisites for the emergence of machine functionalism in the modern philosophy of mind. The idea of multiple implementation stems from the principle that a formal symbol system prescribes rules for the use of rational abstractions through the physical architecture of a computational engine. The article considers the reasons for the conceptual shift and reveals the semantic foundations for the metaphorical transfer of the properties of abstract objects from the theory of automata to the field of modern philosophy of mind. The criticism and ways of protecting the philosophical program of machine functionalism are analyzed by changing the content of the metaphor “Mind as machine”. The reasons for the stability of the information-computer approach in cognitive sciences are also disclosed and explained. (shrink)

In responding to Pannenberg's paper, “God as Spirit—and Natural Science,” Polkinghorne challenges the paper's interpretation of the scientific concept of field. He insists on its physical, material nature, elaborated by quantum theory, and asserts that Pannenberg's concept of field is immaterial or even in some sense “spiritual.” Polkinghorne also comments on how a physical theory may give rise to several differing, even contradictory, metaphysical interpretations.

Many scholars often use the terms “metaphors,” “analogies,” and “models” interchangeably and inadvertently overlook the uniqueness of each word. According to recent cognitive studies, the three terms involve distinct cognitive processes using features from a familiar concept and applying them to an abstract, complicated concept. In the field of science and religion, there have been various objects or ideas used as metaphors, analogies, or models to describe the science–religion relationship. Although these heuristic tools provided some understanding of the complex (...) interaction, they failed to address the broad nature of science and religion as well as the multifarious relationship between the two in a sociocultural context. Unlike the previous candidates, the concept of language, including the notions of linguistic worldview, linguistic identity, dialects, power, and bilingualism, offers a unique and comprehensive window through which science, religion, and the relationship between the two are seen with clarity. (shrink)

Acclaimed theorist and social scientist Donna Jeanne Haraway uses the work of pioneering developmental biologists Ross G. Harrison, Joseph Needham, and Paul Weiss as a springboard for a discussion about a shift in developmental biology from a vitalism-mechanism framework to organicism. The book deftly interweaves Thomas Kuhn's concept of paradigm change into this wide-ranging analysis, emphasizing the role of model, analogy, and metaphor in the paradigm and arguing that any truly useful theoretical system in biology must have a central metaphor.

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. (shrink)

In the literature, the pragmatic dimension of metaphors has been clearly acknowledged. Metaphors are regarded as having different possible uses, especially pursuing persuasion. However, an analysis of the specific conversational purposes that they can be aimed at achieving in a dialogue and their adequacy thereto is still missing. In this chapter, we will address this issue focusing on the classical distinction between the explanatory and persuasive uses of metaphors, which is, however, complex to draw at an analytical level and often (...) blurred and controversial also from a theoretical point of view. Building on the analysis of explanation in different theories and fields of study, we show how it can be conceived as characterized by a cognitive and a pragmatic dimension, where the transference of understanding is used pragmatically for different dialogical goals - such as informing, making a joint decision, and most importantly persuading. In this sense, the cognitive effects of understanding are not incompatible with a persuasive dialogical purpose. This theoretical proposal will be applied to examples drawn from the medical context, to show how a pragmatic approach to explanation can account for the complexity of the cases that can be found in actual dialogical contexts. (shrink)

While environmental ethicists often critique metaphors of nature, they rarely recognize metaphors of environmental practice, and so fail to submit background models of human agency to similar critique. In consequence, descriptions of nature are often shaped by unassessed metaphors of practice, and then made to bear argument for that preferred model. To relieve arguments over “nature” of this vicarious burden, models of agency can and should become a primary topic within the field. In response to some initial misgivings from (...) Eric Katz and taking suggestions from Bryan Norton, Steven Vogel, Holmes Rolston, III, and others, some minimal framing criteria can be developed to promote and facilitate a broad debate over the most appropriate metaphors and models of environmental practice. (shrink)

This book provides a philosophical theory explicating the cognitive contribution of metaphor. Metaphor effects a transference of meaning, not between two terms, but between two structured domains of content, or ‘semantic fields’. Semantic fields, construed as necessary to a theory of word-meaning, provide the contrastive and affinitive relations that govern a term’s literal use. In a metaphoric use, these relations are projected into a second domain which is thereby reordered with significant cognitive effects. The book provides a revision and refinement (...) of ‘the semantic theory of metaphor’. Taking into account pragmatic considerations and recent linguistic and psychological studies, the book aims to forge a new understanding of the relation between metaphoric and literal meaning. It illustrates the thesis with sensitive and systematic analyses of metaphors found in literature, philosophy, science, and everyday language. Keywords:,, . (shrink)

This paper builds on Lakoff’s and Johnson’s theory of metaphorical concepts to propose that our conception of truth as correspondence with reality is metaphorically based on our conception of perceptual fields. In particular, it is argued that parts of reality, as metaphorically understood in terms of parts of perceptual fields, can play the role of objective truth-makers for sentences with empirical content; for instance, they meet the constraints on correspondence put forward by Barry Smith. Finally, Richard Boyd’s account of (...) the function of metaphor in science is utilized to ground the nonfictional and referential status of truth-maker and related notions. (shrink)

The usage of metaphor in languages for specific purposes has been in the focus of interest of cognitive linguistics for years, especially after Lakoff and Johnson published their famous book “Metaphors We Live by” in 1980. Inspired by that book, the author strives to prove that metaphor was not only intensely present in the history of law but also that it pervades the language of contemporary legal theory and practice. Terms like _injury of law, the burden of evidence, soft laws, (...) hard laws,_ etc. are so often used by lawyers in their professional communication that they are hardly recognizable as metaphors. In the theoretical part, the terms _conceptual metaphor_ and _lexical metaphor_, as well as _the source domain_ and _the target domain of the metaphor_ are defined. Accordingly, conceptual metaphor and lexical metaphor are interpreted from the perspective of the language of law. As an introduction to the discussion on metaphoric terms in the field of law, a number of metaphors is presented and discussed from the point of view of legal history, as the metaphoric and other poetic expressions were recognized as the features of legalese back in the early seventeenth century. In the main part, the author presents and discusses the most common conceptual metaphors in connection with the terms _law, justice, court,_ and the types of metaphors typically used in specific branches of law as criminal law, company law, and contract law. The empirical part of the paper is focused on two research tasks. Firstly, metaphors occurring in selected Legal English textbooks are explored and discussed by using a qualitative and a quantitative approach, and secondly, metaphoric terms and phrases of the EU Law are excerpted from the Treaty Establishing the European Community (Consolidated version 2002), the main task being to establish the frequency of metaphors in this relatively young branch of law and the types of conceptual metaphors they belong to. In the closing part, conclusions on similarities and differences in the use of metaphor between two different types of legal texts are drawn with specific reference to the frequency, lexical structures, and typology of conceptual metaphors in the field of law. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.2 (2000) 263-283 [Access article in PDF] Contesting Metaphors and the Discourse of Consciousness in William James Jill M. Kress Ah, not to be cut off,not by such slight partitionto be excluded from the stars' measure.What is inwardness?What if not sky intensified,flung through with birds and deepwith winds of homecoming? --Rainer Maria Rilke William James's lifelong attention to questions about human mental experience (...) elucidates the development of the concept of consciousness through its realization in fields as disparate as natural science, radical empiricism, and religious mysticism. 1 Over the course of a career that both establishes and traverses disciplinary boundaries, James's work embodies tensions between scientific explanations for mental phenomena and the inescapability of metaphysical arguments. Jamesian psychology thus alternates between materialist and spiritualist assumptions of scientists and philosophers at the turn of the century, joining their compulsive investigations into the nature of consciousness. 2 Most readers [End Page 263] of James puzzle over the theoretical contradictions within his work, debating central philosophical dilemmas concerning the status of the conscious self. Perhaps the most paradoxical aspect of James's theories, his response to dualism, emerges as he attempts to negotiate ethereal explanations for consciousness with bodily processes. 3 The mind-body problem disrupts James's more delicately balanced theories, a disruption registered explicitly through the metaphors in his texts.Reading The Principles of Psychology (1890) alongside "Does 'Consciousness' Exist" (1904), this essay demonstrates how figurative language directs James's study of consciousness. I argue that metaphor does more than describe consciousness; metaphor constructs James's arguments, governs his conflicting theories of mind through a series of rhetorical configurations and provokes the continual reconstruction of his ideas of human subjectivity. Furthermore, while it is impossible for James to explain and to study consciousness without metaphor, he experiences great anxiety about using language, figurative or otherwise, to represent his object of study. The language becomes more powerful than his intentions or designs and, indeed, raises implications that James cannot control. James possesses a heightened awareness of what he crafts with words; he also, perhaps more penetratingly, acknowledges the inadequacy of any linguistic system to realize concepts thoroughly. 4 Struggling over appropriate "names" and "terms" for consciousness, James presupposes some clearly delineated concept around which we might wrap a verbal expression; yet he also seems painfully aware that every new metaphor launches an entirely new theory. Fluid and unpredictable, consciousness becomes like language itself, yielding its power precisely because it can be so many things at once. The ultimate principle of Jamesian consciousness seems to be its creative capacity; still, once James admits that the problem of consciousness is a problem of language, his carefully constructed designs begin to unravel. Though consciousness will be translated into James's notion of "pure experience" by the time he writes the radical empiricism [End Page 264] essays, James remains simultaneously committed to his figures (especially of the "stream of consciousness") and ambivalent about the account of consciousness that they provide. James helps create the modern self with its enhanced individuality, though his metaphors at once direct us inward to a centered, private self and propel us outward to find consciousness materializing in the fluxional cycle of the natural world.In presenting his initial theory of the stream of our thoughts, James argues for its coherence. His most famous metaphor of the "stream" of consciousness appears to saturate the varied material of the mind, its water washing over and through any distinctions or separations which the mind might present: Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as "chain" or "train" do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A "river" or a "stream" are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. 5James's desire to find words that are more "natural... (shrink)

In a now classic paper published in 1991, Alberch introduced the concept of genotype–phenotype (G!P) mapping to provide a framework for a more sophisticated discussion of the integration between genetics and developmental biology that was then available. The advent of evo-devo first and of the genomic era later would seem to have superseded talk of transitions in phenotypic space and the like, central to Alberch’s approach. On the contrary, this paper shows that recent empirical and theoretical advances have only sharpened (...) the need for a different conceptual treat- ment of how phenotypes are produced. Old-fashioned metaphors like genetic blueprint and genetic programme are not only woefully inadequate but positively misleading about the nature of G!P, and are being replaced by an algorithmic approach emerging from the study of a variety of actual G!P maps. These include RNA folding, protein function and the study of evolvable soft- ware. Some generalities are emerging from these disparate fields of analysis, and I suggest that the concept of ‘developmental encoding’ (as opposed to the classical one of genetic encoding) provides a promising computational–theoretical underpinning to coherently integrate ideas on evolvability, modularity and robustness and foster a fruitful framing of the G!P mapping problem. (shrink)

The role of figurative languages such as metaphor and metonymy in creativity has been studied in cognitive linguistics. These methods can also be applied to analyze non-linguistic data such as pictures and gestures. In this paper we analyze fashion design by focusing on visual metaphor and metonymy. The nature of creativity in fashion design is not fully studied from a cognitive perspective compared to other related fields such as art. We especially focus on the aspect of fashion design as a (...) communication tool between the designer and the audience to convey designer’s image of human. Photos from two fashion shows are analyzed. We carried out an experiment to compare how human images in two shows are interpreted by those who are familiar with fashion and those who are not. We got three results: (1) As far as figurative (metaphorical and metonymic) interpretations of human image are concerned, two groups with different familiarity to fashion have significantly different patterns of responses to two shows. (2) For non-figurative interpretations (such as physical or personal attributes), no significant difference in the pattern of response to the show was observed between two groups. The participants as a whole, however, responded to the two shows differently. (3) In addition for non-figurative interpretation, fashion experts found significantly more attributes in human images than the others. The results show that the analysis of figurative interpreations is effective in seeing how the familiarity to fashion affects the mode of seeing fashion shows. (shrink)

The enigmatic thought of Charles S. Peirce, considered by many to be one of the great philosophers of all time, involves inquiry not only into virtually all branches and sources of modern semiotics, physics, cognitive sciences, and mathematics, but also logic, which he understood to be the only useful approach to the riddle of reality. This book represents an attempt to outline an analytical method based on Charles Peirce’s least explored branch of philosophy, which is his evolutionary cosmology, and his (...) notion that the universe is made of an ‘effete mind.’ The chief argument conceives of human discourse as a giant metaphor in regard to outside reality. The metaphors arise in our imagination as lightning-fast schemes for acting, speaking, or thinking. To illustrate this, each chapter will present a well-known metaphor and explain how it is unfolded and conceptualized according to the new method for revealing meaning. This original work will interest students and scholars in many fields including semiotics, linguistics and philosophy. (shrink)

In the time of Coronavirus, it is perhaps as good a time as any to comment on the use and abuse of metaphors. One of the worst instances of metaphor abuse-especially given the recent epidemiological crisis-is Lynne Tirrell's notion of toxic speech. In the foregoing reply piece, I analyze Tirrell's metaphor and reveal how it blinds us to the liberating power of public speech. Lynne Tirrell argues that some speech is, borrowing from field of Epidemiology, toxic in the sense (...) that it harms vulnerable listeners. In this response piece, I summarize the main points of Tirrell's toxic speech argument, map the underlying conceptual metaphor and pose three objections. (shrink)

Objects of Metaphor puts forward a philosophical account of metaphor radically different from those currently on offer. Powerful and flexible enough to cope with the syntactic complexity typical of genuine metaphor, it offers novel conceptions of the relationship between simile and metaphor, the notion of dead metaphor, and the idea of metaphor as a robust theoretic kind. Without denying that metaphor can sometimes be merely ornamental, Guttenplan justifies the view of metaphor as fundamental to language and the study of language. (...) His book will be of great interest not only to philosophers in this field, but also to those working across psychology and linguistics. (shrink)

Metaphor theory has shifted from asking whether metaphor is 'conceptual' or 'linguistic' to debating whether it is 'embodied' or 'discursive'. Although recent work in the social and cognitive sciences has yielded clear opportunities to resolve that dispute, the divide between discourse- and cognition-oriented approaches has remained. To unite the field, this book brings together leading metaphor researchers from a number of disciplines. It collects major arguments and presents a wide variety of empirical evidence, placing special emphasis on the embodiment (...) and socio-cultural embeddedness of cognition, as well as the multi-modal and social-interactive nature of communication. It shows that metaphor theory can only profit from an approach that takes multiple perspectives into consideration and tries to account for findings yielded by multiple methodologies. By doing so, it works towards a dynamic, multi-dimensional, socio-cognitive model of metaphor that goes beyond what research traditions have separately achieved. (shrink)

The enigmatic thought of Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), considered by many to be one of the great philosophers of all time, involves inquiry not only into virtually all branches and sources of modern semiotics, physics, cognitive sciences, and mathematics, but also logic, which he understood to be the only useful approach to the riddle of reality. This book represents an attempt to outline an analytical method based on Charles Peirce's least explored branch of philosophy, which is his evolutionary cosmology, and (...) his notion that the universe as made of an 'effete mind.' The chief argument conceives of human discourse as a giant metaphor in regard to outside reality. The metaphors arise in our imagination as lightning-fast schemes of acting, speaking, or thinking. To prove this, each chapter will present a well-known metaphor and explain how it is unfolded and conceptualized according to the new method for revealing meaning. This original work will interest students and scholars in many fields including semiotics, linguistics and philosophy. (shrink)

Analysing race as the metaphor of life - by means of which Thomas Hobbes describes the passions in The Elements of Law, natural and politic - seems to be the right occasion to underline the relationship between the mechanistic idea of human being and sports activity. This approach makes a paradigm come to the surface - where factors such as extreme competition, the pursuit of success at any cost, ineliminable fear of defeat confirm the relevance of the Malmesbury born philosopher's (...) thought, even within the so popular but little investigated field of sport. (shrink)

Technology has advanced significantly over the past decades. Significant changes have occurred in the field of translation with the development of programs such as Google.translate and Yandex.translator. The presented applications are already being actively implemented in translation agencies to optimize translation activities, where written translations of documents, articles, annotations, etc. must be provided to customers as quick as possible. While working with popular science text, online programs help translators gain time, but this requires to edit the text. The artistic (...) style requires more concentration and dedication, because. the means of expression presented in it require taking into account the context and nuances of the use of certain units of language. Machine translation has the potential to become an indispensable assistant in the hands of a translator. This article discusses machine translation of expressive means, namely metaphors. The study is illustrated with examples and a comparative analysis of the translation of metaphorical units is carried out, the classification of metaphors is identified and an analysis is carried out with which means of expression the translator is able to cope with. The difficulties of translating metaphors are analyzed. (shrink)

Metaphor is one of the most frequently evoked but at the same time most poorly understood concepts in philosophy and literary theory. In recent years, several interesting approaches to metaphor have been presented or outlined. In this volume, authors of some of the most important new approaches re-present their views or illustrate them by means of applications, thus allowing the reader to survey some of the prominent ongoing developments in this field. These authors include Robert Fogelin, Susan Haack, Jaakko (...) Hintikka (with Gabriel Sandu), Bipin Indurkhya and Eva Kittay (with Eric Steinhart). Their stance is in the main constructive rather than critical; but frequent comparisons of different views further facilitate the reader's overview. In the other contributions, metaphor is related to the problems of visual representation (Noël Carroll), to the open class test (Avishai Margalit and Naomi Goldblum) as well as to Wittgenstein's idea of `a way of life' (E.M. Zemach). (shrink)

This article arises indirectly out of the development of a particular approach, called ATT-Meta, to the understanding of some types of metaphorical utterance. However, the specifics of the approach are not the focus of the present article, which concentrates on some general issues that have informed, or arisen from, the development of the approach. The article connects those issues to the questions of metaphorical meaning and truth. -/- A large part of the exploration of metaphor in fields such (...) as Cognitive Linguistics and natural language Pragmatics takes metaphor to rest on complex mappings between a target subject matter and a source subject matter (see, e.g., Lakoff 1993, 2008). This is one main way in which some aspects of the source, generally including some structural aspects, can have parallels in the target. It is typical for much, and perhaps the whole, of the meaning of a metaphorical expression to be explained by means of these parallels. We will talk about “parallelism” rather than “isomorphism,” or even “analogy,” because “isomorphism” implies a strict one-to-one correspondence between items in the source scenario and items in the target scenario, and analogy theorists often hold that analogy rests on isomorphism. We wish not to prejudge the question of whether looser, messier forms of parallelism are sometimes needed. Also, we will talk about parallels rather than mappings, because our discussion will embrace the question of parallelism that may be discernible, albeit implicitly, in accounts of metaphor that are not presented as being based on mappings. Three main cases of such accounts are Relevance Theory (RT: e.g., Sperber & Wilson 2008, Wilson & Carston 2006), the categorization-based or "class-inclusion“ approach (Glucksberg 2008), and Ritchie’s (2006) CLST account (Context-Limited Simulation Theory). -/- One main issue we will address is that of substantial non-parallelism that can exist between source and target subject-matters in metaphor: more precisely, the issue that there may be source aspects that are exploited by the utterance and have a deep effect on metaphorical interpretation but that do not themselves have a natural parallel in the target subject-matter (although we will point out that artificial parallels can generally be created). This is part of a broader point that the content of metaphorical discourse should often be seen as being derived in a rather holistic way from several metaphorical bits of the discourse, which conspire to describe some source-domain scenario, rather than being derived by putting together metaphorical meanings of each metaphorical bit (even if each bit could in principle be assigned its own separate metaphorical meaning). As a result, we suggest that it is misguided to think of the propositions making up the content (or, if you like, "meaning“) about the target scenario that is being described is a matter of metaphorical meaning of specific grammatical units such as sentences, clauses or other constituents that a traditional semantic theory would assign propositional meaning to. Rather, grammatical units (that are to be taken metaphorically) have meanings in source-domain terms; content in target-domain terms is derived from the source-domain scenario depicted by those units and fleshed out through inference; and the target-domain content is only (in general) fuzzily relatable to particular grammatical units. This view is on a spectrum at whose extreme point we could place Davidson’s (1984) view that metaphors only have literal (i.e., source-domain) meanings, with other effects on the understander not being a matter of propositional content. However, on our view it is proper to take metaphorical discourse as having non-literal meaning, couched as a collection of propositions, among other things possibly; it is just that the propositions are not to be thought of (in general) as meaning of specific sentences, clauses or other grammatical units rather than of a possibly only fuzzily delineated piece of discourse. -/- A second main concern of the article is the question of how much, and what types of, inference are involved in the derivation of metaphorical meaning. While our own ATT-Meta approach accords with, amongst other accounts, Relevance Theory (RT) as to the centrality of inference in metaphor interpretation, we disagree with RT on its claim that metaphor interpretation is a matter of (a relatively high degree of) concept "broadening“ and (often) "narrowing“. We argue that almost all inference can in fact be theoretically re-described as concept broadening and/or narrowing, and what is left over should be included in the metaphor interpretation process anyway. Thus, the RT claim about broadening and narrowing really just says that inference, of unrestricted type, is involved in metaphor understanding, in accord with what ATT-Meta claims. (shrink)

Conceptual metaphor theory is among the challenging theories that the cognitive linguistics has presented to the field of metaphor in recent years. By leaving aside the relationship of species-genus, transmission and similarity, a new metaphor mechanism is introduced by this theory. Moreover, this theory reveals that metaphors belong to concepts based on experience, not to words. The Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which made a remarkable contribution to metaphor studies, has also attracted the attention of those who are interested in the (...) Qur'an studies. As a result, literature dealing with the metaphors in the Qur'an through the lens of this theory has emerged. This theory is implemented to analyse metaphors existing in everyday language and does not aim to offer an approach to the analysis of metaphors in sacred texts. Despite this, the number of studies examining the Qur'an through the lens of theory is increasing day by day. By focusing on this paticular literature, this study discusses the method followed by researchers, how they apply the theory, its contribution to the Qur'anic studies, and the existing deficiencies in the literature. This study questions the extent to which the theory contributes to the field of Qur’anic studies, the problems it has created in the field and whether it could be resolved. (shrink)

Excerpts from Chapters 1 and 3 of New Maps for Old: Explorations in Science and Religion (Gerhart and Russell 2001) explore the ramifications of metaphoric process for changes in thinking, especially those changes that lead to a new understanding of our world. Examples are provided from science, from religion, and from science and religion together. In excerpts from Chapter 8, a double analogy—theology is to science as science is to mathematics—is proposed for better understanding the contemporary relationship between science and (...) religion. A conservation of epistemological sufficiency is disclosed as one moves from mathematics to empirical science to theology—a move from one discipline to another that involves a sacrifice of one aspect of thought to gain another. (shrink)

In many papers dealing with the stylistic features of legal texts, metaphor is highlighted as a stylistic figure often used in the language of law. On a daily basis we can witness the frequent use of metaphoric collocations like soft laws, hard laws, silent partner, hedge funds, etc. In this paper, the author analyses the use of denotations for colours as constituent parts of metaphoric collocations in the language of law. The analysis is conducted by using a comparative approach to (...) examples extracted by means of computer technology from international bills and conventions available online. In the main part of the paper, examples are classified by using a colour denotation as the main criterion for the classification. After that, the examples are compared with corresponding expressions used in German and Croatian. Taking into account the main principle of the Skopos translation theory that differences between cultures strongly influence the translation process, the hypothesis of this research is that in many cases there will be no lexical equivalence between collocations with colour denotation in three languages. Due to the fact that international bills and conventions build the corpus of the research, and that the English language has become the lingua franca of international communication, it can be expected that some metaphoric terms and collocations would be literally translated from English. Conclusions drawn from the comparative analysis of legal collocations containing denotations for colours can be interesting to lawyers and LSP teachers in the field of law. In this sense, results of the research can contribute to motivational aspects of teaching Legal English and Legal German. (shrink)

Military metaphors are pervasive in biomedicine, including HIV research. Rooted in the mind set that regards pathogens as enemies to be defeated, terms such as “shock and kill” have become widely accepted idioms within HIV cure research. Such language and symbolism must be critically examined as they may be especially problematic when used to express scientific ideas within emerging health-related fields. In this article, philosophical analysis and an interdisciplinary literature review utilizing key texts from sociology, anthropology, history, and Chinese and (...) African studies were conducted to investigate the current proliferation of military metaphors. We found the use of these metaphors to be ironic, unfortunate, and unnecessary. To overcome military metaphors we propose to give them less aggressive meanings, and/or replace them with more peaceful metaphors. Building on previous authors' work, we argue for the increased use of “journey” metaphors as meaningful, cross-culturally app... (shrink)

he field of linguistics has exported a number of big ideas to the world. They include the evolution of languages as an inspiration to Darwin for the evolution of species; the analysis of contrasting sounds as an inspiration for structuralism in literary theory and anthropology; the Whorfian hypothesis that language shapes thought; and Chomsky's theory of deep structure and universal grammar. Even by these standards, George Lakoff's theory of conceptual metaphor is a lollapalooza. If Lakoff is right, his theory (...) can do everything from overturning millennia of misguided thinking in the Western intellectual tradition to putting a Democrat in the White House. (shrink)

Let me make it clear from the outset that my main point isnoteither of the following: one, that there should be more women economists and research on “women's issues”, or two, that women as a class do, or should do, economics in a manner different from men. My argument is different and has to do with trying to gain an understanding of how a certain way of thinking about gender and a certain way of thinking about economics have become intertwined (...) through metaphor – with detrimental results – and how a richer conception of human understanding and human identity could broaden and improve the field of economics for both female and male practitioners. (shrink)

The role of metaphor in political discourse has received significant attention in recent years. Expanding on the cognitive theory of metaphor developed by Lakoff and Johnson, scholars in the fields of sociolinguistics and discourse analysis have examined politicians' use of metaphorical concepts to justify policies and define events. The metaphors examined in these studies frequently have attained the status of idioms; they consequently pass unnoticed while retaining their ability to frame perspectives. However, political discourse does not limit itself to (...) such lexicalized metaphors, but makes use of new metaphors as well. Such uses are specifically designed to attract attention, which may become problematic if the metaphor is rejected, resulting in a classic `failure to launch'. This article examines such a case. Through an analysis of the metaphors used to describe President Bush's military plan to increase US forces in Iraq, I explore the mechanisms by which the meanings of novel metaphors are negotiated in the political arena, and demonstrate that, although their vivid imagery can generate persuasive force in political language, this effect may backfire when they encounter resistance. (shrink)

Finally, our argument suggests that the relationship and the distinction between literature and philosophy cannot be made in terms of a distinction between aesthetic and epistemological categories. All philosophy is condemned, to the extent that it is dependent upon figuration, to be literary and, as the depository of this very problem, all literature is to some extent philosophical. The apparent symmetry of these statements is not as reassuring as it sounds since what seems to bring literature and philosophy together is, (...) as in Condillac's argument about mind and object, a shared lack of identity or specificity. Contrary to common belief, literature is not the place where the unstable epistemology of metaphor is suspended by aesthetic pleasure, although this attempt is a constitutive moment of its system. It is rather the place where the possible convergence of rigor and pleasure is shown to be a delusion. The consequences of this lead to the difficult question whether the entire semantic, semiological, and performative field of language can be said to be covered by tropological models, a question which can only be raised after the proliferating and disruptive power of figural language has been fully recognized. Paul de Man, Tripp Professor in the humanities and chairman of the comparative literature department of Yale University, is the author of Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Political Allegory in Rousseau," appeared in the Summer 1976 issue and appears in his book Allegories in Reading. (shrink)

As a field of scientific expertise, semiotics has the interesting property of being a relevant tool for understanding how scientists represent any domain of research, including the semiotic domain itself. This feature is particularly expressive in the case of biology, as it appears to be the case that a certain range of biological phenomena are of a semiotic character. However, it is not consensual the extent to which semiotics pervades biology. This paper deals with this issue for the particular (...) case of developmental biology, stressing the role of semiotics-as-a-discipline in delimiting the extent of semiotics-as-a-natural-phenomenon and, specifically, in disentangling semiotic mechanisms from semiotic metaphors aimed at clarifying non-semiotic developmental mechanisms. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to contextualize the study of metaphors within constructivist-informed research, in the hope that this process will orient cognitive scientists to the usefulness of implementing qualitative research methodologies, especially to using the person of the researcher as the primary research instrument. First, I explore some of the differences between Johnson and Lakoff’s Contemporary Metaphor Theory (CMT) and approaches evolving from it on one hand, and the clinical approach to metaphor based on a constructivist therapy model, (...) on the other. CMT has been one of the most significant forces that helped shift cognitive science toward an embodied approach to cognition. While it has succeeded to place physical experience back where it belongs in reason and meaning, CMT has, however, also fallen into some positivist traps which lead to problems such as a dualism, a split between the knower and the known, and with that, to a distrust of introspective, first-person accounts. In the process of finding conceptual metaphors — generalizations that govern metaphorical expressions — CMT often deletes the idiosyncratic characteristics and presuppositions implicit in linguistic metaphors; it divorces them from people’s sensory experiences, the “here and now” and the intent of their communications. The constructivist approach to metaphor that I present here accepts as a priori assumptions much of what workers of CMT are out to prove. In particular, it takes the correlation of conceptual metaphors and physical experience, as well as the unity of language and thought as pragmatic givens. Emulating the constructivist therapist’s approach to metaphors, I show how it is possible to deconstruct conceptual metaphors into minute sensory distinctions, using one’s own person as the main tool, for the purpose of helping people change their experiences in desired ways, at will. I illustrate this process by numerous examples from a wide field of applications, including mathematics education and psychotherapy. (shrink)

"The scholarship of Michael Spitzer's new book is impressive and thorough. The writing is impeccable and the coverage extensive. The book treats the history of the use of metaphor in the field of classical music. It also covers a substantial part of the philosophical literature. The book treats the topic of metaphor in a new and extremely convincing manner."-Lydia Goehr, Columbia University The experience of music is an abstract and elusive one, enough so that we're often forced to describe (...) it using analogies to other forms and sensations: we say that music moves or rises like a physical form that it contains the imagery of paintings or the grammar of language. In these and countless other ways, our discussions of music take the form of metaphor, attempting to describe music's abstractions by referencing more concrete and familiar experiences. Michael Spitzer's Metaphor and Musical Thought uses this process to create a unique and insightful history of our relationship with music--the first ever book-length study of musical metaphor in any language. Treating issues of language, aesthetics, semiotics, and cognition, Spitzer offers an evaluation, a comprehensive history, and an original theory of the ways our cultural values have informed the metaphors we use to address music. And as he brings these discussions to bear on specific works of music and follows them through current debates on how music's meaning might be considered, what emerges is a clear and engaging guide to both the philosophy of musical thought and the history of musical analysis, from the seventeenth century to the present day. Spitzer writes engagingly for students of philosophy and aesthetics, as well as for music theorists and historians. (shrink)

The promises of nanotechnology have been framed by a variety of metaphors, that not only channel the attention of the public, orient the questions asked by researchers, and convey epistemic choices closely linked to ethical preferences. In particular, the image of the ‘therapeutic missile’ commonly used to present targeted drug delivery devices emphasizes precision, control, surveillance and efficiency. Such values are highly praised in the current context of crisis of pharmaceutical innovation where military metaphors foster a general mobilization of resources (...) from multiple fields of cutting-edge research. The missile metaphor, reminiscent of Paul Ehrlich’s ‘magic bullet’, has framed the problem in simple terms: how to deliver the right dose in the right place at the right moment? Chemists, physicists and engineers who design multi-functional devices operating in vitro can think in such terms, as long as the devices are not actually operating through the messy environment of the body. A close look at what has been done and what remains to be done suggests that the metaphor of the “therapeutic missile” is neither sufficient, nor even necessary. Recent developments in nanomedicine suggest that therapeutic efficacy cannot be obtained without negotiating with the biological milieu and taking advantage of what it affords. An ‘oikological’ approach seems more appropriate, more heuristic and more promising than the popular missile. It is based on the view of organism as an oikos that has to be carefully managed. The dispositions of nanocapsules have to be coupled with the affordances of the environment. As it requires dealing with nanoparticles as relational entities (defined by their potential for interactions) rather than as stable substances (defined by intrinsic properties) this metaphor eventually might well change research priorities in nanotechnology in general. (shrink)

The Computational Metaphor is an extremely influential notion, and more than any other trend has given rise to the field of Cognitive Science. Environmentalism is at present better formalised as a political movement than as a scientific paradigm, despite significant research by Gibson and his followers. This article attempts to address the difficult problem of synthesising these two apparently antagonistic research paradigms.

This study explores multimodal metaphors and metonymies in Faust, a German Expressionist silent fiction movie by Murnau. The article combines principles of psychocinematics, an interdisciplinary scientific field of enquiry, with the multimodal metaphor and expressive movement model, which looks into the temporal dynamics of metaphoric meaning-making by movie watchers. It is shown that interrelating both film-analytic approaches provides a deeper and more comprehensive insight into how figurative thought influences psycho-cognitive processes in the moviegoer’s mind as they dynamically unfold in (...) their cinematic contexts. Evidence is provided that Kappelhoff and co-workers’ proposal can be complemented and enriched by psychocinematics findings on the allocation of visual attention and eye fixation, motion and image frame sensing, and mental activity underlying emotional and diagetic experiences. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEffects of metaphorical framing of political issues on opinion have been studied widely by two approaches: a critical-discourse approach and a response-elicitation approach. The current article reports a systematic literature review that examines whether these approaches report converging or diverging effects. We compared CDA and REA on the metaphorical frames that were studied and their reported effects. Results show that the CDA frames are typically more negative, nonfictional, and extreme than REA frames. Reported effects in CDA and REA (...) studies differ in terms of presence, directionality, and strength, with CDA typically reporting strong effects in line with the frame, compared to REA. These differences in effects can be explained by the different frame characteristics. However, differences in the methods applied by CDA and REA could be responsible for these differences as well. In all, we conclude that the research field is fragmented on the impact of metaphors in politics. (shrink)

The terms complexity, complex adaptive systems, and sciences of complexity are found often in recent scientific literature, reflecting the remarkable growth in collaborative academic research focused on complexity from the origin and dynamics of organisms to the largest social and political organizations. One of the great challenges in this field of research is to discover which features are essential and shared by all of the seemingly disparate systems that are described as complex. Is there sufficient synthesis to suggest the (...) possibility of an overarching science of complexity? This report describes current views on this subject held by various eminent scholars associated with the Santa Fe Institute.The physical sciences have traditionally been concerned with “simple” systems whose dynamics can be described in mathematical terms with precision and certainty. In contrast, the biological and social sciences are inevitably concerned with self-organized or social “complex” systems whose detailed behaviors appear to be unpredictable. The two categories differ greatly in size and diversity, prompting the late mathematician Stanislaus Ulam to remark that research on complex systems might be compared to the study of non-elephants. Nevertheless, certain integrative themes have begun to emerge.Rising activity in this field of research runs completely counter to the trend toward increasing fragmentation and specialization in the sciences. It has stimulated a resurgence of interest in a broad synthesis involving mathematics, computational science, physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, and the social sciences. The growth of effort in this very extended field has been greatly stimulated by the development of new computational tools that are capable of dealing with vast, interrelated databases. Many of the participants in complexity research feel that it is now time to reintegrate the fragmented interests of much of the academic community. The reader is encouraged to consider whether such views are sparking a historic renaissance of scholarship or represent a passing scientific diversion. (shrink)

Dr Caitríona L Cox’s recent article expounds the far-reaching implications of the ‘Healthcare Hero’ metaphor. She presents a detailed overview of heroism in the context of clinical care, revealing that healthcare workers, when portrayed as heroes, face challenges in reconciling unreasonable expectations of personal sacrifice without reciprocity or ample structural support from institutions and the general public. We use narrative medicine, a field primarily concerned with honouring the intersubjective narratives shared between patients and providers, in our attempt to deepen (...) the discussion about the ways Healthcare Heroes engenders military metaphor, antiscience discourse, and xenophobia in the USA. We argue that the militarised metaphor of Healthcare Heroes not only robs doctors and nurses of the ability to voice concerns for themselves and their patients, but effectively sacrifices them in a utilitarian bargain whereby human life is considered the expendable sacrifice necessary to ‘open the U.S. economy’. Militaristic metaphors in medicine can be dangerous to both doctors and patients, thus, teaching and advocating for the critical skills to analyse and alter this language prevents undue harm to providers and patients, as well as our national and global communities. (shrink)

Dr Caitríona L Cox’s recent article expounds the far-reaching implications of the ‘Healthcare Hero’ metaphor. She presents a detailed overview of heroism in the context of clinical care, revealing that healthcare workers, when portrayed as heroes, face challenges in reconciling unreasonable expectations of personal sacrifice without reciprocity or ample structural support from institutions and the general public. We use narrative medicine, a field primarily concerned with honouring the intersubjective narratives shared between patients and providers, in our attempt to deepen (...) the discussion about the ways Healthcare Heroes engenders military metaphor, antiscience discourse, and xenophobia in the USA. We argue that the militarised metaphor of Healthcare Heroes not only robs doctors and nurses of the ability to voice concerns for themselves and their patients, but effectively sacrifices them in a utilitarian bargain whereby human life is considered the expendable sacrifice necessary to ‘open the U.S. economy’. Militaristic metaphors in medicine can be dangerous to both doctors and patients, thus, teaching and advocating for the critical skills to analyse and alter this language prevents undue harm to providers and patients, as well as our national and global communities. (shrink)

The scientific study of living organisms is permeated by machine and design metaphors. Genes are thought of as the ‘‘blueprint’’ of an organism, organisms are ‘‘reverse engineered’’ to discover their func- tionality, and living cells are compared to biochemical factories, complete with assembly lines, transport systems, messenger circuits, etc. Although the notion of design is indispensable to think about adapta- tions, and engineering analogies have considerable heuristic value (e.g., optimality assumptions), we argue they are limited in several important respects. In (...) particular, the analogy with human-made machines falters when we move down to the level of molecular biology and genetics. Living organisms are far more messy and less transparent than human-made machines. Notoriously, evolution is an oppor- tunistic tinkerer, blindly stumbling on ‘‘designs’’ that no sensible engineer would come up with. Despite impressive technological innovation, the prospect of artificially designing new life forms from scratch has proven more difficult than the superficial analogy with ‘‘programming’’ the right ‘‘software’’ would sug- gest. The idea of applying straightforward engineering approaches to living systems and their genomes— isolating functional components, designing new parts from scratch, recombining and assembling them into novel life forms—pushes the analogy with human artifacts beyond its limits. In the absence of a one-to-one correspondence between genotype and phenotype, there is no straightforward way to imple- ment novel biological functions and design new life forms. Both the developmental complexity of gene expression and the multifarious interactions of genes and environments are serious obstacles for ‘‘engi- neering’’ a particular phenotype. The problem of reverse-engineering a desired phenotype to its genetic ‘‘instructions’’ is probably intractable for any but the most simple phenotypes. Recent developments in the field of bio-engineering and synthetic biology reflect these limitations. Instead of genetically engi- neering a desired trait from scratch, as the machine/engineering metaphor promises, researchers are making greater strides by co-opting natural selection to ‘‘search’’ for a suitable genotype, or by borrowing and recombining genetic material from extant life forms. (shrink)