In Sāṃkhya similes are an important means to communicate basic philosophical teachings. In the texts similes are frequently used, especially in the Sāṃkhya passages in the Mahābhārata, in the Sāṃkhyakārikā and in the Sāṃkhyasūtra. This paper compares the similes in these three texts and analyses changes in the philosophy as revealed in the similes. A comparison of the similes of Sāṃkhya texts produced over more than one thousand years reveals changes in the emphasis in this (...) philosophical system. The purpose of the similes in the Sāṃkhya passages of the Mahābhārata is to produce an intuitive understanding of the separateness of puruṣa and prakṛti. The similes are designed to lead the listener to understand this basic dualism. In the Sāṃkhyakārikā the most difficult issues are the relationship between prakṛti and puruṣa and the idea of prakṛti working for the salvation of puruṣa. One whole chapter of the Sāṃkhyasūtra is devoted to similes. (shrink)

Researchers have identified 2 distinctive types of pictorial displays, namely, pictorial metaphor and pictorial simile, and offered theoretical explanations of them. Regarding the distinction between pictorial metaphor and pictorial simile, we argue that symmetric image alignment of pictorial components depicting things at the object level is the principal design factor that sets pictorial simile apart from pictorial metaphor and links pictorial simile to pictorial grouping. Based on the idea of symmetric image alignment, an attempt is made to identify and explain (...) a further type of pictorial display, namely, pictorial oxymoron. We propose a hypothesis, called the "image grouping hypothesis," to provide an integrated account of pictorial grouping, pictorial simile, and pictorial oxymoron. The hypothesis can be summed up as follows: Symmetric image alignment of pictorial components depicting things of the same kind is apt for expressing pictorial grouping; symmetric image alignment of pictorial components depicting things of different kinds is apt for expressing pictorial simile; and symmetric image alignment of pictorial components depicting things that can be seen as incompatible with each other is apt for expressing pictorial oxymoron. (shrink)

In Sāṃkhya similes are an important means to communicate basic philosophical teachings. In the texts similes are frequently used, especially in the Sāṃkhya passages in the Mahābhārata, in the Sāṃkhyakārikā and in the Sāṃkhyasūtra. This paper compares the similes in these three texts and analyses changes in the philosophy as revealed in the similes. A comparison of the similes of Sāṃkhya texts produced over more than one thousand years reveals changes in the emphasis in this (...) philosophical system. The purpose of the similes in the Sāṃkhya passages of the Mahābhārata is to produce an intuitive understanding of the separateness of puruṣa and prakṛti. The similes are designed to lead the listener to understand this basic dualism. In the Sāṃkhyakārikā the most difficult issues are the relationship between prakṛti and puruṣa and the idea of prakṛti working for the salvation of puruṣa. One whole chapter of the Sāṃkhyasūtra is devoted to similes. (shrink)

Two principal questions are addressed: In De Finibus 3.54 what position does Cicero imagine the talus to fall and lie? How does this talus simile shed light on the problematic relationship between the Stoics’ doctrine of ‘preferred indifferents’ and their definition of the Good as virtue?

This article reveals an overlooked way of interpreting sentences like “The Internet is crack [cocaine]” or “Libraries are supermarkets.” Many existing theories of metaphor could apply here. However, they can instead be interpreted in a likeness-exaggerating way, under which “Libraries are supermarkets” is simply an exaggerated way of saying that libraries are like supermarkets to a very high degree. This interpretation option follows from simple, general considerations about exaggeration and likeness scales. In this way it is preferable to the abbreviated-simile (...) view of metaphor, and in any case it can be added to any existing metaphor account. It has broad significance for the theory of metaphor and simile, but also provides a new, straightforward explanation of the special, likeness-strengthening effect in utterances such as “Libraries aren’t merely like supermarkets, they are supermarkets.” This effect exists despite evidence that X-is-Y metaphors do not generally convey more likeness than correspondin. (shrink)

Metaphor is commonly taken to be an elliptical simile. This article offers a rational reconstruction of two types of simile theories of metaphor: reductive and non-reductive. Careful analysis shows the differences between these theories, but in the end, neither does the explanatory work it sets out to do. In assimilating metaphor to simile and simile to literal comparison, the reductive simile theory obscures what is most important to an account of metaphor: an account of what it is to interpret a (...) bit of discourse metaphorically. The reductive simile theory fails because the reduction to literal comparison fails. The non-reductive simile theory faces most of the same problems that undermine the simile theory, particularly problems generating a corresponding simile when the metaphor contains quantificational terms and other linguistic complexities. Analysis of the non-reductive simile theory highlights the troublesome assumption (inherent in all simile theories) that metaphor and simile play the same linguistic role: making or prompting us to make comparisons. In both guises, the simile theory mistakes the task of explaining what a metaphor means with how metaphor (in general) has meaning; it confuses explanation with explication. In diagnosing and arguing against the simile theory, this article sets out a framework for understanding the difference between literal and metaphorical interpretation. (shrink)

The ArgumentBy the beginning of the fourteenth century, medicine had acquired a cultural role in addition to its traditional functions as a therapeutic art. Medical subject matter infiltrated the religious discourse via the new thirteenth-century encyclopedic literature. Preachers came to employ in their moral analogies a wider range of medical topics, using sophisticated medical examples and citations attributed to recognized medical authorities. These developments coincided with the growing prestige of medicine as an academic discipline.

The similes of the Sun, Line, and Cave in the Republic remain a reproach to Platonic scholarship because there is no agreement about them, though they are meant to illustrate. I propose to analyse the form of the argument, a clue that has never been properly weighed. The Greek theory and practice of analogia and diairesis give good evidence about the method that Plato adopted; if this usage were respected, the analogical argument would not be so loosely interpreted, and (...) the double diairesis and proportion that the Line actually is could not be mistaken for a classification. I hope also to show that Plato's terminology is definite and consistent; here too ancient usage helps to establish his meaning. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a great impact on the life of every inhabitant of the planet. During 2020 and 2021 a significant amount of work on how the pandemic is being conceptualized and communicated has been done. Most work has focused on the role of metaphor in the construal of specific cognitive frames. In this paper, we turn to a similar but different conceptualization mechanism, i.e. simile. Drawing from recent socio-cognitive and discursive empirical approaches to similes, this paper (...) focuses on “target is like source” constructions in English and Spanish containing (corona)virus either as target or source of the simile. The analysis is based on 200 examples found in the digital media during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. First, the constructions, conceptualizations and mappings are analyzed. Second, the relevant discourse features (genre type, relation to subjectivity, text location and structuring properties) are described. Finally, the cross-linguistic English-Spanish analysis shows that, despite the many coincidences in both datasets, there are different tendencies as for the use of culture-specific mappings and the genres where the similes occur in. The study aims at testing to what extent the general features characterizing similes also hold in the case of (corona)virus, both as source and as target. The corpus analysis contributes, in addition, to the emerging line of research on the use of figuration in the communication of the pandemic, as well as to the study of the discursive dimensions of similes in real settings. (shrink)

At the end of Republic VI. Socrates compares the Good with the sun as a cause both of existence and intelligibility. Afterwards, when he continues and expands this comparison, the symbolism becomes so complex that the interpretation of almost every part of it is in dispute. We start with the contrast of light and darkness; to this is next added the contrast of image and original, and also of up and down along a vertical line; in the allegory of the (...) Cave these three sets of contrasted terms are worked in together so as to explain the effect on the soul of the intellectual education by which we are converted from what is dark and imitative and ascend finally to knowledge of the Good. (shrink)

The similes of the Sun, Line, and Cave in the Republic remain a reproach to Platonic scholarship because there is no agreement about them, though they are meant to illustrate. I propose to analyse the form of the argument, a clue that has never been properly weighed. The Greek theory and practice of analogia and diairesis give good evidence about the method that Plato adopted; if this usage were respected, the analogical argument would not be so loosely interpreted, and (...) the double diairesis and proportion that the Line actually is could not be mistaken for a classification. I hope also to show that Plato's terminology is definite and consistent; here too ancient usage helps to establish his meaning. (shrink)

David Raynor aborde une pluralité de thèmes chez Berkeley, qui se rapportent soit à la signification ambiguë de l'immatérialisme par rapport à la philosophie spontanée des gens ordinaires, soit au dosage savant de réalisme et d'idéalisme dans une philosophie qui élabore une critique radicale de la doctrine de l'idée-représentation. Il est intéressant de noter que Raynor ne s'en laisse pas raconter par certains interprètes classiques de la pensée berkeleyenne et qu'il sait tirer avantageusement parti d'une confrontation de Berkeley avec des (...) rationalistes tels Male-branche ou Leibniz, mais tout aussi bien d'une mise en perspective à l'intérieur du courant empiriste à partir des réflexions de Hume et de Maupertuis. (shrink)

It has long been noted that there are links between the Homeric portrayals of Odysseus' companions and the suitors. These two largely anonymous groups of Ithacans are connected not only by their ἀτασθαλίαι but also by the fact that by the end of theOdysseyboth groups will be dead. Clearly, these fatalities are – in their different ways – crucial to the story. Nagler regards the death of the suitors as a ‘grim inversion’ of the death of Odysseus' crew. Odysseus himself (...) is depicted both by the primary narrator and in his own narrative inOd.9–12 as making every effort to save his crew, all in vain. By contrast, he is the prime and highly effective instigator of the death of the suitors. (shrink)

The following remarks on the aviary simile have been prompted by Professor Hackforth's article in C.Q. January 1938, pp. 27 ff., in which he in turn comments on certain points in Professor Cornford's treatment in his Plato's Theory of Knowledge. Commenting on 199c–d C. suggests that P.'s criticism in that passage might be met by the inclusion in the aviary of ‘complex objects such as the “sum of 7 and 5”.… It is this object that I identify with 11 when (...) I make my false judgement.… False judgement can be explained as the wrong putting together of two pieces of knowledge’—i.e. 11 and ‘the sum of 7 and 5’. C. further suggests that P. has overlooked this possibility because he persists in speaking as if we judged not ‘that the sum of 7 and 5 is 11’ but that ‘12 is 11 ’. H. replies that this criticism of C.'s is not valid because P. understands the knowledge of 11 and 12 to include a knowledge of the various sums that make up these numbers. There could, therefore, be no ‘question of “putting together” such a piece of knowledge as 7 + 5 = 12 with a different piece of knowledge, viz. the knowledge of 12. They are not different pieces; they are the same piece.’. (shrink)

The following remarks on the aviary simile have been prompted by Professor Hackforth's article in C.Q. January 1938, pp. 27 ff., in which he in turn comments on certain points in Professor Cornford's treatment in his Plato's Theory of Knowledge. Commenting on 199c–d C. suggests that P.'s criticism in that passage might be met by the inclusion in the aviary of ‘complex objects such as the “sum of 7 and 5”.… It is this object that I identify with 11 when (...) I make my false judgement.… False judgement can be explained as the wrong putting together of two pieces of knowledge’—i.e. 11 and ‘the sum of 7 and 5’. C. further suggests that P. has overlooked this possibility because he persists in speaking as if we judged not ‘that the sum of 7 and 5 is 11’ but that ‘12 is 11 ’. H. replies that this criticism of C.'s is not valid because P. understands the knowledge of 11 and 12 to include a knowledge of the various sums that make up these numbers. There could, therefore, be no ‘question of “putting together” such a piece of knowledge as 7 + 5 = 12 with a different piece of knowledge, viz. the knowledge of 12. They are not different pieces; they are the same piece.’. (shrink)

At the end of Republic VI. Socrates compares the Good with the sun as a cause both of existence and intelligibility. Afterwards, when he continues and expands this comparison, the symbolism becomes so complex that the interpretation of almost every part of it is in dispute. We start with the contrast of light and darkness; to this is next added the contrast of image and original, and also of up and down along a vertical line; in the allegory of the (...) Cave these three sets of contrasted terms are worked in together so as to explain the effect on the soul of the intellectual education by which we are converted from what is dark and imitative and ascend finally to knowledge of the Good. (shrink)

In this paper I consider ways in which seawater––both on its surface and in its depths––opens up alternative forms of thought and expression in Homer, especially with respect to the body. By tracking the relationship between body and simile as it is mediated by the surface of the sea, I argue that water emerges as an especially mobile and adaptive medium for expressing the transformation that takes place between self and simile in Homer. In the Iliad, similes are well-known (...) for bringing weather, waves, and other aspects of the natural environment into the poem, whereas in the Odyssey those aspects more often introduce similes of their own. I offer a reading of the shipwreck scene in Odyssey 5 to suggest that the body’s struggle to stay afloat is matched there, on a formal level, by the role of waves in drawing simile and body to the sea’s surface. I then address a different kind of figurative language (closer to metaphor and associated with grief) that takes place in the depths, through readings of scenes in Books 18 and 24 of the Iliad and Archilochus fragment 13. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to shed some light on the early Stoics' practice of managing platonic suggestions to construct their epistemology. Instances of such a practice, which scholars have recently focussed on, are the Stoic reassessment of the account of phantasia Plato offers in the Sophist and the image of the wax block as discussed in the Theaetetus. In this work I put forward a comparison between the simile of the soul-book, as presented by Socrates in (...) the Philebus (39a1-c2), and the Stoic image of the soul as a sheet in which conceptions are inscribed. I try to show that a far-reaching investigation of the relationship between Plato and early Stoic epistemology should take such a comparison into due account. In section one, I go into the details of the comparison and argue that Plato's perceptual judgment (this is how I translate the term doxa as it is used in the relevant section of the Philebus) is compatible with Stoic phantasia. In section two, I try to show that the theorisation of assent enable the Stoics to reply to an objection Aristotle made to Plato's definition of phantasia as a mixture of perception and judgment. (shrink)

No part ot Plato's writings has been more debated than the three similes in Books VI.-VII. of the Republic, and still there is a diversity of opinion about their meaning. I believe that most of these difficulties arise from certain assumptions about their purpose which need revision. The current view applies the Cave to the Line, as Plato seems to direct, and this application, which is itself attended by considerable difficulties, leads to an assimilation of the two figures till (...) they seem to have much the same content and purpose. Again, as this makes the lower line appear to be the phenomenal world, it is thought that the simile of the sun foreshadows the theme of the Line by hinting at a connexion between the intelligible and the sensible which is made more explicit in the Line. Thus the group of similes seem mainly intended to show the dependence of Becoming upon Being. This paper will argue that such a view depends upon the misrepresentation of the symbolism adopted by Plato, that two antithetical groups of symbols are confused with one another, and that symbols are even identified with antitypes. Owing to these misinterpretations the Form of the Good has been mistaken for a material cause; both the Line and the Cave have been thought to reveal Plato as embarrassed by a dualism between sense and intellect, and the purpose of the Cave in particular, since the error is cumulative, has been completely obscured. This paper will attempt to substitute for current accounts another interpretation which will relate the three similes closely with the political arguments of Book VI., and with the Platonic education which is set forth in close connexion with them. (shrink)

It is exxtraordinary what difficulties have been found from ancient times in the extract from Empedocles containing his theory of respiration, and preserved by Aristotle, De Respiratione 7, p. 473 B1.

In a remark written sometime between 1933 and 1943, Wittgenstein suggests that philosophy ought really to be written as one “writes a poem.” Around this time he also talks of simile as the “best thing” in philosophy. In this paper I consider what it would mean to take such claims seriously. Through examining newly discovered material from the Skinner manuscripts, I offer an analysis of Wittgenstein's approach to literary techniques and see how this impacts on his conception of philosophy.

The first part of this paper argued that the traditional application of the Cave to the Line was not intended by Plato, and led to a misunderstanding of both similes. The Cave, it was said, is attached to the simile of the Sun and the Line by the visible region outside the cave, which is a reintegration of the symbolism of sun, originals and images in the sunlight, and the new system of objects inside the cave is compared and (...) contrasted with the natural objects in the visible outside. As we know that the natural symbolism illustrates the Platonic education, our main task in this paper will be to find the meaning of the cave, untrammelled by the associations of the lower line. (shrink)

It is exxtraordinary what difficulties have been found from ancient times in the extract from Empedocles containing his theory of respiration, and preserved by Aristotle, De Respiratione 7, p. 473 B1.

No part ot Plato's writings has been more debated than the three similes in Books VI.-VII. of the Republic, and still there is a diversity of opinion about their meaning. I believe that most of these difficulties arise from certain assumptions about their purpose which need revision. The current view applies the Cave to the Line, as Plato seems to direct, and this application, which is itself attended by considerable difficulties, leads to an assimilation of the two figures till (...) they seem to have much the same content and purpose. Again, as this makes the lower line appear to be the phenomenal world, it is thought that the simile of the sun foreshadows the theme of the Line by hinting at a connexion between the intelligible and the sensible which is made more explicit in the Line. Thus the group of similes seem mainly intended to show the dependence of Becoming upon Being. This paper will argue that such a view depends upon the misrepresentation of the symbolism adopted by Plato, that two antithetical groups of symbols are confused with one another, and that symbols are even identified with antitypes. Owing to these misinterpretations the Form of the Good has been mistaken for a material cause; both the Line and the Cave have been thought to reveal Plato as embarrassed by a dualism between sense and intellect, and the purpose of the Cave in particular, since the error is cumulative, has been completely obscured. This paper will attempt to substitute for current accounts another interpretation which will relate the three similes closely with the political arguments of Book VI., and with the Platonic education which is set forth in close connexion with them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Omne Agens Agit Sibi Simile: A “Repetition” of Scholastic Metaphysics by Philipp W. RosemannJohn InglisPhilipp W. Rosemann. Omne Agens Agit Sibi Simile: A “Repetition” of Scholastic Metaphysics. Louvain Philosophical Studies, Vol. 12. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1996. Pp. 368. Paper, BF 1,450.The technical sounding title of this volume could mislead the reader into thinking that it concerns some obscure point of Latin medieval thought, rather than an issue (...) central [End Page 131] to medieval metaphysical speculation. In fact, Philipp Rosemann charts the metaphysical theology of a significant number of intellectuals, ranging from Plato to Aquinas, in a dense and perceptive historical narrative that reaches its telos in Aquinas’s view of the emanation from, and return to, God. Too often historians and philosophers atomize specific medieval issues by treating them apart from the textual, historical, and metaphysical context. The classic case of this occurs when the wider web of metaphysical and monastic concerns is neglected in presentations of Anselm’s argument for the existence of God. Rosemann supplies much of this context in a concise yet detailed discussion of Hellenistic and medieval views on causal similitude, i.e., the degree of similarity that must exist between every cause and effect.The book is divided, as it were, into three equal parts: the first is devoted to the ancient philosophers Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Proclus; the second to Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, Eriugena, Peter the Lombard, Avicenna, Averroes, and Albert the Great; and the third to Aquinas. These figures were included for two reasons: first, for contributing views of causal similitude that take into account either a Neo-Platonic emanational causality between different types of beings or/and a peripatetic efficient causality between individual substances; and second, to provide the background for Aquinas’s reconciliation of both types of causality.In the second part of the book, Rosemann presses his thesis that there is a Trinitarian context to Western metaphysical reflection which must be understood if we are to be clear about the history of Latin medieval thought. His point is that within this context intellectuals produced detailed accounts of a hierarchy of beings each of which stands on a scale closer to or farther away from a single divine “being” (111). Individual beings, including physical objects, both replicate and exteriorize various qualities of the divine (115). From this perspective, Latin medieval inquiry into issues concerning causality and the human mind form at the same time an inquiry into the interior character of a triune God (145, 349). For example, it becomes clear why Eriugena claims that a human being has no direct knowledge of his or her individual essence (125). In imitation of the divine, one reasons about one’s concerns, and only then is one able to reflect on this reasoning. Such reflection yields self-knowledge (124–27). Since human self-knowledge reflects divine self-knowledge, human self-knowledge is required in order to inquire into the mind of God. According to Rosemann, the medievals extend to the divine Socrates’ dictum regarding the unexamined life.Recent writers have devoted attention to the Neo-Platonic framework of Aquinas’s project. For example, in his important God in Himself (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), Wayne Hankey has clarified the two emanations that structure the first part of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae: the first a procession of three persons internal to God, and the second the procession of creation. The first plays a causal role in regard to the universe while the second mirrors the metaphysical structure of the first. Rosemann places this intellectual achievement in a more precise historical context, carefully isolates Aquinas’s types of causal relations (280–88), and offers a splendid account of the role played by causal similitude in the emanation and return of individual substances to God (262–77). Individual beings bring about effects that are species-specific to the point that they both lead to the flourishing of the species and represent [End Page 132] the divine. The higher the type of being, the more elevated and individual the degree of representation. For example, while a stone might express external physical characteristics of strength, a human being can obtain a... (shrink)

People mentally represent the shapes of objects. For instance, the mental representation of an eagle is different when one thinks about a flying or resting eagle. This study examined the role of shape in mental representations of similes (i.e., metaphoric comparisons). We tested the prediction that when people process a simile they will mentally represent the entities of the comparison as having a similar shape. We conducted two experiments in which participants read sentences that either did (experimental sentences) or (...) did not (control sentences) invite comparing two entities. For the experimental sentences, the ground of the comparison was explicit in Experiment 1 (“X has the ability to Z, just like Y”) and implicit in Experiment 2 (“X is like Y”). After having read the sentence, participants were presented with line drawings of the two objects, which were either similarly or dissimilarly shaped. They judged whether both objects were mentioned in the preceding sentence. For the experimental sentences, recognition latencies were shorter for similarly shaped objects than for dissimilarly shaped objects. For the control sentences, we did not find such an effect of similarity in shape. These findings suggest that a perceptual symbol of shape is activated when processing similes. (shrink)

István Mészáros; IX—Metaphor and Simile: Preliminary Notes to a Discussion of Norms and Values, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 67, Issue 1, 1 J.

István Mészáros; IX—Metaphor and Simile: Preliminary Notes to a Discussion of Norms and Values, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 67, Issue 1, 1 J.

Studies have suggested that metaphors (Lawyers are sharks) and similes (Lawyers are like sharks) have distinct representations: metaphors engender more figurative and abstract properties, whereas similes engender more literal properties. We investigated to what extent access to such representations occurs automatically, during on-line reading. In particular, we examined whether similes convey a more literal meaning by following the metaphors and similes with explanations that expressed either a figurative (dangerous) or a literal property (fish) of the vehicle. (...) In a self-paced reading with a moving window paradigm, we presented participants with negated simile and metaphor main clauses (Lawyers are not (like) sharks) followed by explanations that also negated either a figurative (because lawyers are not dangerous) or a literal property of the vehicle (because lawyers are not fish). We found that vehicles (sharks) in metaphors were read significantly faster than those in similes. In addition, explanations negating a figurative property were read faster after metaphors, whereas explanations negating a literal property were read faster after similes. These results support the hypothesis that metaphors and similes rely on different interpretive processes, suggesting that similes access literal representations while metaphor access figurative ones in real time. (shrink)

People mentally represent the shapes of objects. For instance, the mental representation of an eagle is different when one thinks about a flying or resting eagle. This study examined the role of shape in mental representations of similes (i.e., metaphoric comparisons). We tested the prediction that when people process a simile they will mentally represent the entities of the comparison as having a similar shape. We conducted two experiments in which participants read sentences that either did (experimental sentences) or (...) did not (control sentences) invite comparing two entities. For the experimental sentences, the ground of the comparison was explicit in Experiment 1 (“X has the ability to Z, just like Y”) and implicit in Experiment 2 (“X is like Y”). After having read the sentence, participants were presented with line drawings of the two objects, which were either similarly or dissimilarly shaped. They judged whether both objects were mentioned in the preceding sentence. For the experimental sentences, recognition latencies were shorter for similarly shaped objects than for dissimilarly shaped objects. For the control sentences, we did not find such an effect of similarity in shape. These findings suggest that a perceptual symbol of shape is activated when processing similes. (shrink)