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These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"
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Metaphors are Fuzzy The US philosopher Earl
MacCormacadvanced a unified theory of
metaphor with broad implications for meaning and truth. MacCormacrejected both the "tension"
theory (which locates the difference between metaphor and analogy in the
emotional tension generated by the juxtaposition of anomalous referents) and
"controversion" theory pioneered by the US philosopher Monroe
Beardsley(which locates that difference
in the falsity produced by a literal reading of the identification of the two
referents) and the "deviance" theory (which locates that difference
in the ungrammaticality of the juxtaposition of two referents). MacCormac thinks that a metaphor is
recognized as a metaphor on the basis of the semantic anomaly produced by the
juxtaposition of referents. And this also means that metaphor must be distinct
from ordinary language (as opposed to the view that all language is
metaphorical). MacCormacwas influenced by the US
philosopher Philip Wheelwright, who had classified metaphors into "epiphors" (metaphors
that express the existence of something) and "diaphors" (metaphors
that imply the possibility of something). Diaphor and epiphor measure the
likeness and the dissimilarity of the attributes of the referents. A diaphor can become an epiphor (when the
object is found to really exist) and an epiphor can become a literal expression
(when the term has been used for so long that people have forgotten its
origin). Metaphor is a process that
exists at three levels: a language process (from ordinary language to diaphor
to epiphor back to ordinary language); a semantic and syntactic process (its linguistic
explanation); and a cognitive process (to acquire new knowledge). Therefore a theory of metaphor requires
three levels: a surface (or literal)
level, a semantic level and a cognitive level. The semantics of metaphor
can then be formalized using the mathematical tool of fuzzy logic. Literal truth, figurality and falsity can be
viewed as forming a continuum of possibilities rather than a discrete set of
possibilities. The figurality of the metaphorical language, in particular, can
be viewed as a continuum of "partial" truths that extends from
absolute falsehood to absolute truth. These partial truths can be represented
by fuzzy values. This is expressed by a real
number on a scale from zero to one: zero is absolute falsehood; the interval
from zero to a certain value represents falsehood; the interval from that value
to another value represents diaphor; the interval from that value to another
value represents epiphor; and the last interval to one represents truth (with
one representing absolute truth). Metaphors are born as diaphors and, as they
become more and more familiar through commonplace use, slowly mutate into
epiphors, thereby losing their "emotive tension". Language can then be
represented mathematically as a hierarchical network in n-dimensional space
with each of the nodes of the network a fuzzy set (defining a semantic
marker). When unlikely markers are
juxtaposed, the degrees of membership of one semantic marker in the fuzzy set
representing the other semantic marker can be expressed in a four-valued logic
(so that a metaphor is not only true or false). MacCormacargued that, as cognitive
processes, metaphors mediate between culture and mind, influencing both
cultural and biological evolution. Back to the beginning of the chapter "Metaphor: How We Speak" | Back to the index of all chapters |
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