Grant, James (2010) The dispensability of metaphor. British Journal of Aesthetics 50 (3), pp. 255-272. ISSN 0007-0904.
|
Text
5279.pdf - Author's Accepted Manuscript Download (456kB) | Preview |
Abstract
Many philosophers claim that metaphor is indispensable for various purposes. What I shall call the ‘Indispensability Thesis’ is the view that we use at least some metaphors to think, to express, to communicate, or to discover what cannot be thought, expressed, communicated, or discovered without metaphor. I argue in this paper that support for the Indispensability Thesis is based on several confusions. I criticize arguments presented by Stephen Yablo, Berys Gaut, Richard Boyd, and Elisabeth Camp for the Indispensability Thesis, and distinguish it from several plausible claims with which it is easily confused. Although I do not show that the thesis is false, I provide seven grounds for suspicion of our sense (if we have it) that some metaphors are indispensable for the purposes claimed by advocates of the Indispensability Thesis.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in British Journal of Aesthetics following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version, volume 50(3), pp.255-272, is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayq018 A revised version of this paper is to be published as chapter 5 of James Grant, The Critical Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). |
| Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | metaphor, indispensability, paraphrase, Yablo, nominalism, Walton, make-believe, pretense, theory change |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies |
| Depositing User: | Dr James Grant |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Oct 2012 14:46 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 16:59 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/5279 |
Statistics
Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.
Archive Staff Only (login required)
