We are led to the view that myths are modes of discourse whose meanings are phenomenological spaces of openness, creating a nearly infinite range of interpretations.
How are we to explain the mechanics which blend descriptors from one object domain and its sets of perceptions, to a domain of foreign objects? In this section, Kant elevates the Aristotelian categories from grammatical principles to formal structures intrinsic to reason. Here, he identifies an essential problem for knowledge: how are we to conceive a relationship between these pure concept-categories of the understanding and the sensible objects given to us in space and time?
With the introduction of the schematism, Kant seeks a resolution to the various issues inherent to the construction of mental representations a position shared by contemporary cognitive scientists; see below. Though the doctrine is sometimes said to be notoriously confusing due to its circular nature, the schemata are meant as a distinctive set of mediating representations, rules, or operators in the mind which themselves display the universal and necessary characteristics of sensible objects; these characteristics are in turn synthesized and unified by the activity of the transcendental imagination.
In plainer terms, the schematic function is used by the imagination to guide it in the construction of images. For Ricoeur, the schematism lends the structural support for assigning an actual truth-value or cognitive contribution to the semantic innovation produced by metaphor.
The construction of new meaning via new forms of predication entails a re-organization and re-interpretation of pre-existing forms, and the operations of the productive imagination enable the entire process. While these manifest meaning, they are still constrained in that they must mirror the natural cosmic order of things. This saying creates meaning by breaking down our ordinary or familiar temporal frameworks applied to interpretation of signs of the kingdom.
The act points us towards a novel ontological domain of human possibility, enabled through new cognitive content. The linguistic act of creating a metaphor in essence becomes a hermeneutic act directed towards a gap which must be bridged, that between the abstract considerations of reflection understanding Verstehen and the finite living out of life. This will amount to the taking apart of established ways in which philosophers define perception, concept formation, meaning, and reference.
Derrida, from the outset, will call into question the assumption that the formation of concepts logos somehow escapes the primordiality of language and the fundamentally metaphorical-mythical nature of philosophical discourse. These domains are co-constitutive of one another, in the sense that either one cannot be fully theorized or made to fully or transparently explain the meaning of the other.
The result is that language acquires a certain obscurity, ascendancy, and autonomy. It will permanently elude our attempts to fix its meaning-making activity in foundational terms which necessitate a transcendent or externalized to language unified being. Such is the movement which simultaneously creates and masks the construction of concepts.
This is made possible via the movement of the Hegelian Aufhebung. The German term refers to a dynamic of sublation where the dialectical, progressive movement of consciousness overcomes and subsumes the particular, concrete singularities of experience through successive moments of cognition. Derrida prefers giving theoretical privilege to the negative; that is, to the systematic negation of all finite determinations of meaning derived from particular aspects of particular beings.
They depend for their existence on the machinery of binary logic. Reference to being, in this case, is constrained within the field of the proper and univocal.
Both Heidegger and Derrida, and to some degree Ricoeur seek to free reference from these constraints. Unlike Heidegger, however, Derrida does not work from the assumption that being indicates some unified primordial reality.
For Derrida, there lies hidden within the merely apparent logical unity with its attendant binary oppositions or logocentricity of consciousness a white mythology , masking the primitive plurivocity of being which eludes all attempts to name it.
Here we find traces of lost meanings, reminiscent of the lost inscriptions on coins. Meaning must then be constituted of and by difference, rather than identity, for difference subverts all preconceived theoretical or ontological structures.
It is articulated in the context of all linguistic relations and involves ongoing displacement of a final idealized and unified form of meaning; such displacement reveals through hints and traces, the reality and experience of a disruptive alterity in meaning and being. The point here is to preserve the flux of sense and the ongoing dissemination of meaning and otherness. The dispute between Ricoeur and Derrida regarding the referential power of metaphor lies in where they position themselves with regard to Aristotle.
The original theory makes metaphor yet another link in the logocentric chain—a form of metaphysical oppression. Contemporary phenomenological theories of metaphor directly challenge the straightforward theory of reference, replacing the ordinary propositional truth based on denotation with a theory of language which designates and discloses its referents.
These interactionist theories carry certain Neo-Kantian features, particularly in the work of the analytic philosophers Nelson Goodman and Max Black. They posit the view that metaphors can reorganize the connections we make between our perceptions of the world. Their theories reflect certain phenomenological assumptions about the ways in which figurative language expands the referential field, allowing for the creation of novel meanings and creating new possibilities for constructing models of reality; in moving between the realms of art and science, metaphors have an interdisciplinary utility.
Both Goodman and Black continue to challenge the traditional theory of linguistic reference, offering instead the argument that reference is enabled by the manipulation of predicates in figurative modes of thinking through language.
Recent studies underscore the connections between metaphors, mapping, and schematizing aspects of cognitive organization in mental life. Recently, the trend has been renewed and phenomenology has made some productive inroads into the examination of connectionist and embodied approaches to perception, cognition and other sorts of dynamic and adaptive biological systems.
Zahavi and Thompson, for example, see strong links between Husserlian phenomenology and philosophy of mind with respect to the phenomena of consciousness, where the constitutive nature of subjective consciousness is clarified specifically in terms of the forms and relations of different kinds of intentional mental states.
These involve the unity of temporal experience, the structural relations between intentional mental acts and their objects, and the inherently embodied nature of cognition. Those who study the embodied mind do not all operate in agreement with traditional phenomenological assumptions and methods. In recent years, the expanding field of cognitive science has explored the role of metaphor in the formation of consciousness cognition and perception. In a general sense, it appears that contemporary cognitivist, constructivist, and systems as in self-organizing approaches to the study of mind incorporate metaphor as a tool for developing an anti-metaphysical, anti-positivist theory of mind, in an attempt to reject any residual Cartesian and Kantian psychologies.
The cognitive theories, however, remain partially in debt to Kantian schematism and its role in cognition. There is furthermore in these theories an overturning of any remaining structuralist suppositions that language and meaning might be based on autonomous configurations of syntactic elements.
The research follows the work of Srini Narayanan and Eleanor Rosch, cognitive scientists who also examine schemas and metaphors as key in embodied theories of cognition. Such theories generally trace the connective interplay between our neuronal makeup, or physical interactions with the environment, and our own private and social human purposes. In a limited sense, the stress on the embodied nature of cognition aligns itself with the phenomenological position. Yet these researchers largely take issue with Continental phenomenology and traditional philosophy in a dramatic and far-reaching way, objecting to the claim that the phenomenological method of introspection makes adequate space for our ability to survey and describe all available fields of consciousness in the observing subject.
Their work investigates the ways in which metaphors ground various first and second-order cognitive and emotional operations and functions.
There is then some potential for overlap with this cognitive-conceptual version of metaphor, where metaphors and schemata embody emergent transformative categories enabling the creation of new fields of cognition and meaning. Here rhetorical figures are realized on the basis of conceptual domains which create the borders of experience. We have access to a kind of reality that would otherwise be indeterminate, for human beings have the ability to conceptualize the world in imaginative terms through myth, symbol, the unconscious, or any expressive sign.
For Arduini, figurative activity does not depict the given world, but allows for the ability to construct world images employed in reality. To be figuratively competent is to use the imagination as a tool which puts patterns together in inventive mental processes.
Again, metaphor is foundational to the apprehension of reality; it is part of the pre-reflective or primordial apparatus of experience, perception, and first- through second-order thought, comprising an entire theoretical approach as well as disciplines such as evolutionary anthropology see Tooby and Cosmides.
It is not too far a reach from this version of narrative connection back to the hermeneutic and cognitive-conceptual uses of metaphor outlined earlier. If we understand parables to be essentially forms of extended metaphor, we can clearly see the various ways in which they contribute to the making of intelligible experience.
The study of these mental models sheds light on the phenomenological and hermeneutic aspects of reality-construction. If these heuristic models are necessary to cognitive functioning, it is because they allow us to represent higher-order aspects of reality which involve expressions of human agency, intentionality, and motivation. Though we may be largely unaware of these patterns, they are based on our ability to think in metaphor, are necessary, and are continuously working to enable the structuring of intentional experience — which cannot always be adequately represented by straightforward first-order physical description.
Fauconnier states:. We see their status as inventions by contrasting them with alternative representations of the world.
When we watch someone sitting down in a chair, we see what physics cannot recognize: an animate agent performing an intentional act. MTL Turner, along with Fauconnier and Lakoff, connects parabolic thought with the image-schematic or mapping between different domains of encounter with our environments. Metaphorical mapping allows the mind to cross and conflate several domains of experience.
Mapping as a form of metaphoric construction leads to other forms of blending, conceptual integration, and novel category formation. We can, along with Fauconnier and the rest, describe this emergent evolution of linguistic meaning in dialectical terms, arguing that it is possible to mesh together two images of virus biological and computational into a third integrated idea that integrates and expands the meaning of the first two MTL Philosophically speaking, we seem to have come full circle back to the Hegelian theme which runs through the phenomenological analysis of metaphor as a re-mapping of mind and reality.
For these thinkers metaphor serves as a foundational heuristic structure, one which is primarily designed to subvert ordinary reference and in some way dismantle the truth-bearing claims of first-order propositional language.
While there may be a kind of agreement between our notions of things and the world in which we find those things, it is still a derivative agreement emerging from a deeper ontologically determined set of relations between things-in-the-world, given or presented to us as inherently linked together in particular historical, linguistic, or cultural contexts.
The role of metaphor in perception and cognition also dominates the work of contemporary cognitive scientists, linguists, and those working in the related fields of evolutionary anthropology and computational theory. Thinkers and researchers in this camp argue that metaphoric schemas are integral to human reasoning and action, in that they allow us to develop our cognitive and heuristic capacities beyond simple and direct first order experience.
Theodorou Email: stheodorou immaculata. The Philosophical Issues In any theory of metaphor, there are significant philosophical implications for the transfer of meaning from one object-domain or context of associations to another. Existential Phenomenology: Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics, and Metaphor The linguistic turn in phenomenology has been most directly applied to metaphor in the works of Paul Ricoeur, who revisits Husserlian and Heideggerian themes in his extensive treatment of metaphor.
The Dispute between Ricoeur and Derrida The dispute between Ricoeur and Derrida regarding the referential power of metaphor lies in where they position themselves with regard to Aristotle. Anglo-American Philosophy: Interactionist Theories Contemporary phenomenological theories of metaphor directly challenge the straightforward theory of reference, replacing the ordinary propositional truth based on denotation with a theory of language which designates and discloses its referents.
Metaphor, Phenomenology, and Cognitive Science Recent studies underscore the connections between metaphors, mapping, and schematizing aspects of cognitive organization in mental life.
The Embodied Mind In recent years, the expanding field of cognitive science has explored the role of metaphor in the formation of consciousness cognition and perception. Fauconnier states: We see their status as inventions by contrasting them with alternative representations of the world.
MTL Turner, along with Fauconnier and Lakoff, connects parabolic thought with the image-schematic or mapping between different domains of encounter with our environments. References and Further Reading Aristotle. Categories and De Interpretatione. Ackrill, trans. Oxford, Clarendon, CDI Aristotle. Peri Hermenenias. Hans Arens, trans. Philadelphia, Benjamins, PH Arduini, Stefano ed. The Concise Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics.
Oxford, Elsevier Ltd. Models and Metaphors. Ithaca, Cornell, On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. Berkeley, UC Press, Cazeaux, Clive. Metaphor and Continental Philosophy, from Kant to Derrida. London, Routledge, Cooper, David E. London, Oxford, Derrida, Jacques. Bass, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, WM Fauconnier, Gilles. Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University, MTL Gallagher, Shaun.
Springer, New York, Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art. New York, Bobs-Merrill, Hinman, Lawrence. Harnad, Stevan. New York, Cambridge, Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. John MacQuarrie and E. Robinson, trans. New York, Harper and Row, BT Heidegger, Martin. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology , trans. Hofstadter, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, Huemer, Wolfgang.
Routledge, Johnson, Mark. Joy, Morny. Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Pure Reason. Smith, New York, Large, Stanford, Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark. Allegory is a didactic procedure" I'm not sure if this will do, but it is suggestive. In symbol, we speak of assimilation rather than apprehension. But it gives rise to concepts.
Ricoeur disagrees with those who make us choose between symbols and concepts. Rather, "symbols give rise to endless exegesis" But it is the work of the concept alone that can testify to this surplus of meaning.
Psychoanalysis, for example, delves into sleep. Poetry, he says, connects to a global form of behavior. And religious symbols engage engagement with supernatural forces, "which dwell in the depths of human existence, transcending and dominating it" The rest of this section analyzes the symbols of these three areas: psychoanalysis, poetics, and religious symbols. Ricoeur's basic conclusion is that "what asks to be brought to language in symbols, but which never passes completely into language, is always something powerful, efficacious, forceful" They involve a "dialectic of power and form Dream accounts involve a kind of "palimpsest, riddle or hieroglyph," a distorted presentation of a mixed inner and outer reality.
Thus while "metaphor occurs in the already purified universe of the logos It testifies to the primordial rootedness of Discourse in Life. It is born where force and form coincide" Ricoeur's treatment of poetic language seems a little more forced, but we can see that he is engaging it with a hint of the same psychological underbelly as he approached psychoanalysis.
Boundedness is significant for Ricoeur in this section. As he will say of religious symbolism, "The bound character of symbols makes all the difference between a symbol and a metaphor.
The latter is a free invention of discourse; the former is bound by the cosmos" So in poetics, "the poem is bound by what it creates" 60 just as in dreams and deep psychology, there is a boundedness of the symbols to our psychic reality. Yet, in regard to poetics, the hypothetical realm created brings to life new meanings, "new ways of being in the world" He references Rudolph Otto's sense of the numinous the transcendent that creates awe, as in Isaiah 6 and Mircea Eleade's sense of hierophany manifestation of the sacred.
There is a power to the sacred that cannot be captured in speech. It does not "pass over completely into the articulation of meaning" There is a preverbal character of such experience. Perhaps Ricoeur again goes too far, but his fundamental point is that there is a logic of correspondences between the universe and the Sacred and this law of correspondences makes religious language bounded by the universe rather than freely composed, as in metaphor.
There are intrinsic correspondences between the body, houses, and the cosmos. The skull is like a roof. Our breath is like the wind. A rite of passage is like a bridge. But without language, "the Sacred would remain unmanifested" Ritual is also a "modality of making or doing--a doing of something marked by power. But the interpretation presupposes the symbol. The Intermediate Degrees between Symbol and Metaphor Having explored the character of symbols, Ricoeur now returns to the metaphor, to see if his venture might in turn further clarify his starting point in the essay.
Ricoeur suggests three ways in which the foray into symbols shows how certain metaphors--especially those that have a connection to symbols--can have staying power beyond the moment of invention.
How can the metaphor of the moment, a moment of invention in an event of discourse, resist simply becoming trivial and then a dead metaphor? And why is it that symbols seem to have staying power, that symbols never die.
The first potential extending factor is the fact that metaphors can function in a network or chain of metaphors. This is when "one metaphor, in effect, calls for another and each one stays alive by conserving its power to evoke the whole network" These interconnections create a kind of equilibrium.
There is a "root metaphor" here of sorts, Ricoeur claims, that both assembles and scatters. The network "assembles subordinate images together, and they scatter concepts at a higher level" A second factor that potentially extends the life of a metaphor is a potential hierarchical structure. Here Ricoeur recaps Frege, whom he mentioned in the first lecture. The sense of a statement is "the pure predicative relation, the reference its pretention to say something about reality, in short, its truth value" The sense is what it says.
The reference is what it says it about. As in science, metaphors can serve like a theoretical model in science, a way of exploring a complex domain of reality by way of a heuristic, somewhat imaginary perspective. Such a model is "an instrument of redescription" Ricoeur uses this notion in the remainder of his analysis.
Metaphor can be an instrument whereby we redescribe the world. We "describe a domain of reality in terms of an imaginary theoretical model" 67, Max Black's sense of metaphors as models.
It is a "way of seeing things differently by changing our language about the subject of our investigation. Both poetic and scientific language "aim at a reality more real than appearances.
We redescribe reality. From this tensive apprehension, "a new vision of reality springs forth. Then to conclude the entire essay, he asserts to contrary propositions. On the first score, a metaphor "brings to language the implicit semantics of the symbol" Thus the metaphor brings out more meaning. But, on the other hand, "metaphor is just the linguistic procedure--that bizarre form of predication--within which the symbolic power is deposited" Labels: book review , metaphors , Paul Ricoeur.
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