Reasoning.StatingandUnderstanding14qth.Images
scientificviewoftheworldthathasevolvedfromthe
As
a
Enlightenment)
resultoftheseandmanyotherthreadsofdevelopment,cognitivescientists
around
tothe
begantocome
viewthat
metaphorandanalogy
aretodowith
on
the
foundationsofthinking,ratherthanbeingmerelythesuperficialdecorations
thecake.
3.2
1
Natureandtypesofmetaphortheoriesconcerningthinking,
』
1●1●
UnderStandlngandexpresslon
Manytheoriesofmetaphorhavebeenproposedanddefendedbyphilosophersof
languagesincethepublicationof
Black’S“interaction”theory.We
to
survey
fourofthemore
influentialtheories;thissurveyisintendedberepresentativeratherthanexhaustive.
(i)Simile
Theories
Black
said(Black1962)that
similetheories
are
theoldestand,untilfairlyrecently:
theviewthat
themostwidelyheldtheoriesof
metaphor.Johson(Johnson1981)held
Aristotleseemstohavebeenthefirstto
suggestthatmetaphorsare‘compressed’j
a
or
‘abbreviated’similes.Onanysuchtheory,themeaningofthat
ofthecorrespondingsimile:where“AisB”isthe
meaningisgivenbysuch
a
metaphorisidentifiedwith
metaphor(e.g.,“LoveB”(e.g.,‘‘Love
a
is
a
journey”),itsjourney”).On
thesentence“Aislike
a
islike
a
view,theinterpretationofmetaphoris
matterofinterpretingthe
correspondingsimile,andthetruthofthemetaphorisreducedtothatofthesimile.
Thesimiletheoryhasbothintuitiveandmethodologicalmotivations.First:itoftenseems
as
thoughsome
sort
ofcomparisonis_made,oratleastadumbrated,inmetaphorappears
to
account
Second,thesimile
theory
for
our
conflictingintuitions
about
metaphors’truthvalues.
ThemostobviousmethodOlogicalmotivationforthetheoryliesinthereductive
nature
ofitscentralclaim,that
metaphoris
a
formofsimile.At
a
minimum,thetheory
reducestwoproblemStoone:wenowneedonlyto
explainhowsimilesthemselveswork
Further,ifthemeaningsofsimiles
are
unproblematicbecauseliteral,thenthe‘problem’
ofmetaphorhasbeenresolvedaltogether:wehaveanalyzed
metaphoricalmeaningand