How Metaphor Makes Its Wonders

The purpose of this paper to examine what Donald Davidson (1984 [1978]) calls of together with radical alternative which he proposes. The central idea of view that metaphor has a sense or meaning which differs from its literal meaning and that metaphor says true or false things about world, although its message might be more exotic, profound, or concealed than that of plain prose. This idea, as Davidson says, is found in works of literary critics like Richards, Empson and Winters; philosophers from Aristotle to Max Black; psychologists from Freud and earlier to Skinner and later; and linguists from Plato to Uriel Weinreich and George Lakoff (ibid.: 246). It this central idea which Davidson considers to be the central mistake. Referring to Max Black, Paul Henle, Monroe Beardsley, Nelson Goodman, and others, Davidson emphasizes that he doesn't disagree with their accounts of what metaphor accomplishes. His disagreement pertains, rather, to how metaphor makes its wonders (ibid.: 247), or to what metaphors actually say or mean. On usual (semantic) account, whatever accomplished brought off by metaphorical meaning or, more generally, by cognitive content of metaphor. Davidson categorically denies this, concluding that metaphors, strictly speaking, mean nothing, that there no cognitive

Aesthetics · Art · Linguistics · Literature · Metaphor · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy

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