Philosophy 402
Winter 1997
Stephen Yablo
yablo@umich.edu

METAPHOR AND METAPHYSICS

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This seminar will address an odd couple of questions, one from hard-nosed metaphysics and the other from the more literary reaches of the philosophy of language. First, what is there, or, as a philosopher would put it, what is there really? Second, what is it to speak metaphorically as opposed to literally? The connection is that X really exists just in case "X exists" is not just something we can get away with saying, but the literal truth. Any light that can be shed on the literal/metaphorical distinction will thus illuminate the metaphysics of existence as well.

OFFICE HOURS

Tuesdays 1:00-2:30pm, 2235 Angell Hall

TEXTS

Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, which you can get at Shaman Drum, 313 State Street, 662-7407, and a largish coursepack available at Michigan Document Service, 1119 #A South University, 662-4530.

REQUIREMENTS

short (7-9 page) paper, due before break............25%
in class presentation...............................25%
longer (12-15 page) paper, due end of term..........30%
classroom contribution .............................20%

WEB PAGE

The syllabus and some other course-related material can be accessed through the 402 Web Page. Point your Web Reader at the URL address http://www-personal.umich.edu/~yablo/402.html. There is also a link to the Metaphor Center, definitely worth a look..

TOPICS

Here is a week by week list of topics with associated readings. For the first few weeks we go back and forth between metaphor and ontology, looking at standard materials in both cases. Then, about half way through, the focus becomes recent work on metaphor, with special attention to the problem of demarcation: how is literal speech to be distinguished from non-literal? A solution to this problem is needed if the traditional ontological project of reckoning a thing existent just in case we can't shake our commitment to it is to make sense -- for our commitments are revealed by what we say in a literal vein, not a metaphorical one. A conjecture to be explored at the very end is that the demarcation problem can't be solved and that philosophers should therefore get out of the business of trying to work out what exists. All readings are from the coursepack (CP) or Lakoff & Johnson (LJ), except for one to be distributed in class (DC). Starred items are supplementary and will not be receiving much explicit attention.

Jan. 13 Introduction

Jan. 20 MLK Jr. Day -- no class

Jan. 27 Basics of Metaphor

  • Cooper, "The Emergence of Metaphor" [CP, 3-25]
  • Chapters 1-11 of Metaphors We Live By [LJ, 3-55]

    • Feb. 3 Outline of Quinean Ontology

  • Quine, "On What There Is" [CP, 105-114]
  • Quine, "Posits and Reality" [CP, 117-121]

    • Feb. 10 Metaphor and Linguistic Meaning

  • Cooper, "The Traditional View" [CP, 25-36]
  • Sadock, "Figurative Speech & Linguistics" [CP, 125-133]
  • Cohen, "The Semantics of Metaphor" [CP, 135-141]
  • Rumelhart, "Problems with Literal Meaning" [CP, 143-149]
  • *Black, "More about Metaphor" [CP, 451-463]

    • Feb. 17 Conventional Critiques of Quinean Ontology

  • Scheffler & Chomsky, "What is Said to Be" [CP, 153-159]
  • Melia, "On What There is Not" [CP, 161-164]
  • *Jackson, "Ontological Commitment & Paraphrase" [CP, 165-171]

    • Feb. 24 Metaphor and Speaker's Meaning

  • Cooper, "Metaphor and Speaker's Meaning" [CP, 36-47]
  • Searle, "Metaphor" [CP, 175-190]
  • Levin, "Standard Approaches to Metaphor" [CP, 191-196]
  • *Morgan, "Pragmatics of Metaphor" [CP, 197-202]

    • Mar. 3 Spring Break -- no class

    Mar. 10 Quine vs. Carnap

  • Carnap, "Empiricism,Semantics, and Ontology" [CP, 205-213]
  • Quine, "On Carnap's Views on Ontology" [CP, 215-222]
  • Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" [CP, 225-238]

    • Mar. 17 Metaphor without Meaning

  • Cooper, "Metaphor without Meaning" [CP, 47-61]
  • Davidson, "What Metaphors Mean" [CP, 241-249]
  • Black, "A reply to Davidson" [CP, 251-257]
  • *Davidson, "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs" [CP, 261-268]
  • *Stern, "What Metaphors do not Mean" [CP, 271-291]

    • Mar. 24 Information or Perspective?

  • Hesse, "The Cognitive Claims of Metaphor" [CP, 293-308]
  • Rorty, "Hesse & Davidson on Metaphor" [CP, 310-317]
  • Hesse, "The Limits of the Literal" [CP, 319-326]
  • Moran, "Seeing & Believing" [CP, 389-402]
  • *Haack, "Surprising Noises" [CP, 327-335]

    • Mar. 31 Metaphor and Make Believe

  • Walton, "Representation & Make Believe" [CP, 339-368]
  • Walton, "Metaphor & Prop-Oriented Make Believe" [CP, 369-387]

    • Apr. 7 Demarcation

  • Cooper, "Dead Metaphor" [CP, 62-72]
  • Cooper, "Demarcation Again" [CP, 92-101]
  • Sadock, "Figurative Speech and Linguistics" [CP, 130-133]
  • *Black, "More about Metaphor" [CP, 459-460]
  • *Chapters 12-18 of Metaphors We Live By [LJ, 56-114]

    • Apr. 14 Why do we Talk Metaphorically?

  • Cooper, "Why Do we Talk Metaphorically?" [CP, 73-92]
  • Margalit and Goldblum, "A Metaphor Game" [CP, 403-415]
  • Chapters 19-22 of Metaphors We Live By [LJ, 115-155]

    • Apr. 21 The Possibility of Ontology

  • Yablo, "Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake?" [DC]
  • *Haack, "Some Preliminaries to Ontology" [CP, 417-434]
  • *Bird, "Internal and External Questions" [CP, 435-447]