Indefinite Precision – The Content and Criticism of Metaphor

Abstract

Despite disagreement concerning the question of how metaphors achieve their effects, it is at least acknowledged by most philosophers that a metaphor has a ‘point’ that its speaker wishes to express. Whether such a point should be characterized in terms of some definite content is a far more open question. A lack of convincing answers to this question has led to a stalemate between the ‘cognitivists’ (who would view metaphor as a means of conveying a unique kind of claim about the world), and the ‘non-cognitivists’ (who question its status as a vehicle for conveying any such thing). Unfortunately, each of these two parties faces serious problems. For the non-cognitivists, there are questions to do with the interpretability of metaphor. If metaphors convey no content beyond the literal, how are we to account for our sense that a metaphor can be interpreted or misinterpreted? For the cognitivists, there is the difficulty of reconciling the open-endedness of our paraphrases with the claim that understanding a metaphor involves grasping a definite content or ‘message’. In response, I contend that what is needed is a shift in focus. Rather than assuming that the central issue concerns the question of content, we should begin from a consideration of what makes metaphor special. I argue that approaching metaphor as a type of artwork-in-miniature provides a more promising means for articulating the significance that metaphors have for us. On this approach, not only can we avoid the pitfalls of the ‘message model’, we can do justice to our sense that a metaphor invites (and rewards) a particular process of collaborative interpretation and extension. Furthermore, by thinking of paraphrase on the model of criticism we can account for our sense that metaphors are proper objects of interpretation, while remaining true to the ways in which the open-endedness of metaphor is manifested in our actual paraphrases.