Frances to Michael and Geoff... (1) You may wish to read some realist writings by angloamerican pragmatists from Peirce to Morris and Sebeok on the matter of categoric classes and semiotic signs. The classes as applied to signs, like the informative lingual grammar of verbal words, deal therein at least with many kinds of represented vehicles and referred objects and interpreted effects. These writings on phenomenal categories also deal with semiotic issues turning on objectivism and relativism and subjectivism, to include the role that mental visions and notions and nominations play in that of classes and signs. In regard to signs in particular, the specific writings relevant to this discussion are those on "types" of words in minds roughly as immediate or intermediate or mediate, and those on the "vehicles" of words as formally similar or causally contagious or conventionally arbitrary, and those on the referred "objects" of words as possible or actual or agreeable, and on the logical "effects" of words as abstract or concrete or discrete. Semiotics also posits a distinction between the general "tones" and special member "tokens" and universal class "types" of all signs. The writings that tend to define "factuality" as a material construct and "meaning" as a contextual construct and "reality" as a mental construct is also germane. Lastly, the pragmatist idea of logical "degeneracy" in regard to signs and senses and minds and thoughts are uniquely revealing. The categories therefore are indeed analogous surrogate signs to senses in minds, because the categories cannot be accessed generatively or directly. As with all things felt or known by humans in the world, they are phenomena that can only seem to be what they likely really are. All that normal humans can do is make a good guess at the truth of signs, and hope they are empirically right, but then optimistically that is what humans usually do so well. (2) In regard to the category of "art" as a typical class, the key issues to debate here in this forum is whether that group of all objects called artworks is found to be of objective matter or rather is made in the subjective mind. If some classes are agreed found to be objective aside from mind, then it may be found that "art" is one of them. The task then is to warrant and justify such a claim. On the other hand, if all categorical classes of generality are agreed found to be subjective constructs made only inside the mind, then it must be held that "art" is one of them. These issues appear as yet to remain unresolved. (3) By the way, in pragmatist semiotics "metaphors" along with "metonyms" and "models" are analogous iconic signs of formal similarity, whether the signs are nonlingual or lingual and then nonverbal or verbal. Anything found or held or deemed or called a "metaphor" is therefore simply a kind of mimetic sign that resembles an object. Icons under pragmatism are furthermore logically senseless in that they alone cannot be truly verified, but can be if they are further made into at least an abstract symbol.
Geoff partly wrote... Could we agree that some words are or refer to "categories"? We might call "categories" "metaphors" (or not). In either case, we might agree that some words refer to members of "categories". Example: "art" is a "category" and possibly a metaphor. Perhaps we could agree to disagree regarding whether a category is a metaphor, but agree that names/categories are abstractions intended to facilitate communication. Michael partly wrote... In any event, your assertion above means that a metaphor is no different from a sign. But as I use the term, a metaphor is a significantly different kind of verbal device. A sign points to the thing, it's the name that points to the substance. But a metaphor asks the reader to compare two dissimilar things and imagine that some quality of B can be found in A, either in some explicit way or in some indirect, i.e., "metaphorical," way. William partly wrote... Whatever stands for something else can be a metaphor of it because it evokes the thing without being it by other means.
