No Andrea, I haven't said anything different about what metaphor is from
what you just said!
The aposteriority I am talking about is something I attibute to *all*
metaphor for reasons that I *argue* are sound: I do not *start out* from the
assuption that metaphor relates peculiarly to either apriori or aposteriori
concepts.
You are clutching at a way to misunderstand me.
Please re-read.
> From: Andrea Sosio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Organization: Italtel S.p.A.
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2001 13:51:17 +0200
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: MD rogers metaphors
>
> Hi Elephant, if you're not too tired of this... Here's the points:
>
>> ELEPHANT:
>> A prioriness excludes something being a metaphor because a metaphor is a
>> description in terms of something else, while aprioriness is irreducibility.
>> If
>> something is prior to all the "something else" in question it cannot be
>> described
>> in terms of "something else". Metaphor occurs when we see one thing, and then
>> afterwards (a posteriori, if you like) see another and use the image of the
>> first
>> in our minds to understand the second. Hence metaphorical use of words is
>> always
>> a posteriori, after the encountering of discrete objects, and since the
>> existence
>> of disrete objects depends on our imposition of the discrete onto the
>> continuous,
>> "discrete" cannot be metaphorical.
>
> I see, now. We disagree on what is a metaphor, Q.E.D. I thought the essence of
> a
> metaphor is that you apply to B a concept that usually applies to some A<>B.
> Whether
> the concept is apriori or aposteriori with respect to A is not relevant. The
> point
> is that you apply it to something *else* than the usual thing.
>
> The acknowledgement of this difference leads us... nowhere. You probably think
> the
> association language-discreteness is irreducible, and so is
> reality-continuity,
> which is weird since you'll never find hints of this in any dictionary, I
> suppose. I
> take the more conservative view of seeing discreteness and continuity as
> irreducibly
> connected to perception of the physical world (apriori concepts in our
> perception of
> objects), while they are not intrinsically bound to reality and language. That
> seems
> a dead end track in our discussion: how can we debate on associations that we
> think
> need not / cannot be explained/justified because they are a priori? We seem to
> have
> different apriori's! How strange.
>
>> ANDREA (previously):
>>> I never said the domain of language is intuition, never at all. I said: the
>>> domain of language (taken literally) is discrete. We have intuition that is
>>> something which seems to be less discrete than language (I mentioned that
>>> this
>>> needed more development, it still does). And that we bridge the gap by using
>>> language in improper (not literal) ways. What you call "creative" use of
>>> language seems to me something that is opposed to "literal" use.
>>
>> ELEPHANT:
>> Yes. And that's why literal truths are only those truths about the forms,
>> and their corrolaries. I'm sorry about my reading you as saying that the
>> domain of
>> language is
>> intuition. It occured as part of an effort to make sense of your idea that
>> the domain of language is somehow continuous. This is something which, now
>> you remove my paraphrase, I cannot understand at all. "Domain": place where
>> someone or something is in power - area of operations. Language is not in
>> power over the continuous, nor is it's area of operations the continuous,
>> since nothing of the continuous is changed or moved around by language.
>> That being so I have failed to understand your "somehow" in "somehow
>> continuous". A second attempt. Perhaps you simply mean that language is
>> somthing
>> that
>> comes about because of intuitions of Dynamic Quality. That's true. But it
>> doesn't (not even "somehow") make DQ language's *domain*.
>
> Amazing. I keep rereading what I wrote and still can't figure out what's going
> on in
> this misunderstanding. Possibly a consequence of different aprioris :)
>
> I still never said that the domain of language is continuous, even less that
> it is
> *the* continuous, I actually said the *opposite* - that it is discrete. One
> comm
> problem may be related to the word "domain", which I may be using in a
> computer-science-engineering-biased sense, that I now explain:
>
> "the domain of (a language) A is B" does not mean that A controls B, or
> changes B,
> or moves around things in B. It means (I meant) that A describes things in B.
> Eg, the domain of programming languages are automated procedures. The domain
> of
> geophysical jargon is geophysics. Etc.
>
> I keep saying that the domain of language is discrete. Not that it is *the*
> discrete, if this means anything - that it is discrete. Trivial, almost the
> same as
> saying that language is discrete, but then, also slightly different - while
> finiteness of alphabet/vocabulary/individual-sentences yields discreteness of
> language (the set of all sentences), it does yield, per se, that the world of
> all
> the literal meanings of all possible sentences is discrete. Or maybe it does.
> But
> that's not the relevant point.
>
> The point is that the world of all possible meanings that can be conveyed by
> *non-literal* uses of language is continuous (footnote: yes, I originally said
> "somehow" continuous. I'll delete that part - just think that any sentence may
> have
> infinite non-literal meanings - I think this yields continuity. A bit of
> underlying
> mathematics here.). The price we pay in non-literal use is, nevertheless, that
> you
> can never be sure of how your intended meaning actually reaches the other side
> (the
> recipient of communication), unless that is yourself.
>
> You cannot be sure, but you can have some degree of confidence that it arrived
> to
> the other side, or that something similar arrived to the other side.
> Everything gets
> fuzzy, but not necessarily out of control. For example, if the recipient
> replies and
> uses words in a non-literal way that closely resembles how you would have used
> them
> in a non-literal way to express your feeling, etc... then the degree of
> confidence
> that the message "got through" increases. (You are 90% sure he understood you
> at at
> least 80%...)
>
> And after all this leads us back to the old rusty "nail in my head" (italian
> saying)
> about language approximating truth rather then expressing truth (meaning,
> continuous
> truth). Of course this does not apply to truth about the forms. You say that
> truth
> about forms is expressed by literal language. I would assume each sentence has
> (at
> most) *one* literal meaning - that makes the collection of all
> literally-expressed
> truth discrete. So the domain of literally-interpreted sentences (domain is in
> the
> sense above) is *not* (continuous) reality. Any false steps in this line of
> reasoning?
>
>> ANDREA:
>>> And I lost you again on your argument that words mean whatever you want them
>>> to
>> mean - is
>>> that Humpty Dumpty?
>>
>> ELEPHANT:
>> I think it is. Humpty-Dumptiness I take to be the point of the "one hand
>> clapping" koan. Even physics undergoes this, since there is nothing in
>> *experience* strictly speaking which corresponds to the discrete entities
>> described in physics. Those entities are what physicists agree to call them
>> -
>> there is nothing else. There is Dynamic Quality - but that is not a thing.
>
> Through the Looking Glass' character, Humpty Dumpty, thought he could attach
> *any*
> meaning to *any* word, provided words got enough money as a reward. By doing
> this he
> extended language to the continuous - he was in fact free to coin new words,
> too,
> eg, "mimsy were the borogoves". Unfortunately, this had the consequences that
> only
> *he* understood the meaning *he* would find in any sentence.
>
> And, remember you have to unsuscribe, elephant. It is also perfectly good
> etiquette
> to raise hands up and say: "too bored!" even prior to unsubscribing. :)
>
> All good wishes to you too
> Andrea
>
>
> --
> Andrea Sosio
> RIM/PSPM/PPITMN
> Tel. (8)9006
> mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
>
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