March 4, 2010.
What are examples of metaphor?
Need to be careful to not use
‘dead metaphors’
idioms
“bit the dust” / “went west” / “bought the farm” -> die
Metaphors are devices for saying something and using something else
There are two lines of questions:
Technical ones in the philosophy of language (e.g. Joseph Stern)
Aesthetic questions (this is what Ted is interested in)
Metaphors are small-scale works of art
you need imaginative capacity to make/understand one
Art: the thing we do that we don’t need to do
it’s the place human’s exhibit their freedom
Once you understand a statement as ironic, it’s not hard to figure out what it means.
Could recognize something as a not-literal metaphor but then be puzzled about what it means
Try reading Wallace Stevens poetry as an example
Song of Solomon in the bible actually about sex, though you could read it without realizing that.
Is it possible to say what a metaphor says literally? Is this committing the ‘heresy of paraphrase’?
The question was confused. Metaphors aren’t reducible to similes which have a straightforward content. (“juliet is the sun” is not “juliet is like the sun”)
The simile is not true, there’s no relevant property shared by juliet and the sun that romeo means.
Inverse: “My love is like a red, red rose” why not “My life is a red, red rose”?
These questions are addressed by Joseph Stern, from analysis of the context.
In using a metaphor you will do something you couldn’t do otherwise, harder to say if you will say something you couldn’t do otherwise
Poetry is often the desire to compress a language and squeeze out all you can get
Can you translate poetry?
Of course.
Czech poet, Anschel, makes his name easier one day as Ansel, then much later writes under anagram “Selam”. Has a poem “Death Fugue” which begins “Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deustchland”
Should be translated “Death is a Meister from Germany” because no subtitutee would work for Meister.
Romans made very few advances in mathematics, possibly because their notation was so bad.
Representation makes a big difference in our ability to imagine
This may be analogous to poetry which represents concepts in a way that prose may not be able to.
We must be free, but if we’re free then there’s chaos and we end up not free, so the solution is a self-imposed constraint.
Related vaguely.
Interpreting metaphors in the same way seen as a means of connecting with other people (meaningful because it is falliable)
Wittgenstein in PI: “Sometimes people we cannot find our feet with them”
If you tell a joke that someone laughs at, you find youself in that person. Gratifying.
If you tell a joke that someone doesn’t laugh at, we react poorly, like something has gone wrong.
Irony/metaphors/jokes. All ways we live within but break rules. They help us get in touch with our freedom.
Are inappropriate/offensive jokes similar in how they work to normal jokes? Or has something gone wrong?
Cohen: they’re the same. Learning to not say telling offensive jokes is akin to learning to not pinch a stranger or roughhouse with someone who doesn’t want to.
Double infliction: they don’t like it, then you say they don’t have a sense of humor (it’s their fault for not finding it funny)
They don’t need a justification to not find it funny.
No moral theories could account for why it’s not ok for a stranger to say “I don’t like it when you cross your legs” but ok to say “Your music is too loud”. It’s something to be negotiated - you won’t learn it studying moral philosophy. The layperson is equally or more qualified than the philosopher at these practical questions.
No bearing on the functioning of the joke among people who find it funny.
Would need some account of it being harmful, that it perpetuates or creates harmful stereotypes has not been convincingly shown
The fact that a stereotype isn’t true is not a mark against the joke (a joke is always a small fiction)
“Not everything you don’t like is immoral”