Wittgenstein-Tractatus: one form of language (that of the logical simple); Wittgenstein-Logical-Investigations: many forms of languages (metaphors: game, city, toolbox)j. (..) Pluralism can be understood today in two ways: ( 1) the traditional metaphysical question of the nature of reality--are there many substances or one?--the polar opposite of pluralism being monism; and ( 2) methodological pluralism in which many philosophical methodologies are considered to be legitimate in contrast to analytic philosophers who have claimed a monopoly on method. (..) My thesis is that metaphor exhibits a strong form of methodological pluralism and a weak form of ontological pluralism. (..) My own work, especially in my A Cognitive Theory of Metaphor, has been criticized because I applied the categories of mathematics, including n-dimensional space, fuzzy sets, and vectors to construct a rational reconstruction of metaphor. (..) Perhaps the strongest impetus propelling the view that metaphor in at least one of its fundamental uses expresses methodological pluralism can be found in Stephen Pepper's World Hypotheses. (..) The basic metaphoric method seems so natural and fundamental to human beings in their quest for knowledge, that to deny it would make the acquisition of new knowledge almost impossible. (..) Problem: on what basic metaphor does the theory of metaphor (including that of basic metaphor) depend? (..) Adopting the computational metaphor as basic metaphor for a theory of metaphor brings with it the admission that other basic metaphors possess legitimacy. (..) The classical question of whether the things of the world are composed of one substance or many substances is mirrored in theories of metaphor by the question: is there one type of language or are there many types? (..) My rational reconstruction of metaphor as a cognitive process presupposing the computational metaphor requires two other commitments: the emergence of thoughts (concepts) from brain processes; and the existence of a cultural world not unlike Karl Popper's "Third World." (..) I am content to accept biological and cultural evolution as two types of evolution based on different mechanisms that parallel one another and interact. I agree, however, with Donald T. Campbell that this interaction between biological and cultural evolution forms a knowledge process. (..) Through conceptual metaphoric changes in language, biological evolution may be influenced. (..) A Cognitive Theory of Metaphor Requires Both Methodological and Ontologial Pluralism. (..) Although several theories may be possible and no one explanation captures the reality of metaphor exclusively, weakly objective constraints do adhere. Metaphors and theories about metaphor must find some intersubjectively testable grounding in empirical experience, especially sense perception. |