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Sunday, June 13, 2010

Metaphors Aren't Hobgoblins (Unless You're Speaking Metaphorically)

Upgraded from the Moot:

Metaphors are of course natural rather than supernatural phenomena: materialized as are all signifiers in events, marks, noises in the world and materialized as are all signifieds as electrochemical dispositions in brains that register, among other things, the organized attention and responsiveness of organisms to impingements upon their sense receptors of streams of energy articulated by the negotiation of a demanding environment by those organisms. I don't see how materiality or reality are imperiled particularly by recognitions of the dynamism of the literal-figural distinction, or any of the series of post-Nietzschean (among which, American pragmatist) recognitions: namely, that science yields confidence but not certainty, truths are good but not final, salient associations can be familiar or not, we are on our own but have each other, and so on.

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