Argument, Truth, and Metaphor
Abstract
Arguments and metaphors are two linguistic and conceptual phenomena that
ought to be of paramount interest to philosophers but for very different reasons.
Argument may be the philosopher’s stock in trade but metaphors are the medium of
exchange, the ubiquitous and indispensable coin of the realm. There is a complex
network of relations between metaphors and arguments. Within arguments, metaphors
can be premises; they can serve as inferential licenses; and they can also be the
conclusions for arguments. We can argue for the appropriateness of a metaphor, and its
acceptance – seeing the world through the lens it provides – can be a goal of
argumentation. From a more distanced perspective, it can sometimes be helpful to read
metaphors as being truncated arguments. And sometimes, conversely, it can be helpful to
read arguments as themselves being metaphors of a special sort. Each can fulfill the
distinctive functions characteristically associated with the other.
Nowhere is this tangled web knottier than at the intersection of the various strands
connecting arguments and metaphors to the concept of truth. Argumentation – its
practice, its products, and its evaluation – implicitly requires a robust, realist notion of
truth. Metaphors, in contrast, are independent of truth and in some ways seem to
positively exclude truth from playing any important role in explicating their meanings.
Apparently, then, we are confronted with the paradox that truth both must and cannot be
used in evaluating the meaning of those arguments that behave like metaphors!
Each of the three theses involved – that argumentation is dependent on truth, that
metaphors are independent of truth, and that some arguments are metaphors – is
controversial and in need of significant elaboration and defense, as does the curious and
perhaps unfamiliar idea of “the meaning of an argument.” They will all be addressed in
turn, followed by a proposal for beginning to resolve the paradox built around the idea
that truth itself is to be understood in large measure as one of language’s “essential
metaphors.” Truth functions as a metaphor in several important ways. The boundaries of
its range of appropriate application are fluid. Its role in our thinking is more
organizational than substantial. And, most of all, it cannot be given definite definition.
Its meaning can, however, be both broadly circumscribed and mined indefinitely without
ever being fully exhausted. The entire dialectic of realist and anti-realist argumentation
does the former. The history of correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, and deflationary
theories gives us a series of metaphors for the latter.
Daniel H. Cohen
Colby College
Waterville, ME 04901
Phone: 207-872-3427
Email: dhcohen@colby.edu