The Devious Logic of Metaphor

1. The Devious Logic of Metaphor Leroy Searle University of Washington

2. Metaphor as an Instrument of Relation • Type 1: Attribute Matching • e.g. My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose • Type 2: Analogy & Substitution • e.g. The eye of heaven • Type 3: Problematic Intensionality • Type 4: Association Restriction • (acres of illustrations)

3. 1: Attribute Matching: A—r—B • A Red, Red Rose • O my luve's like a red, red rose • That's newly sprung in June; • O mu luve's like the melodie • That's sweetly play'd in tune. • As fair art thou, my bonie lass, • So deep in luve am I; • And I will luve thee still, my dear, • Till a' the seas gang dry. • Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, • And the rocks melt wi' the sun; • O I will luve thee still, my dear • While the sands o' life shall run. • And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve! • And fare-thee-weel awhile! • And I will come again, my luve, • Tho' 'twere ten thousand miles. • O my luve's like a red, red rose, • That's newly sprung in June; • O my luve's like the melodie • That's sweetly play'd in tune. • --Robert Burns Love Rose Melody in tune -fresh -fresh -fresh? -beautiful -beautiful -beautiful -[animal] -plant -abstract -smell -smell -? -? -thorns -? -? -aphids -? -pleasing -pleasing -pleasing

4. 2: Analogy & Substitution • XVIII • Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? • Thou art more lovely and more temperate: • Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, • And summer's lease hath all too short a date: • Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, • And often is his gold complexion dimmed, • And every fair from fair sometime declines, • By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: • But thy eternal summer shall not fade, • Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, • Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, • When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, • So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, • So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. • --William Shakespeare eye: face :: sun : heaven eye of heaven but not: sun of face

5. 3: Problematic Intensionality: Violation of expectations • The Sick Rose • O Rose thou art sick. • The invisible worm, • That files in the night • In the howling storm: • Has found out thy bed • Of crimson joy: • And his dark secret love • Does thy life destroy • --William Blake

6. 4. Associational Restrictions • 986 A narrow Fellow in the Grass Occasionally rides— You may have met Him—did you not His notice sudden is— The Grass divides as with a Comb— A spotted shaft is seen— And then it closes at your feet And opens further on— He likes a Boggy Acre A Floor too cool for Corn— Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot— I more than once at Noon Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash Unbraiding in the Sun When stooping to secure it It wrinked, and was gone— Several of Nature’s People I know, and they know me— I feel for them a transport Of cordiality— But never met this Fellow Attended, or alone Without a tighter breathing And Zero at the Bone— --Emily Dickinson By Noun By Verb By Modifier By Syntax By Convention Also: Allusions, Quotations, &c.

7. Mediating Functions / Topic – Comment Grammar TOPIC COMMENT [community] [history] {First}* Selecting identifying structuring P: :S [Perception Cognition] [Syntax Situation] -predicating- {Third }* processing {Second}* * Categories of Charles Sanders Peirce

8. Computer Poetry Shall I compare thee to a noxious bed? Thou art more like a graceful squalid egg: For none will ever warmly call thee red Until, my elk, they see us choke a leg. My heart is crimson, likewise is it blue, When e'er I see the hopeless maidens growl; I stunned the reckless butler - for a gnu Had crudely whistled as it found a fowl. Alas! the days of android, blob and pine Are gone, and now the stainless scarecrows fume; Icelandic was the reindeer, now so fine And vermin cannot heat the chuckling broom. But thou, my falling gorgon, shalt not write Until we firmly stand at Heaven's light. • --Jonathan R. Partington • http://www.geocities.com/j_r_partington/sonnet.html

9. ‘Canons’ of Logic • (1) the law of contradiction, • for all propositions p, it is impossible for both p and not p to be true • (2) the law of excluded middle (or third), • either p or ~p must be true, there being no third or middle true proposition between them • (3) the principle of identity. • a thing is identical with itself, x=x. • BUT: • (1) presupposes uniform intensionality, and is therefore not criteriological for truth or falsity if that condition is not established: it is a felicity condition for decisions; • (2) presupposes that the formation of predicates is either exhaustive or unproblematic; it is therefore a felicity condition for the selection or formulation of predicates; • (3) is a logical prejudice deriving from an uncritical acceptance of (1) & (2) as unproblematic. It further assumes that the only mode of being is the being of a thing.