METAPHOR EXTERNALISED

Abstract

In the philosophy of mind, there is discussion about internalism and externalism. The first claims that for the explanation of mental states, the surroundings of the organism are not important. And the second says that they are. Metaphor seems to be explicitly internalist. But I think that it can be argued that its function is typically externalistic, and that its interpretation should be such as well. This claim is defendable if we look at the perceptual processes. The common-sensical view is that we perceive things directly if we perceive them visually. If I am looking at a chair, my perceptual directedness is centered on this chair. And in the case of language, the function of the word »chair« would be to designate chair. So metaphors would appear to be something non-literal and thus nonuseful. On the contrary, I shall claim that the metaphorical use of language brings considerable profit with it. Let us start with perception. If we look at visual perception, such as seeing a chair, we see that there are aspectual variables within the organism's computation of information, and that there are aspectual variables coming from the surroundings. Aspects in the surroundings are preconditions of the internal aspectual elaboration of information. The language as used by organisms clearly has aspectual character, as compared to artificial languages. The aspectual character of language is best represented by metaphors. Metaphors are here in order to help us perceive and act in surroundings that are typically surroundings of middle sized objects. It is thus the aspectual character that brings visual perception and metaphorical language as used by organisms together. The tentative conclusion is that metaphors should be interpreted externalistically, and that this is the way we can understand why they are here. In the evolutionary perspective, metaphor has possibilities of being naturalized.