The Myth of Embodied Metaphor

According to a traditionally infl uential idea metaphors have mostly ornamental value. Current research, on the other hand, stresses the cognitive purposes metaphors serve. According to the Conceptual Theory of Metaphor (CTM, for short), e.g., expressions are commonly used metaphorically in order to conceptualize abstract and mental phenomena. More specifically, proponents of CTM claim that abstract terms are understood by means of metaphors and that metaphor comprehension, in turn, is embodied. In this paper, I will argue that CTM fails on both counts

The Myth of Embodied Metaphor

According to a traditionally infl uential idea metaphors have mostly ornamental value. Current research, on the other hand, stresses the cognitive purposes metaphors serve. According to the Conceptual Theory of Metaphor (CTM, for short), e.g., expressions are commonly used metaphorically in order to conceptualize abstract and mental phenomena. More specifically, proponents of CTM claim that abstract terms are understood by means of metaphors and that metaphor comprehension, in turn, is embodied. In this paper, I will argue that CTM fails on both counts

Pluralism about Knowledge

In this paper I consider the prospects for pluralism about knowledge, that is, the view that there is a plurality of knowledge relations. After a brief overview of some views that entail a sort of pluralism about knowledge, I focus on a particular kind of knowledge pluralism I call standards pluralism. Put roughly, standards pluralism is the view that one never knows anything simpliciter. Rather, one knows by this-or-that epistemic standard. Because there is a plurality of epistemic standards, there is a plurality of knowledge relations. In §1 I argue that one can construct an impressive case for standards pluralism. In §2 I clarify the relationship between standards pluralism, epistemic contextualism and epistemic relativism. In §3 I argue that standards pluralism faces a serious objection. The gist of the objection is that standards pluralism is incompatible with plausible claims about the normative role of knowledge. In §4 I finish by sketching the form that a standards pluralist response to this objection might take

Knowledge in Context

My aim in this paper is to motivate and defend a version of epistemic contextualism; a version, that is, of what came to be called attributor or ascriber contextualism. I will begin by outlining, in the first part, what I take to be the basic idea of and motivation behind the version of epistemic contextualism that I favor. In the second part, a couple of examples will be presented in order to illustrate the contextualist point. Since epistemic (ascriber) contextualists commonly claim that knowledge ascriptions are context-sensitive, the third part of the paper will be concerned with the phenomenon of context-sensitivity at a more general level. A more detailed inquiry into the context-sensitivity natural language expressions exhibit will prove helpful in order to counter the objection that postulating context-sensitivity in the case of knowledge ascriptions is an ad-hoc-maneuver. Given that epistemic contextualism is partly an epistemological thesis, party a linguistic thesis, the remainder of the paper will be devoted to the question of how to semantically model the kind of context-sensitivity exhibited by knowledge ascriptions. The upshot will be that there are two differ-ent ways of semantically accommodating the context-sensitivity at issue. Both call for a more or less drastic departure from epistemological and semantic orthodoxy