Metaphor, theories of concepts and biological reductionism
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Date
2001Author
Rakova, Marina.
Metadata
Abstract
This thesis is an attempt to present a multidisciplinary approach to adjectival polysemy,
particularly adjectival polysemy of a metaphorical type, and its underlying conceptual
structure. The last ten years have clearly shown a tendency towards reducing the number of
meanings and the idea of metaphor as a mechanism of concept formation has been gaining
much force, influencing research in linguistics, psychology and cognitive science. Despite
that fact, the long-standing tradition of analytic philosophy did not succumb to the attack.
However few contentions are shared in these different fields, one is held unquestioningly by
almost everyone. It is the literal-metaphorical distinction which is at the heart of both
traditional philosophy and the theory of embodied realism.
Drawing extensively on evidence from research on cross-modal perception, synesthesia,
double-function terms in cross-cultural studies, child development, psycholinguistic
experiments and experiments with brain-damaged subjects, reinterpreting the available data
and analyzing in detail theories of concepts contained in cognitive linguistics, lexical
semantics and informational semantics, the thesis casts doubt on the validity of the literalmetaphorical
distinction, for this class of examples. It stipulates the existence of
psychologically primitive concepts, which are likely to be atomic and innate, and offers a
no-polysemy view of conceptual structure with implications for linguistic polysemy. It also
shows the limits of biological reductionism and emphasizes the need for functional
approaches to cognition. The proposed alternative is both unexpected and exciting, and may
serve as a basis for bringing together empirical evidence and philosophical coherence in a
non-contradictory way