Metaphor or not Metaphor: Is that the question?

Frail or not? That is the question.

coeliac disease: to classify or not to classify – that is the question!

.

Pancomputationalism: Theory or Metaphor

The theory that all processes in the universe are computational is attractive in its promise to provide an understandable theory of everything. I want to suggest here that this ‘pancomputationalism’ is not sufficiently clear on which problem it is trying to solve, and how. I propose two interpretations of pancomputationalism as a theory: I) the world is a computer and II) the world can be descr...

Your Metaphor or Mine: Belief Ascription and Metaphor Interpretation

ViewGen, an algorithm and program for be­ lief ascription, represents the beliefs of agents as explicit, partitioned proposition-sets known as environments. A way of extending View-Gen to the interpretation of metaphor, and in particular to the comprehension of metaphor within the belief spaces of particular agents, has been described elsewhere. The paper re­ ports the further refinement and re...

Metaphor is Generic

An approach to sense extension tailored for polysemy associated with non-literal language expanded to include belief revision generally. The relationship between metaphor and genericity as rhetorical devices is discussed, and both are accounted for as related species within the same framework of dynamic semantics. The theoretical apparatus is related to a dominant theory of metaphor interpretat...