On Saturn and Semantics

Donald Davidson’s brute force account of metaphor in his influential paper “What

Metaphors Mean” lays out an account that, while lacking in charm, is at least brutally honest.

Davidson’s highly critical remarks eviscerate most of the traditional ways that metaphor is

discussed in art, leaving in his wake an array of philosophers’ heads mounted on sticks, in a kind

of macabre replay of the Roman repression of the Spartakus slave revolts. In this paper, I will

first examine the aspects of Davidson’s theory that strike me as salvageable, zooming in on his

striking example of the Saturnine visitor. I will then move to a more critical discussion of those

aspects of Davidson’s account which strike me as hopelessly mired in restricted understandings,

reflecting on his central claim that metaphors have no special function. I close my paper with

some speculations about what an alternative to Davidson’s picture could look like.

1. The Saturnine Visitor

Davdison’s account of metaphor bluntly dismisses any theory that would connect

metaphors to any special function or meaning. Davidson introduces what he sees as

“a tension in the usual view of metaphor. For on the one hand, the usual view wants to hold that

a metaphor does something no plain prose can possibly do and, on the other hand, it wants to

explain what a metaphor does by appealing to a cognitive content-just the sort of thing plain

prose is designed to express” (45). The problem, in other words, is how a theory of special

metaphorical function could go beyond the ordinary functions of prose if metaphor is taken to

have a cognitive content as well as being an exception to ordinary prose usage. To reconstruct

his alternative, it is necessary to first understand the (Fregean) motivations for Davidson’s

understanding of linguistic use. For Davidson, “Literal meaning and literal truth conditions can

be assigned to words and sentences apart from particular contexts of use” (33). To clarify the
meaning of this (outrageous) claim, he references the often-made claim that metaphors defy

paraphrase. As he writes,

I agree with the view that metaphors cannot be paraphrased, but I think this is not
because metaphors say something too novel for literal expression but because there is
nothing there to paraphrase. Paraphrase, whether possible or not, is appropriate to what is
said: we try, in paraphrase, to say it another way. But if I am right, a metaphor doesn't say
anything beyond its literal meaning (nor does its maker say anything, in using the
metaphor, beyond the literal) (32).
This claim about paraphrase articulates something crucial about the view Davidson rejects:

whether or not paraphrase is possible, Davidson’s definition of it as saying the thing in another

way is helpful. In more contemporary terms, it would perhaps be possible to rephrase this as an

insight about conceptual transits between different domains, mediated by metaphors as concrete

nodes (a view quite close to such thinkers as Zalamea). Davidson illustrates this odd claim with a

suggestive example:

“You are entertaining a visitor from Saturn by trying to teach him [sic] how to use the
word "floor." You go through the familiar dodges, leading him [sic] from floor to floor,
pointing and stamping and repeating the word. You prompt him [sic] to make
experiments, tapping objects tentatively with his [sic] tentacle while rewarding his [sic]
right and wrong tries. You want him [sic] to come out knowing not only that these
particular objects or surfaces are floors but also how to tell a floor when one is in sight or
touch. The skit you are putting on doesn't tell him [sic] what he [sic] needs to know, but
with luck it helps him [sic] to learn it” (36).
My engagement with the Saturnine visitor aims at giving her a grasp, however tentative, of the

word floor, teaching her through a process that Davidson imagines as a repetitive pointing and

stamping. Whatever we make of this rather odd notion of pedagogy, the point is clear: our

Saturnine visitor must first learn literal meanings before she can begin to use those words in a

more sophisticated, nuanced way. Davidson describes the next stages of this educational process

in similarly suggestive terms:

Your friend from Saturn now transports you through space to his [sic] home sphere, and
looking back remotely at earth you say to him [sic], nodding at the earth, "floor." Perhaps
 he [sic] will think this is still part of the lesson and assume that the word "floor" applies
properly to the earth, at least as seen from Saturn. But what if you thought he [sic]
already knew the meaning of "floor," and you were remembering how Dante, from a
similar place in the heavens, saw the inhabited earth as "the small round floor that makes
us passionate"? Your purpose was metaphor, not [a] drill in the use of language. What
difference would it make to your friend which way he [sic] took it? With the theory of
metaphor under consideration, very little difference, for according to that theory a word
has a new meaning in a metaphorical context; the occasion of the metaphor would,
therefore, be the occasion for learning the new meaning. We should agree that in some
ways it makes relatively little difference whether, in a given context, we think a word is
being used metaphorically or in a previously unknown, but literal way (36-7).
After teaching our Saturnine guest the literal usage of the word floor, Davidson’s consideration

of the case where the Earth would be described as a floor raises an important question: while it is

true that my visitor might be using the word correctly in a literal way, this does not guarantee

that she will understand how to use this word in metaphorical contexts. On Davidson’s picture,

there would not be a difference between these two situations, since literal and metaphorical

usages are for him effectively identical. The flaw in this account is easy to detect: in the last

sentence quoted above, Davidson’s reliance on a concept of “givenness” betrays his underlying

dogmatism. Another of Davidson’s examples (which, notably, is also linked to the Saturnine,

given the persistent association between the Witches’ Sabbath and Saturn1) highlights the

underlying picture of intention that subtends Davidson’s account:

“a woman who believed in witches but did not think her neighbor a witch might say, "She's a
witch," meaning it metaphorically; the same woman, still believing the same of witches and her
neighbor but intending to deceive, might use the same words to very different effect. Since
sentence and meaning are the same in both cases, it is sometimes hard to prove which intention

1
Cf. Idel, Moshe. Saturn's Jews: On the Witches' Sabbat and Sabbateanism.
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011.
lay behind the saying of it; thus a man who says "Lattimore's a Communist" and means to lie can
always try to beg off by pleading a metaphor” (43).
In this case, the woman accused of being a witch is explicitly compared to a prosecuted

communist. In both cases, on Davidson’s picture, since the metaphor is “the same” as its

meaning, the intentions of the speaker are hard to determine, which Davidson acknowledges

poses a problem for his account. Davidson’s solution here is unsatisfying: for him, what matters

is how the words are being used, an explanation that would surely be of little comfort to any

burned witches or hunted communists. In the final section of this paper, I will attempt to extend

further what a conception that goes beyond this “Myth of the Given” could look like, in the case

of our Saturnine visitor.

2. Metaphorical Function

The primary claim in Davidson’s paper, however, is harder to defend. This claim, which

is repeated incessantly throughout his paper, is the prima facie implausible claim that metaphors

are nothing other than their literal meaning. One of the clearest formulations of this view takes

place in Davidson’s claim that “metaphor belongs exclusively to the domain of use. It is

something brought off by the imaginative employment of words and sentences and depends

entirely on the ordinary meanings of those words and hence on the ordinary meanings of the

sentences they comprise” (33). An artist who learns of this view and isn’t shocked by its

implications has failed to grasp the truly horrifying consequences: on this picture, there is no

such thing as a metaphor that is better, or more appropriate, than another. Davidson explicitly

acknowledges this strange implication, seemingly viewing it as feature rather than a bug of his

account: “there are no unsuccessful metaphors, just as there are no unfunny jokes. There are

tasteless metaphors, but these are turns that nevertheless have brought something off, even if it

were not worth bringing off or could have been brought off better” (31). This strikes me as
patently false: jokes about rape are often said to be unfunny (to give one notable example) and it

is obvious that some metaphors capture information better than others. Take for example the

claim “America is a sewer.” While we might take this claim to be tasteless, we are certain that it

is a metaphor which succeeds in conveying some information: a person moved to make this

statement probably associates the actions of American political regimes with waste, and

condenses this information by way of the conceptual transit afforded by language. By way of

contrast, the claim “America is the jewel of the Western hemisphere,” while also metaphorical,

can be said to be a less successful metaphorization. While America could be described as both a

sewer and a jewel, the former synthesizes a controversial, but possible judgment with what we

could call the invariant semantic structure of the terms “America” and “sewer,” whereas the

latter remains at a more superficial level, schematizing not the invariant structure of American

social relations of domination, exploitation etc. but the surface level appearances of beauty,

natural plenitude etc. It is not simply the case that the former expresses a negative judgment

while the latter expresses a positive judgment; the former metaphor is “better” since it articulates

in a more nuanced/complex way levels of the terms which are left latent in the latter. The impact

of this is far-ranging: if works of art can’t be said to express metaphors according to degrees of

excellence, our judgments of the qualities of these works are no more than subjective vanities.

To insist, contra Davidson, that some metaphors are better than others is to recuperate an

important aspect of how artists discuss their own practices, where it is common to hear poets

analyze how fit a certain metaphor is for expressing an idea.

Davidson’s account presupposes another troubling feature, namely that it relies on a

concept of origins. As Davidson puts it, “Whether or not metaphor depends on new or extended

meanings, it certainly depends in some way on the original meanings; an adequate account of
metaphor must allow that the primary or original meanings of words remain active in their

metaphorical setting” (34). This focus on a notion of “origins” leads Davidson down the rabbit-

hole of dead metaphors, but the problems he runs into could easily be avoided if he had

constructed his concept of metaphor without this prosthesis. An alternative could take as its point

of departure the classic distinction between signifier and signified, seeing the transit between

them as the processes that constitute metaphor.

3. Conclusion

The problem Davidson identifies must be attended to, since he correctly points out the weakness

of traditional theories of metaphor when it comes to explaining certain fairly intuitive cases. To

return to the example of the Saturnine visitor, however, the pedagogy which would teach her the

meaning of the word “floor” must be expanded from the restricted understanding in which

Davidson frames it. Davidson’s reduction of meaning to use cuts through the (metaphorical)

symbolic forest, but does so based on an untenable concept of givenness. Our usages of words

are not “given,” instead they exist in contexts which constitute what metaphors are available,

meaningful and useful to us at any given time and space. We can follow Davidson in his claim

that

The critic is, so to speak, in benign competition with the metaphor maker. The critic tries to
make his own art easier or more transparent in some respects than the original, but at the same
time he tries to reproduce in others some of the effects the original had on him. In doing this the
critic also, and perhaps by the best method at his command, calls attention to the beauty or
aptness, the hidden power, of the metaphor itself (47).
Where Davidson’s comes down on the side of the critic, I would like to imagine in closing what

would happen if the philosopher were to instead side with the metaphor maker. As was argued

above, some metaphors compress information better than others; if this is true, we could see the

role of the philosopher as cracking the enigma behind metaphors, decoding why it is that some
metaphors are more effective than others. As suggested above, this program could investigate the

semantic clusters in which our language exists, investigating how these are linked to concrete

social relations which those semantics make explicit.