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Ideas for 'works', 'Apriority and Existence' and 'Anthropological Studies of Classification'

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2 ideas

19. Language / F. Communication / 1. Rhetoric
Plato's whole philosophy may be based on being duped by reification - a figure of speech [Benardete,JA on Plato]
     Full Idea: Plato is liable to the charge of having been duped by a figure of speech, albeit the most profound of all, the trope of reification.
     From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.12
     A reaction: That might be a plausible account if his view was ridiculous, but given how many powerful friends Plato has, especially in the philosophy of mathematics, we should assume he was cleverer than that.
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / d. Metaphor
Hardly a word in the language is devoid of metaphorical potential [Yablo]
     Full Idea: There is hardly a word in the language - be it an adverb, preposition, conjunction, or what have you - that is devoid of metaphorical potential.
     From: Stephen Yablo (Apriority and Existence [2000], §12)
     A reaction: Yablo goes on to claim that metaphor is at the heart of all of our abstract thinking. 'Dead metaphors' (like the "mouth" of a river) sink totally into literal language. I think Yablo is on the right lines.