Here I shall deny the possibility of being ironic without criticizing –hence the asymmetry issue is an illusion. And I will do so by adopting the theoretical grounds of Critical Pragmatics.

Wednesday, September 28, 11:00 am.,

Jakob Krebs (Goethe-University Frankfurt)
Uninformative metaphors

Venue: ILCLI. Carlos Santamaria Building. Seminar Room: B1

Abstract

The question whether metaphors can transmit information is in need of an account of information. Despite our intuitive grasp of the term and the fundamental role in scientific endeavours, a wide range of formal and informal accounts of information got differentiated. Some of them are incompatible in the sense that they cannot qualify as types of one kind of phenomena, namely the legendary flow of information. While the latter draws on an objectivist understanding of information as a transferable commodity, contextualist intuitions call for informativity as a de-reified, relational property. With respect to relational features of informativity, postulating a transfer appears to be metaphorical – and philosophically uninformative regarding the explanatory gap between events and knowledge.