Michael Hymers

Some philosophers influenced by Quine's meaning-holism agree that metaphor matters for science and for language in general, but they part ways over whether metaphors are cognitive. Hesse holds that metaphors have special cognitive content, apart from the literal content of the expressions used metaphorically. Davidson and Rorty deny this. I offer a partial reconciliation, allowing that metaphor has a noncognitive dimension, but holding that there is no sharp boundary between the literal and the metaphorical, between meaning and use, or between the cognitive and noncognitive. This also answers the question: Where do dead metaphors gets their second literal meanings?

In 'Sartre on Bad Faith' Leslie Stevenson attempts to formulate the Sartrean notion of bad faith. According to Stevenson, someone is in bad faith, if she reflectively denies some state of affairs, of the truth of which she is pre-reflectively aware. Jeffrey Gordon counters with the criticism that, although Stevenson's analysis of Sartre is correct, it is a position which is philosophically indefensible. I argue that Stevenson's reflective denial account falls to Gordon's criticism, but that it is also inadequate as a description of bad faith. I then offer an analysis of bad faith which provides both a better reading of Sartre and a way of overcoming Gordon's objection.