Abstract
All human knowledge is the product of measuring one experience against another. That is, it is the product of what can be called "comparative thinking" or what is more commonly and broadly conceived as metaphorical thinking. The simplest illustration of this point, expressed in Skinnerian terms, is "dictionary behavior". When someone wishes to know the meaning of a word, he or she can open a dictionary and read a definition in which the word is explicated in relation to other words, words that have Like meaning and yet are hopefully more familiar to the reader. If they are not more familiar, the reader can then turn to their definitions, and so on, until he or she locates some ground of understanding some comparative standard of meaning. This ground or standard is never absolute; it is always relative to the person's prior experience. Yet generally it suffices quite nicely.
In other words, the objects of knowledge are never "unambiguously identified". Knowledge is always established in relation to some other experience, often but not always verbal in nature. Although I cannot hope to convince Skinner or anyone else by the mere assertion of this claim, the monumental failure of logical positivists and others to establish procedures and criteria for the unambiguous definition of meaning should lend considerable credence to this proposition.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1988
Recommended Citation
Leary, David E. “A Metaphorical Analysis of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior.” Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 8 (1988): 12‑15.